Theodora: Empress of Byzantium (Mark Magowan Books) (46 page)

Well-informed courtiers were gossiping about possible candidates for emperor, and Theodora’s faithful informers intercepted the gossip. She regularly held brief meetings with the leading ministers of the empire on purely technical matters, so that nothing would leak out. She investigated behind the scenes, and her suspicions were confirmed.

Germanus’s name sometimes came up, for he was a blood relative of Justinian, and he had shown valor on the battlefield against the Balkan and African barbarians, as well as the usual Persian enemies. Although he was a cousin of the emperor, his differences with Theodora were too deeply rooted. She had pushed him into a comfortable but distant isolation, and he would not take the first step to come out of it. The same could not be said of Belisarius. Many people looked to him: he was the only Roman general in recent centuries to have been granted a triumph (albeit an anomalous one). Belisarius looked good not only because of his victories but also because he had refused to become king of the Western empire. It was well known that he had chosen to remain a “slave” and keep the oath he had sworn to Justinian of not seeking the crown while the latter was alive. If the emperor died, many believed that Belisarius could immediately grasp what they perceived was his destined position, especially because the masses loved him as much as they feared Theodora.

The lucid empress saw clearly that in an empire without Justinian, a Belisarius supported by the military would constitute the gravest danger to the continuity of her own power. She would never withdraw the words she had spoken ten years earlier, the words that this very general had backed up with force in the Hippodrome: someone who has worn the purple cannot live without it.

What was she to do? She could not open the door to him by abdicating to become a nun, giving up her glittering power for a dull, dark, rough habit—she would be the first empress to take such a step! She
could not choose exile like Athenais-Eudocia—the fifth-century empress and poetess with whom she shared her Monophysite sympathies and a rumored whiff of scandalous “paganism”—for she loved the capital and her Hieron palace too much. Had she had a child with Justinian, the husband would live on in the son; she could keep the purple and rule as regent, teaching her heir how to exercise power. But that was not the case.

Only a miracle would let her continue to wear the purple: only a miraculous recovery by Justinian. But if he were to die, she could choose to marry again, as other empresses had. This idea she found unbearable: no one truly deserved to possess her, or Justinian’s throne. Besides, the hypothesis was even more loathsome because it would certainly be a forced marriage. A civil war would erupt, and she would lose, unless she married one of the generals. The one general she would have to marry to avoid it was Belisarius.

This was truly unfortunate because it would cost her dearly: Theodora would have to give up Antonina, the only person who in all this time had proved capable of handling important confidential matters. In 542, after what had transpired with her son Photius, Antonina probably had not followed Belisarius to the eastern front. If she was in the capital now, she was the only person Theodora would want to consult, but also the only one that she ought not to consult. Perhaps Theodora could marry another military man—some lesser general—and once again use Antonina to act against Belisarius? The reactions of the other generals would be unpredictable and risky.

With Justinian on the throne, the empire was a series of problems to be solved. Without Justinian, the empire became unbearable to her.

Theodora prayed; she did not speak; she waited. Of all the ancient mythological images that have been superimposed on the empress (and once-promiscuous actress), perhaps the most appropriate one for this period is the image of Penelope, the least promiscuous of wives, who stayed faithful to her husband despite the growing violence of her suitors. It was a paradox of history. Like Penelope, Theodora did not betray any preference; Ulysses’s wife had a piece of cloth to weave and unweave, and Justinian’s wife wove her
complex fabric of prayers. But there were no signs that Justinian’s health was improving.

Finally, Theodora might have added a vow. If so, it was a personal, intimate vow, not a promise to build churches or cities. In January 532, Theodora had publicly gambled her life for her purple mantle. Ten years later, in the confines of her soul, perhaps she repeated the gamble, offering her own survival in exchange for the emperor’s. It would be another secret, another reversal of hers. And if God took her life in exchange for Justinian’s, at least she would end her days wearing the purple. Perhaps such a vow gave her new strength to face the idea that Justinian might not survive.

Her secrets and her personal mysticism did not cause her to loosen her total control of everyday situations. Theodora continued to weave her fabric of prayers, and ordered numerous liturgies and orations for the recovery of the emperor in churches and monasteries, including those that she had founded or supported. She kept up with the network of informers who “kept reporting to her what was said and done both in the market-place and in the homes of the people.”
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Among her spies were two officers assigned to the eastern front, John “the Glutton” and a strategist named Peter, who swore to having heard from Belisarius and Bouzes—a high-ranking Thracian officer—that they would never accept another emperor “like Justinian.”

We don’t know if these words were actually spoken, and in what form; we don’t know if it was a repudiation of Justinian’s work, or if it referred to an agreement about the appointment of the next emperor, or if it was a formal understanding. It may have been a well-crafted fake rumor, spread for personal profit or commissioned by the empress herself. With such stories she could proceed to eliminate the most dangerous, and certainly the most popular, of the possible claimants to the throne. Teaching Belisarius a lesson would serve as due notice to other officers that in spite of all their secret pacts, in the end they would have to settle accounts with her and her alone.

An investigation was needed to find out if these rumors were fabricated or genuine. If true, they meant high treason, a crime that
Theodora was inflexible about, a crime that had brought down Hypatius, Pompeius, and John the Cappadocian. For the third time in less than two years, Belisarius was recalled to Constantinople.

We can easily imagine what this general who had triumphed over the Vandals and the Goths thought when he got the summons. Yet, once more, he obeyed and returned. More than the Augusta’s orders, he was probably honoring the loyalty that bound him to his emperor. And if indeed he was plotting against the Augusti, now would have been the time to disobey the summons and challenge Theodora openly. Historical hindsight, therefore, seems to put him above suspicion. On the other hand, we know that Antonina, his wife and the manager of his wealth, was probably in the capital. An open rebellion could trigger Theodora’s reprisal and the confiscation of his wealth, to his detriment and Antonina’s (or even to his detriment alone, given the intimacy between the two women). So he did well to return.

In Constantinople, the two “plotters” met different fates. Belisarius was free to move about as he pleased during the investigation, but Bouzes was called before Theodora and disappeared in the recesses of the palace: not the inner rooms reserved for the empress’s sorrowful conversations and intense prayers with Anthimus, the deposed patriarch, but the suites “where she usually kept in confinement those who had given her offense.”
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Like Photius and so many others before, Bouzes, “[a] man sprung from a line of consuls, remained, forever unaware of time. For as he sat there in the darkness, he could not distinguish whether it was day or night. … For the man who threw him his food each day met him in silence, one as dumb as the other, as one beast meets another.”
¹⁰

Perhaps this passage from the
Secret History
is alluding to Acacius, Theodora’s father, the keeper of the ferocious bears in the cages of the Kynêgion. Everyone believed that Bouzes was dead. Fear of the empress’s wrath, coupled with the awareness that a throng of spies was ready to take down any remark, buried the issue and created a conspiracy of silence: “For if it was her wish to conceal anything that
was being done, that thing remained unspoken of and unmentioned by all, and it was thenceforth not permitted either for any man who had knowledge of the matter to report the fact to any of his kinsmen, or for anyone who wished to learn the truth about him to make enquiry, even though he were very curious.”
¹¹

When in 545 Bouzes finally resurfaced “as one who had returned from the dead,”
¹²
he was broken by years of imprisonment. Was he released because generals were needed, or had the empress been “moved to pity”?
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In any case, his release from prison was a discretionary decision on the part of the empress. It partially revised the judgment of “inhuman cruelty” that many of Theodora’s contemporaries perceived as being the “foundation of her soul.” After the troubles with Pope Silverius and John the Cappadocian, Theodora interpreted each and every event in the light of a personal dispute or confrontation. Everything ricocheted off her like a test of strength.

Finally, miraculously, Justinian recovered from the plague. People wondered if he recovered because of his natural strength, or because he had not contracted an acute form of the illness, or because of the concentrated waves of innumerable thaumaturgic energies, prayers, and vows on his behalf. Only Theodora saw the emperor’s recovery as her own personal victory as well as a very great relief. (She also might have known that her vow meant that she could pay a very high price for that victory: she could pay with her life.)

Just as in 532 she was able to capitalize on her speech about power, now her husband’s recovery gave her renewed strength and energy. She had new energy to move against Belisarius, because the investigation that she had conducted had not erased all her suspicions. The emperor, who had been so close to death, preached indulgence. He reminded Theodora of the punishment they had inflicted on John the Cappadocian when he had, after all, been caught in the act; the charges against Belisarius were not comparable. Eliminating him would be counterproductive.

To placate Theodora, who continued to suspect him of plotting high treason, Belisarius was removed from his post as chief strategist
for the East. It was an unexpected and serious humiliation, but not the first one for the general—and it was just the first in a new series of humiliations. Next his personal retinue, which had grown to seven thousand soldiers who marched with him when he appeared before the admiring citizens of Constantinople, was disbanded and sent to replenish the armies decimated by the plague.

This man, so often acclaimed as the light of salvation, now faced a gray future of isolation. Formerly a living symbol of health, energy, and pride, Belisarius now looked “always pensive and gloomy, and dreading a death by violence.”
¹⁴
His proud list of victories was suddenly worthless. And it seemed that his legendary accumulated wealth was to be confiscated. Paradoxically, this was exactly what Antonina had been trying to avoid when she had redirected Theodora’s anger toward John the Cappadocian.

Justinian’s face, healthy and florid once more, and Theodora’s usual pale and ethereal face appeared to Belisarius as heralds of his own death sentence.

Despite the wounds to his career, his property, and his friendships, Belisarius did not give up. Theodora understood that she had to push harder if she was to break him. She had to properly mark the chasm between masters and slaves. The chasm had already been emphasized during Belisarius’s triumph, when he—the winner of so many battles—had been forced to kneel and bow before the emperor on the throne. Now she was sharpening her prod, while continuing to use the most efficient of her accomplices, Antonina, the general’s wife. One day, when Belisarius appeared at the palace with the small retinue he was permitted in his diminished condition, Justinian and Theodora brusquely sent him off; they seemed irritated. As he left, “some men of the base and common sort,”
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insulted and slandered him on the street (perhaps the men had been engaged on purpose). Back in his mansion, he lay on his bed, certain that the hired assassins were approaching.

A messenger from the empress appeared. Belisarius readied himself to die like an ancient hero. But the messenger carried no swords or knives—only a letter from the Augusta: “You know, noble Sir, how you
have treated us. But I, for my part, since I am greatly indebted to your wife, have decided to dismiss all these charges against you, giving to her the gift of your life. For the future, then, you may be confident concerning both your life and your property; and we shall know concerning your attitude towards her from your future behavior.”
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The “noble Sir” was Theodora’s way of deriding him. In insisting on the opposition between Belisarius and the Augusti (“how you have treated us”), Theodora was rejecting the general’s protestations of innocence. To her and to the emperor, Belisarius’s life and his victories for the public “glory of the Romans” had no value. Still, Theodora cared for Antonina; she acknowledged only that she was indebted to the wife for her stratagems against the empress’s enemies. So the empress entrusted Belisarius to Antonina, with much less enthusiasm than she had shown when she had entrusted Antonina with “her precious pearl”—the lover, Theodosius. Antonina’s private, personal rewards for serving Theodora were worth more than Belisarius’s reward for serving the empire. The general was subordinated to the “patrician lady.”

As the
Secret History
tells it, at this point Belisarius fell on his knees before his wife, who had become his mistress, his
domina
, like a lesser Theodora. He now welcomed the bowing and kneeling that he had found so bitter in the Hippodrome. “He was … constantly shifting his tongue from one of the woman’s ankles to the other,”
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calling her the cause of his life and his salvation, and promising thenceforth to be not her husband, but her faithful slave. He no longer seemed like a disgraced general; it was as if he had abdicated his status as a Roman man—as a man at all. When Pope Silverius was deposed in Rome, Belisarius had sat on the floor, with Antonina reclining higher up, on the triclinium. At that time Belisarius had wanted to stress his separation from her, to remain unsullied by Severus’s blood, for which “the empress would have to answer to Jesus Christ.” Now, just five years later, he kneeled before his wife, to show not that he was separate but that he was dependent.