Tonight, I am watching the flames in the fireplace, how they rise and twist and fall and consume the log that is their source.
The light of the flames glances off the gold tesserae of a mosaic that hangs above our fireplace. The mosaic is a replica of a segment from a large work that graces the sixth century Basilica of San Vitale at Ravenna in northern Italy. The fragment depicts Theodora, the wife of Justinian I, empress of the Byzantine Empire.
Theodora was the daughter of Acacius, a bear trainer at the Hippodrome, the gargantuan theatre of Constantinople. Acacius died when Theodora was five years old. In order to help support the family, Theodora’s mother thrust her and her two young sisters onto the stage of the Hippodrome to perform as strippers and acrobats and mimes in bawdy plays.
Like her mother, whose name is lost to history, Theodora most likely plied her trade as a prostitute, which was essentially considered synonymous with working the stage. There is no doubt that she was keenly intelligent, ambitious, charismatic, talented and beautiful. At sixteen, she exited the theatre and left with her lover, Hecebolus, who was assigned a governorship in northern Africa. Four years later, she abandoned the relationship and made her way to Alexandria, where she retreated to a convent and underwent a conversion to Monophysitism, a heretical sect of Christianity. Theodora, spinner of fantasy, lust and desire became a spinner of wool.
At twenty-five, Theodora returned to Constantinople where she caught the eye, heart and mind of Justinian, nephew of the Emperor Justin I and heir to the throne. Justinian’s aunt, Euphemia, a former slave and courtesan herself, did not approve of Theodora. Justinian would have to wait three years, until after Euphemia’s death, to marry. His uncle would also have to change the old Roman laws that prohibited a person of Justinian’s status to wed a woman who had been an actress.
Tonight, I imagine Theodora tipping toward the fire in her palace, spinning yarn out of the raw material of her life’s experience. Out of the blazes of a past that could have consumed and strangled her, and in the most improbable twirl of fate, Theodora would be coronated with her husband and rise to become effective co-regent of the eastern half of the Holy Roman Empire. As empress, she would be responsible for legislating powerful laws in defense of the parental and property rights of divorced women. She would abolish brothels in Constantinople and other cities within the empire, outlaw the trafficking of girls in the sex trade and create a safe house for former prostitutes. The trajectory of the lives of her people—particularly of women—was altered because of her heroic journey. She would twist the course of history between her fingertips.
At Ravenna, Theodora, once the little naked dancer and pantomime, is presented in her own mosaic panel, with her own court, separate from Justinian’s panel and entourage. She is swathed in pearls, emeralds, rubies and diamonds and a heavy, gem-encrusted crown adorns her head. Although it is probably true that she could be murderous, scheming and ruthless in the pursuit of her political ends, here Theodora is rendered both as a queen, cloaked in royal purple robes, and as a saint, bathed in a shimmering, golden halo.
The portrait of Theodora serves as a reminder that whatever or whoever gave us this life presented us with the opportunity to burn and whirl, with no other promise. Life itself is both the fuel and the fire, the wool and the thread. The world combusts and spins, with or without you, in spite of and because of you,