did not forget those who had rescued her in the days of her affliction; and her influence on Justinian is to be seen in the “feminism” which is so marked in his code. What makes it not impossible is the well-known fact that violent sexuality is in some way related to powerful religious instincts; and the theory that the passions which had led Theodora to the brothel may, when her mind was turned to religion, have led her to be a Puritan, is rather attractive. But nothing is said about Theodora which has not in some way been twisted to her infamy. The only certain fact about her is that she had enormous influence over her husband, and it is difficult to believe that a great and able man like Justinian could have entirely yielded his will to the will of a cruel and treacherous harlot. The idea certainly opens an unexpectedly wide vista of masculine weakness. She used this influence in helping to frame the great Code of Justinian, which has remained the standard of law in many countries ever since. A remarkable feature about this code is that, while it is severe on the keepers of brothels, it is mild to leniency on the unhappy women who prostituted themselves for these keepers’ benefit. The idea that a prostitute is a woman, with rights and feelings like any other woman, appears to have been unknown until Theodora had it introduced into the code of laws which perpetuates her husband’s memory. One night she collected all the prostitutes in Constantinople, five hundred in all--were there only five hundred in that vast Oriental city?--shut them up in a palace on the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus, and expected them to reform as she had reformed, but with less success; as our modern experience would lead us to expect. The girls grew morbidly unhappy, and many threw themselves into the sea. Even in a lock hospital we know how difficult it is to reclaim girls to whom sexual intercourse has become a matter of daily habit, and if Theodora’s well-meant attempt failed we must at least give her credit for an attempt at an idealistic impossibility. These girls did not have the prospect of marrying an Emperor; no pearl-stringed crown was dangled before their fingers for the grasping. Poor human nature is not so easily kept on the strait and narrow path as Theodora thought. Throughout her life she seems to have had great sympathy for the poor and the oppressed, and one feels with Edward Foord that one can forgive her a great deal. We must not forget that her husband called her his “honoured wife,” his “gift from God,” and his “sweet delight”; and spoke most gratefully of her interest and assistance in framing his great code of laws. Was her humanitarianism, her sympathy with down-trodden women, the result of her own sad past experience? To think so would be to turn her pity towards vice into an argument against her own virtue, and I shrink from doing so. Let us rather believe that she really did perceive how terribly the Fates have loaded the dice against