putation he enjoyed, a number of distinguished persons were selected
as judges, and they, scrupulous in the discharge of their duties,
rejected the testimony of his servants as insufficient, especially on
the ground of their not being of legal age. The Empress thereupon
caused one of the intimate friends of Diogenes, named Theodorus, to be
shut up in one of her ordinary prisons, and endeavoured to win him
over, at one time by flattery, at another by ill-treatment. When none
of these measures proved successful, she ordered a cord of ox-hide to
be bound round his head, over his forehead and ears and then to be
twisted and tightened. She expected that, under this treatment, his
eyes would have started from their sockets, and that he would have
lost his sight. But Theodorus refused to tell a lie. The judges, for
want of proof, acquitted him; and his acquittal was made the occasion
of public rejoicing.

Such was the manner in which Theodorus was treated.

CHAPTER XVII

As for the manner in which she treated Belisarius, Photius, and Buzes,
I have already spoken of it at the commencement of this work.

Two Cilicians, belonging to the Blue faction, during a mutiny, laid
violent hands upon Callinicus, governor of the second Cilicia, and
slew his groom, who was standing near him, and endeavoured to defend
his master, in the presence of the governor and all the people.
Callinicus condemned them to death, since they had been convicted of
several other murders besides this. When Theodora heard of this, in
order to show her devotion to the party of the Blues, she ordered that
the governor, while he still held office, should be crucified in the
place where the two offenders had been executed, although he had
committed no crime. The Emperor, pretending that he bitterly lamented
his loss, remained at home, grumbling and threatening all kinds of
vengeance upon the perpetrators of the deed. He did nothing, however;
but, without scruple, appropriated the property of the dead man to his
own use. Theodora likewise devoted her attention to punishing those
women who prostituted their persons. She collected more than five
hundred harlots, who sold themselves for three obols in the
market-place, thereby securing a bare subsistence, and transported
them to the other side of the Bosphorus, where she shut them up in the
Monastery of Repentance, with the object of forcing them to change
their manner of life. Some of them, however, threw