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

everyone, to “those who chanced to come along.” While Theodora the person seemed to conquer the stage, she was in fact losing it, passing it on, as it were, to her body. To her beauty.
    Like a skilled director in the theater that he so detested, Procopius—the only source we have on Theodora’s youth—turns off all the stage lights, leaving only one spotlight focused on the young girl. She appears in all her physical splendor, but it’s a short-lived effect. When called upon to sing and dance she reveals her inadequacy, he reports, and this serves the purpose of the
Secret History
though there is no concrete evidence to support Procopius’s claim of acting mediocrity. In fact, Theodora’s theater background that he condemns must have at least given her some experience with ruses, with the art of deception. Possibly Theodora was too young to land leading roles in which she could display whatever skills she had. And so she built up her experience in secondary roles, in the background. Procopius reproaches her for failing to do what in any case she
could not
do.
    We must assume that in her early acting days Theodora, like Comito, had her mother’s protection, fueled as it might have been by self-interest. In choosing and scheduling her daughters’ progressive appearances on the stage, she must have also filtered the progressive stages of Theodora’s sexual and artistic coming of age. In all likelihood, she discreetly paraded her daughter’s beauty on the stage before offering her young, beautiful body. And not, clearly, to “those who chanced to come along” but to reliable, financially stable men of high rank. Possibly the connection with the Blue team helped here too. Probably Comito and her mother prepared Theodora for her first encounter and those that followed.
    In her sexual training there may have been someone who, with a delicacy uncommon for the times, taught her both how to pleasure a man and how to find pleasure herself; but more probably, she had to figure out on her own how to live with the “service” that was being requested of her.
    Emma Hamilton (1761–1815), last great love of the heroic Admiral Nelson, had a life not unlike Theodora’s, at least in the early years. She leaped up the ladder of society in London and in Naples (the liveliest Mediterranean city of her time, as Constantinople had once been) with the support of the mother who had introduced her to artistic circles and to a courtesan’s career, even though Emma had never displayed any specific penchant or desire for this. And yet, the two women tactfully compared their satisfying erotic experiences, without envying or begrudging each other; and these experiences in turn did not weaken their faith in a just and providential God.
    While Theodora might have appeared artistically weak in the early part of her stage career—her “infantry” period—the reason might be that her mother, in particular, needed to protect her at the outset. Combining the career of actress with that of courtesan meant not only being sexually available, but being subject to the primitive remedies against the possible effects of an active sexual life. It was risky for young Theodora, and not only for her; life at the time was harsh for all women. Most girls at her age, sixteen, were already married or close to it. Many had already given birth to their first child. Theodora was noexception: she became a mother around 515 or 516. We do not know the name of her daughter, but the girl was to play a significant role in history.
    It is difficult to connect Theodora’s motherhood to other events in her life. What we do know is that at some point Theodora suddenly reappeared in public, with the self-assurance and inevitability that always marks the young and talented. Around 517 or 518, when she must have been seventeen or eighteen years old, Theodora joined a mime troupe possibly connected with the Blue team. At that point, she was able to land roles in which