Theodora: Empress of Byzantium (Mark Magowan Books) (48 page)

Sergius was recalled to Constantinople for insubordination, and Areobindus was left in charge. Although he possessed many great personal qualities and was the highest military officer in the area,
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Areobindus had no experience in war. He incited Gontharis, a warrior of Germanic origin who was the imperial commander under him,
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to move against the Moors, but he failed to realize that Gontharis was conspiring with the enemy against the empire. When on the battlefield he saw that Gontharis had betrayed him, and the blood began to flow, Areobindus fled. He retreated to a fortified monastery, where he thought he could be safe. His wife and sister were there too, to comfort and advise him.

When it was time to confront the “barbaric” and victorious traitor, the Roman patrician went to the meeting not in military uniform, but in a monk’s habit, his head and shoulders covered by a scapular to make him look harmless. Instead of displaying Roman virtues, he offered Gontharis an olive branch; Bible in hand, he prostrated himself
before the traitor and begged for Christian salvation. Gontharis agreed, swearing sacred oaths, and offered Areobindus all possible guarantees. He invited him to dinner, ostensibly to celebrate their pact, but in reality intending to have him killed that very night. Thus, Areobindus’s sacred sanctuary became a mortal trap.

Areobindus was not only killed but beheaded, and his severed head was put on display. Praejecta fell into the hands of the foul traitor, who forced her to write to her uncle Justinian that Gontharis was not responsible for Areobindus’s death. Gontharis wanted to marry Praejecta to seal his rule over the territory: he believed that the imperial couple could no longer efficiently control it directly.

He had forgotten or, more probably, did not know, that North Africa, especially Carthage, had long been the ancient backdrop of both vile and cruel acts and lofty thoughts and valiant deeds, with the myth of Dido and Aeneas, the exploits of Hannibal and the Scipios, and, most recently, the victories of Belisarius. Meanwhile, another “Roman” general (who was actually Armenian-born) dreamed of making a name for himself in Carthage. Artabanes had come to Carthage in the retinue of the patrician Areobindus, and he wished to avenge his slain leader. With a clever ruse, he turned an official banquet into a massacre, and personally thrust his blade into the breast of Gontharis, who had collapsed drunkenly on the triclinium next to him. Praejecta was avenged, and she was spared a loathsome marriage. Emperor Justinian rewarded Artabanes by appointing him to Areobindus’s post. It was 546, and the new hero, like Gontharis before him, was now eyeing the emperor’s niece. No doubt Artabanes was proud of having saved her from marriage with her husband’s murderer and usurper, but he also reckoned that marrying her would bring him very close to the throne.

Praejecta was summoned to Constantinople, and then Artabanes was too. His ambition was uncontrollable. In the words of Procopius, “For when men lay hold upon prosperity unexpectedly, their minds cannot remain stable, but in their hopes they ever keep going forward, until they are deprived even of the felicity that has been undeservedly theirs.”
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Still, at the time it seemed as if Artabanes was entitled to
everything he wanted: “For he was both tall of stature and handsome, of a noble character and little given to speech.”
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Honored by the emperor with important positions, he seemed to be blessed by the stars, just as Belisarius had briefly seemed to be. (The only person who was consistently blessed by the stars was the diamond-bright empress.)

Artabanes was already married. He was estranged from his wife, and had repudiated her, so he rightly considered himself free. But his wife did not: she left her home and went to the palace, asking to be received by the Augusta. She could not bear the dishonor of being cast aside while her husband’s name was on everyone’s lips.

It was Theodora’s “nature always … to assist unfortunate women.” As we know, she had even influenced legislation on women’s status and on the family. But most important right now was that she saw Artabanes as an intruder approaching the throne from Justinian’s side of the family, an intruder who could be an impediment to
her own
family. Should he succeed, her family might be cut out of any transfer of power. Theodora and her close relatives had other reasons for suspecting Artabanes: he was the same soldier who, according to a reliable reconstruction of events, had killed Sittas (Comito’s husband, Theodora’s brother-in-law) with a cowardly spear-thrust in his back. Sittas had died in 538 during the wars in Armenia, when Artabanes was fighting alongside the Persians and was not yet an ally of the Romans.

Theodora ultimately exposed Artabanes as an opportunist and an unfaithful husband; he was forced to reunite with his wife. He protested uselessly that the new Rome punished him—the best and most trustworthy of its servants, he claimed—by making him “share the bed of the one woman in the world that he hated most.”
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What about poor Praejecta? Instead of Artabanes, the widow of faint-hearted Areobindus was married off (with Theodora’s consent) to a man named John, son of the Pompeius who—with his brother Hypatius—had paid with his blood for the Nika rebellion. Now the families on both sides of the imperial couple were ennobled by links to the great house of old Emperor Anastasius. The Dyophysite wing of Pompeius and Hypatius married into Justinian’s family through Praejecta, while Theodora’s illegitimate daughter had already been
accepted by the Monophysite wing of Probus and his sons. All the parties in Praejecta’s marriage had great expectations for the future, but they turned out to be short-lived: Praejecta’s new husband, John, died in 549 or 550.

In the
Greek Anthology
Julian the Egyptian, who had already recounted the death of Hypatius, also eulogized John:

“Famous was John.”

“Mortal, say.”

“The son-in-law of an empress.”

“Yes, but mortal.”

“The flower of the family of Anastasius.”

“And mortal too was he.”

“Righteous in his life.”

“That is no longer mortal. Virtue is stronger than death.”
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John’s virtues are recalled in this Greek verse; but only a sad, uncertain echo remains of Praejecta, who was the wife of Areobindus and John and merely an apparition for Gontharis and Artabanes. Her echo is as uncertain as her pen must have been as she sat, a prisoner in Africa, forced to write to her uncle the emperor under threat of drunken violence from Gontharis.

In acting on the complaint of Artabanes’ wife, Theodora did much more than “assist unfortunate women”: the empress believed that she had a specific calling as an arbitrator. She projected the message that anyone approaching the throne would have to deal with her whole family. She gave her sister Comito revenge against the traitor who had made her a widow. And so what if her action indirectly made Praejecta unhappy? Justinian’s young niece could go on to marry John of the great house of Anastasius, the emperor who was “piously remembered,” and Justinian’s family would benefit from the arrangement. Once again, the Augusta’s moves were based on a winning calculation of the balance between risk and opportunity.

+ + +

Around the year 545, Theodora’s experience was making her every move increasingly calculated. The speedy reactions that had brought her fame and victory in extreme situations (dealing with the Nika rebellion or Pope Silverius or John the Cappadocian) might have been faltering in the face of the new military and papal emergencies in Italy. In a world changed by the plague and Justinian’s illness, however, her consciousness of her role and of the purple had not changed, nor had her concern for the fate of the empire.

She and Justinian pondered the numerous unresolved issues in the Mediterranean. On their stage, there was no predetermined cast of characters, and no set moment when the curtain would fall: Theodora exhorted the emperor to face the most important issue of all, the question of the succession. Who would rule when their bodies lay in the church of the Holy Apostles?

It was an unwelcome subject for her husband. The sleepless Justinian could not bear the idea that his eyes would close one day in eternal sleep. He was past sixty and he had looked death in the face, but like old Emperor Anastasius he was unwilling to consider the issue of the succession. In the privacy of their apartments, Theodora must have reminded him that they sat on the throne precisely because one reckless action by that “most provident and … most prudent administrator of all emperors”
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had finally paved the way for his uncle Justin’s accession to the throne. Theodora understood that the time had come to work out, if not impose, a solution that might meet the needs of both houses (the immigrants from Illyricum and the daughters of the theater and the Hippodrome).

But while Justinian’s keen political mind was quick to grasp Theodora’s arguments, his private persona was reluctant. He wasn’t afraid of being brought down to size, but he believed that if any part of him was destined to last, it would last through what he could imprint on lifeless matter. He sought immortality through what could be written on parchment or papyrus rolls, or carved in ivory, or depicted in mosaics, or built with marble. With the exception of Theodora, to Justinian human beings were remote creatures that evoked no feelings
in him. He liked the idea of transforming his efforts into glorious objects, but the idea of securing his immortality or that of his family through future generations was foreign to him. Of course, things might have been different if his marriage to Theodora had produced a child.

The Augusta had a natural genius for command, and because there are no commands without people, people were fundamental to her. Nature had given her offspring, and her daughter and grandchildren secured their place in history. Several sources mention Theodora’s daughter as the mother of Athanasius, a complex, controversial monk and theologian. The same sources speak of an “illustrious John” who descended from Emperor Anastasius and whose maternal grandmother was Empress Theodora: he was honorary consul, patrician, ambassador to Persia in 576–77, and a staunch Monophysite.
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Furthermore, the
Secret History
speaks at length of an Anastasius whose history is indicative of his grandmother Theodora’s strong character and aspirations. It’s worth taking a closer look at him.

Theodora’s daughter had been born around 515 or 516; in 530 or 531, most likely, she was given in marriage to a son of Probus, a nephew of Emperor Anastasius and cousin of Pompeius and Hypatius, the “usurpers” in the Nika rebellion. She soon gave birth to an Anastasius of her own. Around 543, at the time of Belisarius’s humiliating treason investigation, Theodora and Antonina arranged for this Anastasius to be betrothed to Joannina, mentioned earlier. The boy and the girl were about the same age—twelve or thirteen. Anastasius next appears on our stage as an adolescent of about seventeen. In the
Secret History
, we read that in the summer of 548 he and Joannina “found themselves held by an ardent love for one another, and a space of no less than eight months [had] passed in this way.”
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They had been living together at least since the fall of 547. How could such shameless behavior have been allowed, behavior that is often frowned on even today, in a society that valued marital virtue (as personified by the most Christian rulers Theodora and Justinian)?

In 543 Theodora had decided that a male member of her family—our Anastasius (our nephew)—would get Joannina and her coveted
wealth, but no steps were taken for some years; there was no sense in rushing the immature couple. But by the second half of 547 Theodora must have felt the first symptoms of the illness that would soon kill her. She dutifully hid them, for she could not allow the slightest rumor of imperfection to circulate about her or about her power. She quickly wrote to Belisarius and Antonina, summoning them to return so that together they could end the betrothal with a marriage. But the demands of war prevented Belisarius from moving. Besides, the empress’s insistence made them suspicious: a summons to Constantinople had never been a good sign for the couple, especially not for the general.

At that point, Theodora felt that she had to intervene personally, forcing Anastasius and Joannina together. The empress seems to have prodded her nephew with very frank language, urging him to use force on the girl, “and thus after the girl had been compromised,”
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arranging for a hasty marriage to remedy the situation (an age-old Mediterranean custom). In any case, the forced intimacy produced the desired effect, for the two fell in love.
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Theodora’s radical decision was proof of her strong belief in the continuity of her power but also—and for the first time—proof of her fears. The Augusta suspected that she had only a few months to live and that she had to act quickly, as she had done so often in the past. But on the other hand, she had to deal with Antonina. Theodora must have perceived that the memory of their past collusion and their reciprocal support in dire situations might carry no weight with Belisarius’s wife, who had always tended to act only in her own interests. Fearing that after her death Antonina “would not shew herself faithful to her house,”
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Theodora forced the situation.

There was more. Theodora wanted to act immediately so that “the emperor might not put a stop to her machinations.”
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Perhaps she planned to find Justinian’s successor in her own family, forming an alliance linking her people to the houses of Emperor Anastasius and Belisarius. In this way the wealthy and glorious family of Belisarius and the noble family of Anastasius would be joined to her family in a regime of power and Monophysitism. It would be another metamorphosis, though not Theodora’s last. She would create a sort of dynasty,
which in a miraculous (though all too human) parthenogenesis would be born of Theodora’s now imperial loins from an unknown father. Ultimately,
she
would be the founder of the dynasty.