She died of cancer, and died young. There is no record of the original site of the cancer; the ecclesiastic who records the glad tidings merely relates joyfully that it was diffused throughout her body, as was only right and proper in one who differed from him in religious opinions. It is generally thought that it started in the breast. No doubt this is a modern guess, though of course cancer of the breast is notorious for the way in which its secondary growths spread through liver, lungs, bones, neck, spine, and so forth; and there is little reason to suppose that the guess is incorrect. After trying all the usual remedies for “lumps,” her physicians determined to send her to the baths of Brusa, famous in miraculous cure. There were two large iron and two large sulphur springs, besides smaller ones; and people generally went there in spring and early summer when the earth was gaily carpeted with the myriad flowers that spring up and fade before the heat of the Mediterranean July. May we infer from the choice of a sulphur bath that the cancer had already invaded the skin? Possibly. Such a horror may have been the determining factor which induced the Empress and her physicians to travel afield. But if so, surely the recording priest missed a chance of rejoicing; for he does not tell us the glad news. All over Bithynia and the Troad there were, and are, hot mineral springs; Homer relates how one hot spring and a cold gushed from beneath the walls of Troy itself. The girls of Troy used to wash their clothes in the hot spring whenever Agamemnon would let them. When Theodora went to Brusa she was accompanied by a retinue of four thousand, and Heaven resounded with the prayers of the Monophysites; but the Orthodox refused to pray for the recovery of so infamous a heretic, just as they had refused to join in her prayers for a son. Theodora met with little loving-kindness on this earth after she had left Egypt; possibly the world repaid her with what it received from her.