Free Theodora: Empress of Byzantium (Mark Magowan Books) by Paolo Cesaretti

the question that springs immediately to the mind of a modern scholar: Were the sexual practices attributed to young Theodora “other-directed,” dictated primarily by external situations and outside forces, by financial or social constraints? 21 When these factors are denied or omitted from consideration, it is easy to present sexual promiscuity as an avocation, deeply rooted, practiced early on, in vaguely identified brothels or even in the vaulted basements below a stage (the
fornices
, root of the word
fornication
). Our modern sensitivity has a different interpretation of perversion: it considers contemptible not the child or minor who might himself need protection and care, but the knowing adult who lays hands on the child’s body.
    Soon, according to the
Secret History
, Theodora’s sexual life ceased to be passive and she began to interact with her men, moving from sexual acts “against” nature to a more mature phase of sex “according to” nature, a transition that paralleled the rise in her social rank. But here too there was a reversal of sexual behavior: she took not a traditionally passive (female) role but an active, even sinister one.

ithin the macrocosm of Constantinople’s Christian Roman Empire, the chronicles of 513 to 515 dealt primarily with a political, religious, and military struggle. Emperor Anastasius, a supporter of Monophysitism (the belief that Jesus Christ’s divine nature prevailed over his human nature), was pitted against Vitalian, the military man who crusaded for the pro-papacy religious orthodoxy that Christ, the Incarnate Word, partook of two natures, divine and human. At the time, nothing was further from Theodora’s microcosm than any sort of imperial destiny. During these years of adolescence she matured enough to establish her theatrical career. And so, writes Procopius, “she joined the women of the stage and straightway became a courtesan, of the sort whom men of ancient times used to call ‘infantry.’ For she was neither a flute-player nor a harpist, nay, she had not even acquired skill in the dance, but she sold her youthful beauty to those who chanced to come along, plying her trade with practically her whole body.” 1
    Far from being not yet “ripe,” Theodora had now matured; from an apprentice in the service of her sister Comito, she had become a full-fledged actress. Possibly she joined a women’s professional association similar to the guilds of the male mime actors; her mother might have recommended her to the director of one of these guilds.
    At first glance, Theodora’s career seemed to follow a different path from Comito’s. She seemed to have poor acting skills. While her sister“had already scored a brilliant success among the harlots of her age,” 2 Theodora was described as a failed actress. The
Secret History
blamed her because she could neither play a musical instrument nor dance, an implicit comparison with perfect courtesans such as the famous Aspasia must have been: Aspasia was Pericles’ mistress in fifth-century B.C. Athens, more than a thousand years before Theodora’s time. But this temporal gap was of no consequence in the millennial Greek literary discourse, and Procopius’s readers might have caught a refined echo of distant days in his disparaging labeling of Theodora as an “infantry” or “troop” courtesan, the antithesis of the courtesan known as a “knight”—a highly prized, high-level courtesan (these terms were already used in ancient Attic comedy). 3
    Theodora seemed limited to being a group dancer, just another body in the corps de ballet. Of course she was on the stage now, no longer in the wings. But the stage merely revealed—even highlighted—her weakness as an artist. Instead of redefining her through her talent, it underscored Theodora’s identity as a pure sexual object, on account of her great physical beauty. And now she offered her entire body, as she had not done before. She now belonged to