Empress Theodora's Legacy in the Shadow of Prokopios

    Despite her well-known powerful status and influence as empress, Theodora was born into the lowest classes of Byzantine society. Like her husband, Justinian, she climbed the Byzantine social ladder and eventually became an empress of much controversy. This controversy not only stems from gendered bigotry, but her rags-to-riches story (alongside Justinian’s) marked an era of change. Theodora herself was the agent of change that others, especially Prokopios, sought to resist. Prokopios was an advisor to Belisarius, a military commander during Theodora’s reign, who wrote "The Secret History" which serves as a close look into the lives of Justinian and Theodora and the denunciation of the pair.  

    Her story, to a modern audience, may be seen as an inspirational story in which a woman could control her future and climb the ranks despite her low birth, however, men like Prokopios ultimately controlled her narrative to portray her as a demonic woman who used magic to gain power for destruction and chaos. Even though most of Theodora’s history is derived from Prokopios’s "The Secret History," which seeks to misconstrue Theodora’s character as a villain in history, modern historians and scholars can read between the lines and form different interpretations of Theodora based on the policies she influenced Justinian to enact. Her power as a woman, and the fear of it, cast her and Justinian’s legacy in a negative light that has changed since the 6th century.  

    According to Prokopios, Theodora was the daughter of a bear keeper, and after her father’s death, she became an actress to support her family. At this time, it was expected that people would marry within their class, especially (in Justinian’s case) future emperors who must marry an upper-class bride. Even so, Justinian, heir to the Byzantine throne, falls in love with Theodora and commands the reformation of marriage laws to marry her. Thus, even before Theodora steps into her role as empress, she undoes a long-standing law, destabilizing tradition and creating tension among men who already questioned Justinian’s rule, for he has also come from one of the lower classes. Prokopios considered such ascension to power to be improper since it challenged his values for a traditional, patriarchal society.

    Not only does Theodora’s former career as an actress indicate to others that she is of lower rank, but it also makes this marriage shameful in the eyes of others, especially since this profession was thought by many to be as scandalous as that of prostitution. Prokopios goes into extreme detail about her performances with vulgar language to portray her as a carelessly immoral, lewd woman who was able to tempt Justinian into a marriage in which her greed, sexuality, and bloodthirstiness could be satisfied with his power, wealth, and influence. He uses such descriptions to set a foundation of dishonor and convey the dangers of women in power. For instance, he also states that “[n]othing could mollify her wrath in the slightest” and she “stubbornly executed her own plans with all the power at her command” (68). These reports create a sense of fear for Theodora’s power since they imply that she rules with anger and a dangerous amount of power. Thus, the combination of all these accounts reveals Prokopios’s elitist and sexist views since these descriptions are blatantly biased against Theodora’s rise from the lower class and the power that she holds. 

    Although Prokopios uses Theodora’s former social status and career to vilify her as an empress, modern historians and scholars use her background to understand and justify her influence on internal policies. For example, Douglas A. Burton, a novelist focused on Byzantine history, describes Theodora as a woman whose former job and experiences in the lowest class “served as a backdrop for the reforms she would influence” (Burton). Throughout her time as empress, Theodora made rape punishable by death, allowed women to own and inherit property, prohibited women from being forced into prostitution, and banned the law of mutual consent in divorce cases. She also famously created the Metanoia, a convent where former prostitutes could recover from their trauma.  

    All of these reforms served to protect women, especially those in the lower classes whose backgrounds she could identify with, and give them better social mobility in the eyes of the modern audience. Instead of a rageful ruler, historians understand her as an empress with an “assertive nature” and “a vocal advocate for women’s issues” (Vulic). From Prokopios’s perspective, however, he saw these reforms as acts of destruction and corruption of marriage laws, reasoning that those women did not want to be saved. In light of this, Prokopios remarks that "[t]he nation had become a community of slaves with Theodora as slavedriver” (115-116). Despite this commentary -among many other degrading remarks- many regard Theodora as a powerful, progressive ruler and “a subject of historical interest and admiration” for her trailblazing in women’s rights (Vulic).  

Works Cited  

Antōnios Emm Kaldellēs, and Caesariensis Procopius. The Secret History with Related Texts. Indianapolis, In Hackett, 2010.  

Burton, Douglas. “Empress Theodora and the Origin of Women’s Rights.” Douglas A. Burton, 2 Sept. 2019, douglasaburton.com/empress-theodora-and-the-origin-of-womens-rights/.

Vulic, Vladimir. “Empress Theodora (?-548 AD) - the Most Important Empress.” The Roman Empire, 4 July 2024, roman-empire.net/people/women-who-shaped-rome-people/empress-theodora/. Accessed 7 Oct. 2024.