Read Theodora: Empress of Byzantium (Mark Magowan Books) for Free Online Page B

fragment showing children playing the Devil in Chains game, c. 500. Staatliche Museen, Berlin.

    (During those same years, a man named Flavius Petrus Sabbatius—later known as Justinian—had left his native Roman province of Illyricum in the Balkans and moved to Constantinople at the invitation of his uncle, Justin, a military man. He was about twenty at the time, and he wasn’t playing any street games: he needed to continue studying politics and administration. He was to become the most knowledgeable expert on the power machine in the entire empire, and someday he would share his imperial power with Theodora.)
    The three sisters probably challenged one another in singing contests, as song was the primary pastime of ancient man, a constant in all premodern societies. They might have learned the melodies of the various trade guilds (necessary channels for the barter economy of the reigning city): the shoemakers’ songs, or the songs of incense vendors, butchers, and the like. Separately or as a trio, perhaps, they went into shops to sing these songs, or to ask to learn others. Sometimes they might have gotten material items in exchange, such as pieces of string and fabric with which to make a doll’s dress, or oil to keep their lamp lit at night as they shared the stories and legends that were then, as they are now, gymnasiums of the mind and the psyche, building blocks of what we call “identity.”
    Paul, that most Christian and highly educated of apostles, when asked who he was had replied simply that he was a “Roman citizen.” 8 For Theodora and her sisters the streets and squares of the city—with their obelisks, their columns, and their statues—most likely inspired a complex sense of pride, for they were Constantinopolitans and Romans and Christians. The girls repeatedly heard about the exploits of the emperor Constantine, who had defeated the tyrant Maxentius in the name of the cross, or the tale of Saint Helena, Constantine’s mother, who had found the true Golgotha Cross. These tales celebrated an empire that had existed continuously since the famous twins were suckled by the she-wolf; a lasting empire, changed but uninterrupted; an empire that would surely last another eon, because it so pleased God.
    To the three sisters, Christianity must have seemed a happy mystery, for Jesus had promised that the last would be the first, as it had been in ancient Israel when David had defeated Goliath and Judith had beheaded Holofernes. They must have loved to hear the story of the three Jewish boys thrown into the raging furnace of Babylon: the fire had not touched the boys because they were singing lovely songs in praise of God. It was a good reason to keep on singing.
    While the girls were busy with the crucial formation of their identities, their fruitful activity did not protect them from the uncertainties of fate. The calm period for Acacius’s widow and daughters turned out to beonly a temporary lull. Asterius, the Greens’ chief organizer, suddenly overturned their lives: according to the
Secret History
he “removed these persons from that office.” 9 It’s interesting to note that Acacius’s widow shared the official position: Asterius removed “these persons.” Asterius himself must have enjoyed great latitude if he had such power.
    The widow and her partner had done their job well and were beyond reproach. And yet Asterius “removed them from that office,” perhaps for reasons that had nothing to do with [them], just as people are dismissed these days “because of corporate restructuring.” Asterius received an outside offer he could not refuse: someone else’s cash. 10 We mustn’t simply deride this as corruption; the fact is that society in late antiquity was structured so that mobility and even overnight wealth resulted from bonds that were rarely formal or merit-based, but were dictated largely by family relationships, geography, or religion—in short, by a patronage system that was