IX. Upon this shore there stood from ancient times a beautiful palace: the whole of this the Emperor Justinian dedicated to God, exchanging present enjoyment for the reward of his piety hereafter, in the following manner. There were at Byzantium a number of women who were prostituted in a brothel, not willingly, but compelled to exercise their profession; for under pressure of poverty they were compelled by the procurer who kept them to act in this manner, and to offer themselves to unknown and casual passers-by. There was here from ancient times a guild of brothel-keepers, who not only carried on their profession in this building, but publicly bought their victims in the market, and forced them into an unchaste life. However, the Emperor Justinian and the Empress Theodora, who performed all their works of piety in common, devised the following scheme. They cleansed the State from the pollution of these brothels, drove out the procurers, and set free these women who had been driven to evil courses by their poverty, providing them with a sufficient maintenance, and enabling them to live chaste as well as free. This was arranged in the following manner: they changed the palace, which stood on the right hand as one sails into the Euxine Sea, into a magnificent convent, to serve as a refuge for women who had repented of their former life, in order that there spending their lives in devotion to God, and in continual works of piety, they might wash away the sins of their former life of shame; wherefore this dwelling of these women is called from their work by the name of the Penitentiary. The princes endowed this convent with large revenues, and furnished it with many buildings of exceeding great beauty and costliness for the comfort of these women, so that none of them might be forced by any circumstances to relax their practice of chastity. So much then for this part of the subject.