Theodōra
（
Θεοδώρα). The wife of the emperor Justinian I. Procopius,
in his scandalous chronicle of the Byzantine court, describes her as the daughter of one
Acacius, a showman, and as having been by turns an actress, a dancer, and a harlot of
extraordinary shamelessness. She was at first Justinian's mistress, and in A.D. 527 became his
wife, the emperor having secured the repeal of a law which forbade the marriage of a member of
the Senate with an actress. From the time of her wedding, however, she lived a life of
exemplary purity, and was to her husband a wise and trusty counsellor, and one whose courage
saved the throne at the time of the riots that took place in 532. She was especially famous
for her charity towards unfortunate women. She died at the age of forty in
548. The disgusting stories contained in the
Ἀνέκδοτα of
Procopius (q.v.) and repeated by Gibbon and Dahn
are discredited by the fact that neither Evagrius nor Zonaras mentions them, and also by the
selfconfessed mendacity of Procopius himself. See Débedour,
L'Impératrice Théodora (Paris, 1885);
Dahn,
Prokopius (Berlin, 1865); a paper by Mallet in the
English Historical Review, vol. ii.
(1887); and the article
Iustinianus. The story of Theodora is made the basis
of a well-known drama by Victorien Sardou
(1884).
