Theodora (wife of Justinian I)
Theodora was the daughter of a bear-keeper, worked as an actress, and became the most powerful woman in Roman history. Almost everything scandalous about her early life comes from Procopius, who wrote official histories by day and a Secret History of considerable venom, and whose account of her stage career is unprintable and probably exaggerated and certainly not invented from nothing. She was some twenty years younger than Justinian, and marrying her required a change in the law, since senators had been forbidden to marry actresses. Her decisive moment was the Nika riots of 532. With half of Constantinople burning and a rival proclaimed in the hippodrome, the council was preparing to put the emperor on a ship, and Theodora spoke against it — that flight was possible and easy, that she preferred not to live a day without being called empress, and that the imperial purple makes a fine shroud. They stayed, and the revolt was destroyed. She was named in imperial legislation as a partner, received ambassadors, corresponded with foreign rulers, and appointed and removed officials. The laws she is credited with pushing through concern women: prohibiting the trafficking of girls, giving women rights in divorce and property, and imposing the death penalty for rape. She also protected the Monophysite churches of Egypt and Syria against her husband's own religious policy, which is why she is a saint in those churches. She died of cancer in 548 and he never remarried. Procopius is the only detailed source and he wrote two incompatible accounts of the same woman, which is a warning about how much of any ancient life is recoverable. The mosaic at Ravenna shows her holding a chalice, facing her husband across the apse as an equal.
- Lived: 497 CE – 548 CE
- Nationality: Byzantine
- Roles: leader, politician
