But in spite of his great power, in many ways he was a democratic emperor who was elected or at least chosen by a process carefully set down by law. First he had to be named by either the senate or the army. Then he had to be approved by whichever of those two bodies that had not named him in the first place. Finally he had to be hailed by the people. (This was true even when the emperor seized power or when an emperor named his son co-emperor so that he would be sure to succeed him. He still had to be approved and hailed.) But once the emperor was elected, he was “the emperor chosen by God,” for the Byzantines firmly believed that God guided them in everything they did. From then on, it was not only treason but wicked and sinful to oppose the emperor. That is, unless you were successful. If you led a successful revolution, it meant that God had chosen you to take the old emperor’s place! The empress—the Augusta, or _basilissa_, as she was also called—was almost equally important. To be sure, in the long history of the Byzantine Empire, only three women actually mounted the throne to rule in their own name, and only one of these amounted to anything. This was the wicked Irene who wanted to marry Charlemagne and who blinded her own son so she could stay in power. However, she did not call herself empress. She called herself emperor of the Romans just as if she had been a man. But even though she rarely ruled, the empress was not shut up in a harem, and many empresses had great power and even greater influence. Ariadne, the widow of an early emperor, went before the people and told them that her husband was dead. “Choose us a new ruler!” they clamored. She named a palace official, and then she married him. He was a very good ruler. Zoe, the daughter of another emperor, did even better. She married three men, and each in turn became emperor. More than that. The nephew of her second husband persuaded her to adopt him and name him her co-emperor. Then he had her hair shorn and shipped her off to the Princes Islands, in the Sea of Marmara, as a nun. The crowds surged around the palace. “Where is our lovely lady,” they shouted, “whose father, grandfather, and great-grandfather ruled before her?” The usurper had to bring her back, but even that did not save him. He ended in a monastery himself. Saint Theodora (the wife of an emperor and the mother of one) used her influence to end a religious dispute that had disturbed the state for more than 100 years, while another Theodora, who was far from a saint, saved it from revolution. This happened when the Greens and the Blues (the rival political parties) joined forces and revolted against Justinian, the greatest Byzantine emperor of all. After they had burned much of the city, they surged into the Circus and called on the emperor to abdicate.