In Theodora’s time Asklepios and the other Olympian divinities had long been gathered to their fathers before the advancing tides of Christianity and Earth-Mother worship; but though the old gods were gone the human body and human spirit remained the same, and there is no doubt that she was expected to dream and bathe and drink mineral waters just as Aristides had done centuries before; and no doubt a crowd of sympathizing friends sat round her on the marble seats which are still there and tried to console her--a difficult task when the sufferer has cancer of the breast. She sat there, her beauty faded, her once-rounded cheeks ashy with cachexia and lined with misery, brooding over the real nature of the Christ she was so soon to meet, wondering whether she or her implacable enemies were in the right as to His soul--whether He had in truth two souls or one. She had made her choice, and it was too late now to alter; in any case she was too gallant a little Empress to quail in the face of death, come he never so horribly. Let us hope that she had discovered before she died that Christ the All-merciful would forgive even so atrocious a sin as attributing to Him a single soul! All her piety, all the prayers of her friends, and all the medical skill of Brusa proved in vain, and she died in A.D. 548, being then forty years of age. So we take leave of this woman, whom many consider the most remarkable in history. Let us envisage her to ourselves--this graceful, exquisite, little cameo-faced lady, passionate in her loves and her hates, with some of the languor of the East in her blood, much of the tigress; brave in danger and resourceful in time of trouble; loyal and faithful to her learned husband as he was loyal to her; yet perhaps a little despising him. Except Medea, as seen by Euripides, Theodora was probably the first feminist, and as such has made her mark upon the world. On the whole her influence upon the Roman Empire seems to have been for good, and the merciful and juster trend of the laws she inspired must be noted in her favour. Theodora dead, the glory of Justinian departed. He seemed to be stunned by the calamity, and for many critical months took no part in the world’s affairs; even after he recovered he seemed but the shadow of his old self. Faithful to her in life, he remained faithful after her death, and sought no other woman; that is another reason for thinking that Procopius lied. He lived, a lonely and friendless old man, for eighteen more years, hated by his subjects for his extortionate taxation--which they attributed to the extravagance of the crowned prostitute, though more likely it was due to the enormous campaigns of Belisarius and Narses the eunuch, as a result of which Italy and Africa once more came under the sway of the East. Justinian was lonely on his death-bed, and the world breathed a sigh of relief when he was gone. He had long outlived his glory. The Emperor Charles V