Theodora: Empress of Byzantium (Mark Magowan Books) (39 page)

So Antonina had many good reasons for rechanneling Theodora’s mounting irritation as anger at the Cappadocian. She had to push her affair with young Theodosius into the background, and she needed to divert attention from insinuations about her and Belisarius’s conduct and wealth. For Antonina it was natural to “contrive the impossible”; this was the time to act. She prepared a detailed plan and got the Augusta’s approval. For her plan, she used Belisarius just as she had when she removed Silverius from office. But this time he was at the Persian front, so she didn’t use him in person, or his army: his name was enough.

During one of the Cappadocian’s absences from Constantinople, Antonina, who was then perhaps fifty years old, approached Euphemia, the young, shy, beloved daughter of the prefect, “his little girl.” She feigned interest and was able to gain the girl’s trust and affection, as if she were her dearest friend. Then with insistent self-pity she lamented her fate and that of her husband, the man who had done so much to expand and enrich the empire and bring it glory. The couple had had nothing but ingratitude from the Augusti, she said. Euphemia, whom her father protected like “the apple of his eye,” repeated to her “dearest friend”
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what she must have heard at home: that the responsibility was all Antonina’s and Belisarius’s; they were the only ones who could have turned the situation around, but had failed to do so. Evidently women were not afraid to discuss political issues freely in the gynoecia of Constantinople.

Antonina seized the opportunity. She said that she and Belisarius needed support from inside the palace. They had been away for a long time.
With her Eastern flair for drama, she drew a pathetic picture of the hardships she had endured, the dangers she had faced: the African drought, the winters in Rome, Belisarius’s sorties out of besieged cities, the continual risks to his life. She had even had to personally outfit a fleet of ships in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius as the rumbling volcano prepared to erupt.
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Euphemia shared her grief. She said that she would speak to her father, the very man who had begrudged all kinds of support to the general, and she did so when the prefect returned from a trip.

To John the Cappadocian, it seemed like a dream: his imperial prophecy was coming true. He enthusiastically requested a meeting with Antonina, but she postponed it until she was ready to leave for the East to join Belisarius. She suggested a seemingly casual meeting that could take place at the Rufinianae, a villa owned by Belisarius on the Asian coast of the Propontis. The official reason? John was to bring deferential greetings to Antonina and good wishes for the journey. Theodora approved the plan.

On the appointed day, after paying her respects to the empress, Antonina set out with her retinue for her journey to the East. The first stop was at the Rufinianae for the nighttime meeting with the praetorian prefect. As Antonina went, Theodora denounced the Cappadocian to Justinian, telling him that a plot was being hatched that would finally reveal John’s long-standing imperial designs, his crime of high treason. Theodora depicted John as Justinian’s deep and constant enemy, even more formidable than foreign or barbaric kings. She painted a dark picture, as if a second Nika were imminent. Once again, it looked like she was Justinian’s savior.

Theodora’s powerful pathos was equaled by her legendary speed. She dispatched Narses, the old eunuch, to the Rufinianae: over the years, he had been sharpening his military expertise. With him went the commander of the palace guards and an escort of armed men. They had clear orders from Theodora: to use the slightest pretext to eliminate John on the spot for the crime of high treason.

Theodora probably did not reveal this order to her husband. This is proof of both her violent determination and her fears. She might have
thought back to the indulgence Justinian had shown to Hypatius in 532, or to his indecision over Pope Agapetus. She believed that in such predicaments action was the best course, and that it was proof of might and majesty.

In any case, Justinian learned of Theodora’s orders. In spite of everything, he might have believed that John could still be useful to the empire. Even if he was personally offended and disappointed, his institutional persona might still have kept its balance. He sent a message to John, forbidding him to meet secretly with Antonina. Never had a potentate acted so solicitously toward someone who was plotting against him. Perhaps Justinian simply wanted to interrogate John personally, as he had done with Hypatius at the time of the Nika rebellion. In any case, although John received the message, he went ahead with the meeting.

It was night at the Rufinianae, and Antonina and the Cappadocian were working out the details of their completely realistic plan. Theodora’s men lay in ambush nearby, behind a wall. The plotters’ silk garments and adornments proclaimed their high institutional positions: one was the most powerful minister of the empire and the other was the wife of the leading Roman general. The patrician lady stressed the importance of Belisarius’s army, but we shall never know what they decided about who would wear the purple after Justinian was eliminated, or what fate they planned for Theodora. We do know that Antonina was deceiving John, and that he was probably thinking of getting rid of Belisarius (and Antonina) once the general no longer served his purpose.

Meanwhile, the prefect was speaking freely and committing himself to the plot with the moral weight of those “most dread [Christian] oaths”
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the law prescribed for the “service of the most divine and pious rulers, Justinian and Theodora.” At that point, Theodora’s men sprang into action, leaping toward John. But the cautious prefect had brought his own bodyguard. There was a scuffle, and John fled. He did not run to Justinian but sought refuge in a church, begging for the right of sanctuary, even though many literary sources have described him as a pagan.

It was an implicit admission of guilt. Theodora asked the emperor
for John’s head, but Justinian refused to sentence him to death, preferring to exile him to the ancient city of Cyzicus (now Balkiz in Turkey), beyond the Propontis. John had dreamed of wearing the imperial mantle; now he was forced to wear a monk’s habit and be called “Brother Augustus.” It was a bitterly ironic fulfillment of the prophecy that he would be Augustus.

His legendary riches didn’t suffer such a bitter fate. They were quickly confiscated, but then a fair portion was returned to him; he had wisely hidden away other property for his beloved Euphemia. Soon it was rumored that he was living a carefree life, much better than when he was a powerful prefect. Theodora continued to detest him; her people hated him too. But for him the worst was yet to come.

In 542, the bishop of Cyzicus was murdered. Mutual animosity had developed between the exiled John and the murdered bishop, so the former prefect was immediately suspected of the foul deed (or suspicions were conveniently directed toward him). There was an inquest; John was jailed, interrogated, and beaten. While there was no conclusive proof of his guilt, still he was deprived of all his property. Dressed in rags, he was put on a ship and forced to beg for food at each port of call. He finally reached the remote place where he was to be interned, the city that the emperor Hadrian had dedicated to his lover Antinoos. The city, Antinoopolis (now Esh Sheikh’ Abãdah, Egypt), on the banks of the Upper Nile, was about two hundred miles south of the urban opulence of Alexandria.

Still, John had not changed. Even in this faraway place, he oversaw tax matters that were no longer his responsibility, threatening to inform on people and reminding everyone of his prestige, and his former power. Theodora had also not changed: years later, she was still seeking evidence to nail him for the murder of the bishop of Cyzicus. She was implacable. She sought not victory for herself but complete defeat and humiliation for John. She failed to shed his blood, but she shed the blood of others: two men lost their right hands when they refused to testify in a trial against John, as she had asked them to. She was not punishing those who went against the law, but only those who did not bend to
her
law.

The history of Theodora and John the Cappadocian was not marked by the spirit of forgiveness that has often been professed as the essence of Christianity. The affair was a naked power struggle; Theodora’s unrelenting fury might even give credence to those who denigrated her by attributing to her a sort of “inhuman cruelty” and “a mind fixed firmly and persistently upon cruelty.”
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Others might have defended her by recalling that before this affair she had never exercised power arbitrarily and that it was a one-time event, a personal reaction to the Cappadocian’s provocations and accusations, not a case of wrath for “the destruction of men.”
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Many women, many poor people, and all the Monophysites could testify to Theodora’s compassionate mercy.

From a historical perspective it’s clear that the overall imperial project was subsumed to her personal hatred, and passion overcame reason. It was the first time that something of this sort had happened, and it showed her political irresponsibility, for there was no adequate successor at the praetorian prefecture. Only in 543 was the position filled, by Peter Barsymes, a protégé of Theodora’s originally from Syria.

Public affairs were being managed like private affairs
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because of technical problems, the debasement of offices and officeholders, the difficulty of communication in a multicontinental setting, and the interpenetration of the personal and the public. Private issues too easily became public; this is what happened between Belisarius and Antonina.

Antonina did much more than please Theodora and ruin John: she saved her wealth and that of her husband, as well as her relationship with her lover Theodosius. But beyond the Euphrates, in his camp on the Persian front, far from the wife who bewitched him “through her magic arts,”
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Belisarius opened his eyes. Actually, someone opened them for him.

That someone was the general’s stepson, a child of Antonina’s first marriage. Photius was a high-ranking officer who helped his stepfather defend the empire from the Persians; but he feared his mother even more than he feared enemy archers. He was especially worried that Antonina might appoint Theodosius, her godson and lover, sole heir to
the wealth that she and Belisarius had accumulated. Photius refused to accept a secondary role, and so he told Belisarius the whole truth about Antonina’s behavior. It was a bitter revelation for the conqueror of Vandals and Goths. Threatened, he swore to act, and Photius swore with him, both of them using the kind of oaths “which are the most terrible among the Christians and are in fact so designated by them,”
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but he did not intend to eliminate Antonina. “I love my wife exceedingly,” Belisarius reportedly said; “I shall do her no harm … if it be granted me to take vengeance upon [Theodosius] the corrupter of my home.”
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To get his revenge, all he had to do was to exclude the younger man from the spoils of war.

After her triumph over the Cappadocian, Antonina was moving inland to join Belisarius with her retinue. The two winners should have had a happy reunion: her husband, in one of those military operations that made him “the best general of all times,”
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had just stormed the enemy fortress of Sisauranon near Nisibis and the river Tigris at the eastern border of Mesopotamia. But his mind was not on military matters. As soon as he learned of his wife’s arrival, he stopped battling for the empire’s glory.

He did not push forward to attack the Persians, to advance into the heart of their territory and on to the undefended capital, Ctesiphon. In Ravenna the previous year, Belisarius had refused to become “a new Theodoric.” Now he had the chance to become another Alexander the Great, and again he refused. He pulled back because he wanted to meet with Antonina.

He did not confront her explosively, or mete out harsh punishment. But did put her under strict surveillance that the patrician Antonina found humiliating. In focusing on her, Belisarius was “subordinating the most vital interests of the State to those of his own family”
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without effectively resolving either. The result was total inaction on both fronts.

Photius had a different interpretation of the oath that he had sworn with Belisarius. He ordered Theodosius captured and he grabbed his riches; he hid the prisoner in southern Anatolia and transferred his loot to the capital. But his ugly display of manly loyalty and Christian
observance was ill-considered, for through Theodosius he struck at Antonina, Theodora’s untouchable assistant. He struck at the very heart of the empire.

Antonina and Theodosius’s erotic escapades had already cost the lives of slaves and chamber servants. According to the
Secret History
, Antonina had their tongues cut out in order to guarantee their silence. Later, so the story goes, they were hacked to pieces, thrown into sacks, and tossed into the sea. Even assuming that our source was exaggerating, there is indisputable evidence that even a high-ranking officer had been put to death for having spoken out unwisely against Antonina.

Belisarius’s wife had Theodora on her side, and since the Augusta owed her for having helped dispose of John the Cappadocian, Antonina could ask the throne for help against her husband and son. Theodora did help: the two women gave each other “unholy gifts.”
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The result was that many functionaries and army officers—the very backbone of the empire—were stripped of their rank simply for being friends of Belisarius and Photius. Some were exiled, others confined to the palace dungeons. Bound to a rack with ropes around their necks, they eventually died. Despite his position as consul, Photius was captured and held captive in the innermost recesses of Theodora’s legendary quarters. Repeated floggings on his back and shoulders did not persuade him to reveal the hiding place of his mother’s lover.