Constantine’s wife, Helena, daughter of the patrician Alypius, is a mere cipher in the imperial records, and seems to have died much earlier, leaving three daughters--Eudocia, Zoe and Theodora--to grow up as they might in the palace of her voluptuous husband. Eudocia, the eldest, lost during an attack of smallpox whatever comeliness she may have had, and retired to hide her disfigured countenance under the veil of a nun. There remained Zoe and Theodora, and Constantine determined to marry one of the two to some important noble and leave the crown to him. The elder of the two was nearly fifty years old, and Theodora cannot have been much younger. It is not very clear why they had not married earlier. Their father, who could hardly be induced to take the least interest in his Empire, had wholly neglected his daughters until he held the sceptre in his hands, and felt that the time was at hand when he must relinquish it to another. He was a very large and robust man, absorbed in hunting, gambling and other less reputable pleasures, and, even when he was sole Emperor, he left the cares of state to his eunuchs and retained his imperial attention for the theatre, the banquet and the dance. In his home the sisters had, says the chronicler, “lived as they listed,” and the further course of the story will make it probable that Zoe had not failed to enjoy her liberty. Theodora was less sensual, but we shall have to include both sisters in the list of Empresses who were little embarrassed by moral scruples. In approaching their careers we have the rare advantage of an excellent guide. Michael Psellus, one of the leading philosophers and literary men of Byzantine history, not only lived at their Court, and knew them intimately, but he had a genial taste for the tattle and scandal of a court and not the least reluctance to entrust it to his graceful pen. He has been called the Voltaire of Byzantine letters on account of his brilliant, caustic and very candid way of writing the story of his times. We shall find his “Chronography” of inestimable value, provided we make due allowance for the prejudices of the politician and the amiable unscrupulousness of the anecdotist.