[10] I have passed in silence an earlier charge against Theodora in the “Anecdotes.” The Gothic queen Amalasuntha had appealed to Justinian, and Theodora is said to have sent an officer to cause her to be assassinated, lest her great beauty should seduce the Emperor. Procopius gives a different version of the murder of Amalasuntha in his “Gothic War,” and we have no serious reason to involve Theodora. [11] Shorthand (_notatio_) was, of course, familiar to the Romans and daily practised. It may not be superfluous to add that the dignity of Cæsar was a semi-imperial rank conferred usually on sons or possible successors of the Emperor, or King (_basileus_), as the eastern Romans came to call their monarch. [12] It should be noted that the organized factions were not nearly so large as these incidents suggest. When Maurice had wished to arm them against the usurper, he found that the blues numbered only nine hundred, and the greens fifteen hundred. The entire population was about a million. [13] See Pernice’s “L’Imperatore Eraclio,” 1905, p. 25. [14] Professor Bury gives his age as twenty-three, and assumes that he was born in 615, but Nicephorus places his birth in the second Persian campaign (623). The first son of Martina had died. His name (or nickname) is spelt either Heraclonas or Heracleonas. [15] The readers of Gibbon may often notice that words or speeches quoted here differ materially from corresponding quotations in the great historian. The reason is that Gibbon invariably paraphrases such quotations. They are in this work translated literally from the Greek chroniclers. [16] I have not been able to consult this interesting “Life of St Philaretus,” and am quoting Diehl’s admirable work, “Figures Byzantines.” [17] A monk of this monastery, Theodore of Studium, has left us a number of letters and works, though they give little satisfaction to the profane historian. One letter, however, is addressed to the ex-Empress Maria, and we learn from it that her daughter, or one of her daughters (Euphrosyne and Irene), pressed her to come and live in her palace. Theodore sternly forbids her to return to that world of sin. [18] Finlay rejects the story on the ground that Theodora could not possibly have made her husband believe that sacred images were dolls for her children. But that is not the story; Theodora denied that she had any dolls at all.