You may perhaps have been puzzled by the term 'Megaraean Sphinx': that was the name given by some epigrammatist or other to the prostitute of Constantinople. The Sphinx was a devouring monster that kept its secrets to itself, and it was from the Greek city of Megara that Constantinople was first colonized. The story is that the prospective colonists were instructed by an oracle to sail to the north-east until they came to the land opposite to 'the city of the blind men'; they were to found their own city there, which would become the finest in the world. So they sailed north-east across the Aegean, and up the Hellespont until they reached the Bosphorus, and there they founded their city on the European bank-opposite Hieron, which was already colonized. This was clearly the place intended, for the men of Hieron had built their city on the more unfavourable bank, where currents were troublesome, fish scarce, and the ground unfertile, when they could readily have chosen the other bank with its fine natural harbour, the Golden Horn-so blind they were. Now after all these centuries Hieron is still a small place, but the Megaraean foundation has become a place of a million inhabitants, with magnificent buildings enclosed by a triple wall. It is the city of many names-to the Greeks officially 'Constantinople', familiarly 'Byzantium', to literary Italians 'New Rome', to the Goths and other German barbarians 'Micklegarth', to the Bulgars 'Kesarorda', to the Slavs 'Tsarigrad'-the wonder of the world, which I regard as my home.
My master, the father of the girl Antonina, was as I have said a charioteer of the Green faction at Constantinople. His name was Damocles, and he treated me kindly. He won many races for his Colour before he died, as quite a young man, in circumstances which require that I should tell the story in detail. He was a Thracian from Salonica, the son of a charioteer at the Hippodrome there, where the racing standard is a very high one-though not, I admit, as high as at Constantinople. He was noticed one day by a wealthy supporter of the Greens who had come to Salonica in search of talent; and, in return for a large sum of money paid to the local faction funds, his services were transferred to the Capital. There he drove the second chariot in important races, his task usually being to make the pace and jostle the two Blue chariots off their course, in order to give the first Green chariot, which had the faster horses, an opportunity for a clean run through. He was very skilful at this business, and sometimes at the last moment won the race with his own chariot by a feint at jostling that allowed him to slip in and thrust ahead himself. He had a great talent for getting the best out of difficult or lazy horses. He was also the cleverest manager of the whip in the whole profession: with it he could unerringly kill a bee in a flower or a wasp on the wall at five yards' range.
This Damocles had a friend, Acacius of Cyprus, to whom he was greatly devoted, and one of his conditions for coming to Constantinople was that Acacius should be given an appointment of sorts at the Hippodrome: enough for a decent living, because he was married and had three little children, all girls. The condition was faithfully observed, Acacius being appointed Assistant Bear Master to the Greens. Later he was given the Chief Bear Mastership, a responsible and lucrative post. Here I must go back in history, to make everything plain.
Now, the year of our Lord 404, exactly a hundred years before the story that I have to tell, was marked by two very inept innovations. In the first place the Sibylline prophetic books, which were consulted by the Senate in all cases of national perplexity and danger and had been kept carefully stored in the Palatine Library at Rome ever since the reign of the Emperor Augustus-these precious and irreplaceable treasures were wantonly burned on religious grounds by an illiterate Christian, a German general in the service of Honorius, Emperor of the West. This stupidity was foretold in the books themselves; for it is said the final set of hexameter verses ran:
When two young fools between them do divide
Our world, the elder (on the younger side)
By banning bloodshed in his Hippodrome
Bloodshed redoubles, while in elder Rome
The younger, yielding to barbarian folk,
Sees his most trusty Council rise in smoke.
Arcadius, the Emperor of the East Romans ('the younger side'), fulfilled his part of the prophecy in the same year. One day, in the Hippodrome at Constantinople, a mad monk darted between two armed gladiators just as they had reached the most exciting phase of their combat. He called on them in a loud voice to refrain from murder, in Christ's most holy name. The gladiators were chary of killing the monk, which would have brought them bad luck-gladiators are naturally superstitious. They broke away, and by signs asked the Emperor, who was acting as President, what they were expected to do next. The spectators were affronted by the monk's tasteless interference with their amusement; swarming over the barrier, with lumps of concrete in their hands and bricks torn from the seats, they stoned the monk to death. Arcadius was equally affronted at this usurpation by the audience of his authority as President. He took the very severe step of forbidding all gladiatorial displays for an indefinite period. This decree provoked riotous protests, in punishment of which he dissolved the gladiators' guild altogether and allowed the monk, whose name was Telemachus, to be proclaimed a martyr and honourably enrolled on the diptychs. The consequences were not happy.
In the first place, as the Sibyl seems to have foreseen, the populace, denied its customary pleasure of seeing men kill one another publicly and professionally, sought satisfaction in unofficial sword-fights in the streets and squares between the young coxcombs of the Blue and Green factions. In the second place, the disappearance of the gladiatorial part of the Hippodrome games raised bear-baiting from an inferior position to a very high one. The mastiffs which fought the bears were, I may mention, not jointly owned by the faction, as the bears themselves were, and the horses, but privately trained by wealthy sportsmen. Occasional fights were also staged between lion and tiger (the tiger always won) or wolves and bull (the wolves always won, if in health, by attacking the bull's genitals) or bull and lion (the odds were even, if it was a strong bull) or wild-boar and wild-boar. But bear-baiting provided the most consistently good sport, and was more popular even than the spectacles, still permitted at some hippodromes, in which armed criminals attempted, more or less ineptly, to protect themselves from the attacks of these various wild beasts.
The more devout Christians either left their seats or shut their eyes during such set fights; and by some encyclical letter or other bear-keepers and lion-keepers and chariot-drivers and other Hippodrome entertainers were not allowed to profess Christianity. Or rather, they were forbidden to take part in the Eucharist, since their professions were supposed to be wicked ones that excited men's minds and drew them away from calm contemplation of the Heavenly City. For this reason the entertainers were naturally hostile to the Christian religion as one that despised their traditional callings, of which they were by no means ashamed. They took pleasure in circulating stories to the discredit of Christianity, especially about the hypocritical behaviour of devout Christians. There was more than one high officer of the Church who used secretly to send a present of money to the Green or Blue Dancing Master, asking him to select a clever woman to enliven a dinner-party; and yet, in the streets, these same men would draw their garments away in horror if they met an actress, as though afraid of pollution.
I was at one with the entertainers in this: my experiences while in the employment of my former master Barak had given me profound suspicions of the Church, suspicions which I still retain. It is something ingrained in me and not to be washed away; just as the colour Green was ingrained in my master Damocles' soul. But I have met some honourable men among the Christians, and therefore cannot in justice write anything against Christianity itself-only against those who have used it to their own ends and made a parade of holiness as a means of self-advancement. At any rate, there was this hostility to the Church among the Hippodrome people (I include in this term the entertainers from the Theatre, which was closely connected with the Hippodrome); and their rooms and offices were a sanctuary for the few priests of the Old Gods who survived, and for Egyptian and Syrian sorcerers and fortune-tellers and Persian mages, who were adepts in the interpretation of dreams. Only the Dancing Masters, who acted as our intermediaries with the faction management and thus with the Court and the Church, were, by custom, Christians; and a sly, unlovable set of men they were, to be sure.
Damocles' friend, the Bear Master Acacius, was killed in the exercise of his duty. The he-bears were excited by the presence of a she-bear in a neighbouring stall. They became refractory. One of them managed to break his chain and then beat in the door of his stall, furious to get at the she-bear. Acacius offered him honeycomb on a stick, and tried to persuade him to return peaceably to his stall. But the bear seemed insulted to be offered one sort of sweetness when he had set his heart on another, and struck petulantly at Acacius, though with no intent to hurt him seriously, and tore his arm. The wound became poisoned, and Acacius died that same evening, to the great grief of his associates of the Green faction, and especially of my master Damocles; and to the grief, I am told, of the bear, who mourned for him like a human being.
The Assistant Bear Master, Peter, was a sort of cousin to Damocles-most of the Hippodrome people were related by marriage-and it was decided that he should marry Acacius's widow and apply to the faction management to be appointed Bear Master in his place. This was done; and, though the marriage might seem a little lacking in good taste, celebrated so soon after the Bear Master's death, it was necessitated by circumstances. None of the Greens thought any the worse of either of the contracting parties.
But the dead Bear Master's term of office had been so successful-he had improved the defensive powers of the bears by giving them regular exercise and a careful diet, instead of keeping them always locked up in the dark, as the custom had been-that the management had recently voted for his salary to be doubled. It now amounted to 500 gold pieces a year, apart from perquisites. This bounty was justified by the huge increase in the ringside betting on the bear-baiting shows, for three per cent of the winnings went to the faction funds. Five hundred a year was a tempting sum, and the Dancing Master, who was typical of his class, did not wish to give it away for nothing. When Cappadocian John, who happened to be a prominent Green, offered a thousand for it on behalf of a retainer of his, the Dancing Master was not deaf. The matter was easily arranged, Cappadocian John being chairman of the Committee for Appointments. The Dancing Master stated at the meeting that the only other candidate was Peter, the Assistant Bear Master, who not only should be refused the rise in position but did not deserve to keep his present post. He insinuated to the Committee that Peter might have had something to do with the escape of the bear that killed Acacius; and made Peter's haste in marrying his dead master's widow seem indecent.
The Committee not only dismissed Peter's application, but also Peter himself. When Damocles heard of the decision he was rightly disgusted. He went to his fellow-charioteers to complain. He asked them to sign a petition to the Governors of the Hippodrome, who were a higher authority than the Green-faction management, complaining of the double injustice done to the Bear Master's widow and three children, and to the Assistant Bear Master.
The charioteers were not eager to do anything in the matter, however, though the new Cappadocian Bear Master had openly boasted that the post had been bought for him, and though he was an outsider with no previous connexion with the Hippodrome. Their reasons were that they were not interested in bear-baiting themselves, being charioteers; that Cappadocian John was a powerful man at Court and in the faction; and that they held it as unreasonable to carry a matter which touched the honour of the Greens before the Governors, among whom there were Blues as well.
Damocles refused to let the matter rest. He interviewed other prominent Greens, trying to persuade them to take an interest in the case, but none of them would listen to him.
The Blues soon came to hear the whole story and sent two of their charioteers to sound Damocles secretly. They asked him whether they could assist him in any way to get justice done. Damocles was so distracted that he answered bitterly: 'Yes, indeed! I would accept assistance from anyone, even from the Blues, nay even from the accursed Christian monks, if they could bring about the disgrace of this Dancing Master and this Cappadocian.'
The charioteers said: 'Suggest to the woman and her children that they put garlands on their heads and take posies in their hands and go out as suppliants, escorted by Peter, to the lower race-post just before the bear-baiting is to begin. The better-minded of the Greens will intervene on their behalf; and we can promise that the Blues will support the appeal vociferously.'
He agreed to this plan, which was only, of course, intended by the Blues to discredit the Green management; they had no genuine desire to help the woman and her children. But strange things now began to happen. In the first place, by a remarkable coincidence, the Bear Master of the Blues dropped dead that same afternoon as he was walking across the Square of Augustus. In the second place, Thomas, the Treasurer of the Blues, had a dream that night in which a big black bear, wearing a Green favour and ridden by a little girl with a garland on her head, came shambling into the Blue committee-room, tore off the favour, trampled on it, and began distributing crowns and palms of victory and pawfuls of newly-minted money.
The next day, as soon as the suppliants had presented themselves at the race-post, as the Blue charioteers had suggested, Cappadocian John sent a party of Greens to remove them. The Blues raised a fearful outcry, and most of the Greens among the audience did not understand the rights and wrongs of the case: so far from showing sympathy, they hissed the poor creatures as they were being bustled out through the Green benches. Damocles grew more angry than ever.
The last race that afternoon was a most important one. It was the anniversary of the Emperor's accession and he had promised to award a work of art, a chariot team in full career (the horses executed in silver, the chariot and driver in gold) to the management of the winning faction. It would be a close race, to judge by the betting. Damocles determined to gain popular applause by driving as he had never driven before. He knew that when he was conducted by the faction-leaders, garlanded and with a cross of flowers in his hand, to prostrate himself in homage and accept the prize from the Emperor's hands (as would happen if he helped to win the race), he would have an opportunity to make an appeal. The Emperor Anastasius was an affable man, and ready to do justice in cases of this sort.
It would be out of place to give a full account of the race; but let me at least describe the seventh and last lap of it. First one Colour had led, then the other, then the first again. By the end of the fifth lap, when the competitors had already covered a full mile, the position was that the first Green chariot was in the inside berth, hugging the central barrier; the second Blue chariot, which had been making the pace magnificently, lay just a little behind, in the next. Next came Damocles' chariot, the second Green, in the outside berth, closely challenged by the first Blue in the berth next to him on the inside. Victory seemed assured for the Greens now, and the Blue benches were looking glum when the final turn of the course was reached. But then Damocles suddenly knew that his horses were exhausted: no amount of skill with the whip or exhortations with the voice would draw another spurt of speed out of them. The distance between the two inside chariots, the first Green and the second Blue, and the two outside ones, the first Blue and the second Green, had lessened greatly, though the same relative positions were maintained. The first Blue was going strongly now and was capable of snatching a victory not only from Damocles, in the second Green, but from the two leaders. So Damocles took a swift decision at the turn: he slightly infringed on the first Blue's course and then reined in suddenly. His intention, of course, was to foul the off-wheel of the enemy chariot, and so put it out of the running-leaving his partner in the inside berth to make rare of victory. This trick is a legitimate one, but seldom played, because of the danger to the life of the man who plays it: the chances are that the chariot will overturn and that he will break a limb, or be kicked to death, or strangled in the reins, which are tightly tied around his middle, before he can cut himself free with his hook. Damocles, however, risked the danger, and was so intent on not missing his aim, and there was so much dust and shouting, that he did not notice what was happening in the two inner berths. His partner, the first Green, had been jostled by the second Blue and had fouled the race-post and come to grief; but the near trace-horse of the second Blue had strained a tendon in the course of the manoeuvre, which obliged the team to pull up. As a result, the first Blue was able to avoid the danger from Damocles' wheel, as he could not have done if his partner had still been running just ahead of him: he made a wonderful inward swerve and scraped past, to win comfortably from Damocles, who was left standing.
It was a clear case of bad luck, as all discriminating judges would have agreed; yet the Greens were so disappointed that they felt obliged to find a scapegoat. The scapegoat was not the first Green charioteer, who was lying stunned on the ground in the ruins of his chariot, but my master Damocles. For Damocles, after his partner had crashed, had been left in the leading position with only a hundred yards more to go for victory, and had unaccountably reined in. It can be imagined that Cappadocian John put the worst possible construction on his behaviour, and accused him of selling the race to the Blues. The evidence that he offered for the accusation was that two Blue charioteers had been seen speaking to Damocles on the previous morning in a City wine-shop, and that Damocles had a grudge against the faction management in the matter of the Bear Mastership. So at a committee-meeting held immediately after the race he was suspended from driving for a year; and that night he killed himself, after an assault on the Green Dancing Master, one of whose eyes he struck out with a flick of his whip, aiming across the full length of the charioteers' dressing-room.
Our fortunes now seemed at a very low ebb, because my master Damocles had been generous with his earnings and saved practically nothing; and now his wife and Antonina his daughter were cast off by the faction as the relicts of a charioteer who had disgraced his Colour. As for myself, I was in danger of being sold again to another master. But all ended well, because at a meeting of the Blue management two days later Thomas the Treasurer related his dream about the bear. He assured the committee that the little girl who had ridden on the bear's back in his dream was one of the daughters of the deceased Green Bear Master, who had sat garlanded as suppliants at the race-post. He urged them to offer the vacant post of Blue Bear Master to Peter, who was now stepfather to these little girls: for it was clear that good luck would come to the Blues if they did so.
There was some opposition to the suggestion, but Thomas pointed out that Peter was well trained in the Green bear-stables, and that they would be doing themselves a service as well as putting the Greens to shame, if they chose him. Peter was appointed the Blue Bear Master and made a success of his term of office, and the whole family changed their colour from Green to Blue; which is a very rare occurrence among Hippodrome families. To show his gratitude to the family of Damocles, he gave us board and lodging in his own house; and his wife and daughters as well as himself swore by the God Poseidon (the most respectable oath among Hippodrome people), that they would do everything in their power to assist us. So we were comforted, and Damocles' widow did not need to sell me. But in order not to be a burden to Peter, she persuaded the Dancing Master of the Blues to employ her as an actress at the Theatre-not as a dramatic actress on the stage, because she had not sufficient training for this, but as a variety actress in the orchestra-area. She could dance a little and strum a little on the lute and manage a tambourine quite well, so he used her. She trained her daughter Antonina from her earliest years as musician, juggler, dancer, and acrobat, and Antonina grew up as Blue in her feelings as her father Damocles had been Green. Antonina was soon greatly in request at supper-parties like Modestus's at Adrianople, and at community-dinners among the young coxcombs of the Blue faction, to which each member made some contribution either of food or drink.
Antonina remained on terms of intimate friendship with the three daughters of Acacius. Their names were Comito, Theodora, and Anastasia. But of these I wish chiefly to write about Theodora, the middle one in age, who was Antonina's senior by some two years and became her particular friend. As the three girls grew up they were each in turn put on the stage. Comito was a sleek, superbly made creature, and made a great success with the men, in spite of being a poor actress. She began to treat Theodora and Anastasia with disdain, because neither of them had her good looks, but she died pretty soon of the disease of her profession. Anastasia became contaminated too, and lost most of her teeth in a brawl at a community dinner. But Theodora was undamageable. It was generally agreed that she had a devil in her-a devil of implacability and insatiability. How often in after-life did Antonina have occasion to thank the gods that Theodora was her ally, not her enemy!
I remember Theodora first as a six-year-old child, dressed in a little sleeveless frock of the sort that slave children wear, carrying her mother's folding-stool for her to the orchestra-area before a performance. She scowled or snapped at any other children she met; her mother used to say that one ought to hang a notice around her neck like those seen in the bear-stables warning visitors: 'This animal is malevolent.' Theodora had become embittered by being jeered at by her former little friends among the Greens for that unlucky history of her father's death and her mother's remarriage.
Antonina, too, had insults thrown at her, as the daughter of a charioteer who had sold a race to the Blues. But she was not a physical fighter like Theodora, who went for her tormentors with nails and teeth. She took her revenge in other ways: chiefly-as she grew a little older-by frightening her enemies into imagining themselves the victims of her magical powers. She gradually came herself to believe in the magic. Certainly she had one or two remarkable successes with it. One day she was rudely kicked from behind by Asterius, the Dancing Master of the Greens, whose machinations had been the original cause of all the trouble. She made an image of him in tallow-paunchy, big-nosed, one-eyed-and uttered certain prayers to Hecate, who is the Old Goddess who manages these things, and then drove out his remaining eye with a pin. Before the moon had reached her third quarter, this villain was blinded: a spindle thrown by an angry woman at her husband somehow struck him instead, as he was passing by their street door. Theodora much admired Antonina for this action, and together they tried to destroy Cappadocian John too. But I suppose that his many prayers in Church hindered Hecate's action; for he continued to thrive. Then they swore by the Sacred Rattle-a most terrible oath-that they would never rest until one or other of them had reduced John to the nakedness and beggary which were his due. The sequel will be told before this book is over.
An old Syro-Phoenician sorcerer from whom my mistress Antonina learned her magic-my master Damocles had befriended him-cast the two girls' horoscopes one day, which amazed and terrified him by their brilliance. He told Theodora that she was fated to marry the King of the Demons and to reign more gloriously than any woman since Queen Semiramis and never to lack for gold. As for Antonina, she should marry a patrician, the one good man in a wholly bad world; and, whereas Theodora's share of misfortune would occur in the earlier part of her life, Antonina should be spared misfortune until extreme old age, when it would be soon done.
Theodora bent her brows at him and said: 'Old man, are you trying your usual flattering tricks on us? Are you unaware, for a start, that men of birth are forbidden by ancient law to marry women of our profession? Confess that you lie!'
He trembled, but would not retract a word, inviting her to show the figures of these horoscopes to any reputable astrologer. So she did so, and the second astrologer an Alexandrian Greek, made much the same deductions as the first.
Then she said to my mistress Antonina, laughing: 'Dearest girl, what your husband will not be able to accomplish for us by goodness, I shall make my husband accomplish by demonry.'
Another memory that I have is of Theodora going into the Theatre wearing nothing except the obligatory loin-cloth and a large hat. That was when she was almost fully mature in body. Her game was that her loin-cloth was always coming untied: she used to go with it in her hand to the busy faction-official who attended people to their seats and complain that 'certain men of Belial' had rudely pulled it off her. She desired him to escort her to some private place and assist her to put it on again. Meanwhile she modestly covered her thighs with her hat. Her gravity, her mock-distress, her persistence, used to exasperate the official, to the delight of the benches.
Theodora was small and sallow complexioned. She was not a particularly good dancer or instrumentalist or acrobat; in fact, she was rather below the average of excellence at all these things. But she possessed an extraordinarily quick wit and a complete freedom from sexual shame: she seems, indeed, to have shown a singular inventiveness in her carnality, so that 'I learned this from Theodora' was a current joke under the statue of Venus, the chief trysting-place of the brothel district. And all the time that she was apparently engaged merely in money-making and pleasure Theodora was busily studying Man; and there is no better way to study this subject than as a Megaraean sphinx, to whom young men and old reveal their true selves more openly than to their chaster mothers, sisters, or wives. My mistress Antonina was a student of Man, too, and she and Theodora soon learned to despise even the gravest of their clients for their unquenchable conceit and credulousness and ignorance and selfishness, and to turn these traits to their own advantage. By charms and remedies they both managed to avoid pregnancy, except Theodora, who had to procure an abortion on a couple of occasions, but without ill-effects.
They had only two intimate friends, Indaro and Chrysomallo, girls of their set; with whom, some six months after Antonina's visit to Adrianople, they planned to leave the stage, if they could get permission, and set up independently. Permission was extremely difficult to obtain, but Chrysomallo and Theodora had the good luck to gain the favour of the Democrat of the Blues, who controlled the political side of the faction, while Indaro and Antonina laid successful siege to the Demarch, who controlled the military side. The usual ruling was that the husband of any actress who left the stage for the sake of marriage must pay a heavy contribution to the Fund. No other excuses were accepted except penitence, but no penitent might return to her old employment under a penalty of being shut in a house of correction for the rest of her days. Nevertheless, these four girls won permission to leave, on the understanding that they remained good Blues. With their savings, and money borrowed from their backers, they clubbed together to take a well-furnished suite of rooms in an elegant house close to the Statue of Venus, and opened it as a place of entertainment: being officially backed by the faction, it soon became the most fashionable resort of Constantinople. By this time my mistress Antonina's mother was dead; Antonina had inherited me from her. The club catering was entrusted to my charge. As independent entertainers the ladies were no longer forced to pay a high proportion of their private earnings to the Dancing Master; instead, they became full members of the faction, paying their subscriptions regularly to the Fund. Indaro and Chrysomallo were both highly trained, the first as an acrobatic dancer and juggler, the second as a singer and instrumentalist; and my mistress Antonina was equal to either of them in those accomplishments. Theodora was their manager and their clown. The four of them had some very happy, amusing, altogether shameless times together, and I am glad to record that they remained good friends both then and throughout their subsequent lives; and I, who have survived them all, regret them all.
One day Theodora told us-for I was treated more as a friend than a slave, and they all confided in me-that she had been invited to accompany a patrician named Hecebolus to Pentapolis, of which he had been appointed Governor, and that this opportunity of seeing the world at her ease was too good to be missed. We all begged Theodora not to leave us, and Chrysomallo warned her that Hecebolus was not a man to be trusted-was he not a Tyrian by birth and so a born trickster? Theodora replied that she knew how to take care of herself and that her only anxiety was about leaving us to manage without her. Off she went; after a couple of amusing notes from cities on the route to Pentapolis, we heard nothing more either from her or about her for a very long time. Then a staff-officer came on leave from Pentapolis and told us that one evening Theodora had lost her temper with Hecebolus, who had tried to keep her in a sort of cage all to himself: she had emptied a pail of slops over him, brocaded tunic and all, as he was dressing for dinner. He had thrown her out of his residence immediately, and refused even to let her remove her few clothes and jewels. The staff-officer believed that she had then persuaded the captain of a vessel to take her to Alexandria in Egypt; but he could tell us nothing further.
It was a very different Theodora who limped back to Constantinople many months later. The misfortunes prophesied for her by the Syro-Phoenician had been concentrated into a single year, and they had been very bitter ones. Our gay, self-reliant Theodora, who had never failed to tell us her most ludicrous and painful adventures, kept pretty silent on the subject of her experiences in Egypt and her humiliating return journey by way of Caesarea and Antioch and the interior of Asia Minor. We nursed her slowly back to health, but even when she was strong enough, to all physical appearances, she did not feel equal to resuming her work at the club-house. 'I would rather spin wool all day than begin that life again,' she cried. Much to our surprise, she actually borrowed a spinning-wheel and began learning to use this melancholy if serviceable instrument in the solitude of her room. The other ladies did not laugh at her, because she was their friend and had evidently suffered almost beyond human endurance. So the steady sound of the spinning-wheel was now heard in the club-house at all hours of the day and night; and when clients asked, 'Will that damned whining noise never stop?' the ladies would answer, 'That is only poor Theodora earning an honest living.' But they took it for a joke. They never caught sight of her.
One of our clients was a strange, round-faced, smiling, lecherous fellow named Justinian, a nephew of the illiterate old barbarian commander of the Imperial Guards, Justin. Justin had sent for Justinian when a youth, from the mountain village in Illyria where he had himself once been a shepherd-boy, and had given him the education that he regretted himself not having had. Justinian-whose baptismal name was Uprauda, 'the upright'-still talked Greek with a strong foreign accent and far preferred Latin, the official language of his native province. None of the ladies knew what to make of Justinian, and though he was courteous and amusing and seemed destined to become a person of importance, he made them feel uncomfortable, in some obscure way, as if he were not quite human. None of them enjoyed taking him to her private room. My mistress Antonina, for one, successfully avoided doing so on every occasion, and without incurring his hostility. Indaro told a queer story: how one evening she had fallen asleep while Justinian was in bed with her and, suddenly waking up and finding herself alone, had seen a large rat scuttle from under the coverlet and out through the window. With my own eyes I saw a still queerer sight. Justinian said one night, as he and the ladies were talking together, 'I heard noises at the front door.' But all were too lazy to investigate, and I was busy at some task behind the wine-bar. Then I noticed an emanation float out from Justinian's shoulders, a phantom head which swooped out of the door and presently returned. Justinian said: 'The noise was nothing: let us continue our talk.' The ladies had not seen what I saw; but it was a characteristic of these phenomena that not more than one person ever saw them at a time, so that each one doubted his senses, and no argument was possible as to the authenticity of any particular vision.
He was a Christian and revelled in theological discussions, as much as, or more than, in faction gossip and salacious jokes and stories; and he used to fast regularly. He always came to the club-house at the close of his fast-days and would eat and drink enormously. Sometimes he had fasted, he said, for three days, and his appetite would have supported his boast if he had called it three weeks. But he never lost that rosy complexion of his, not to the day of his death in extreme old age. My mistress Antonina used to call him Phagon, after the famous old trencherman who once, giving a display before the Emperor Aurelian, devoured at a sitting: a pig, a sheep, a wild-boar, and 100 loaves of full weight.
Justinian, too, complained of the spinning-wheel whine and derided our explanation of it. But one morning, when he happened to be there on a visit, Theodora came into the club-room to warm her hands at the fire, not expecting to encounter any guests at that hour. When she noticed Justinian on a couch behind the door, she was going away again; but he pulled at her dress and begged her to stay. So she stayed and warmed her hands. Justinian began a religious discussion with Chrysomallo, who liked that sort of thing, and was getting the better of her as usual when Theodora suddenly interposed with a quiet comment which showed her to be extremely well-informed on the doctrine of the Incarnation of Christ, which was the subject under dispute. Justinian exclaimed admiringly: 'That is most ingenious, but also most unorthodox,' and turned his attack on her.
They continued to dispute endlessly, even missing the hour of their midday meal, until Justinian rose and left us in a hurry at the sound of the dull booming of mallet against board, which is the customary summons to public prayer in the City. Justinian's Orthodoxy was also due to foreign travel: he had lived for some years at the centre of Orthodoxy, Rome, as a hostage to King Theodorich of the Goths. Theodora routed him in a way that surprised us; but it seems that she had profited by her stay at Alexandria to learn these fine points of doctrine from the schoolmen there. Thus intimacy between these two started, and he was fascinated by her as by a repentant Magdalene-for had not St Mary Magdalene also been a prostitute? Whenever he came to the club-house Justinian now regularly went straight up to Theodora's room. What passed between them besides discussion of the nature of the Trinity, and of the fate of the souls of unbaptized infants and such topics, I do not know; at all events, her wheel was quite silent during those interviews. The other ladies were glad to be relieved of his company and of the sound of the wheel.