[19] The mystery of the children of Theophilus is yet unsolved. Michael was born, of Theodora, about 828, and we know that another boy, named Constantine, was born. But the five daughters--Thecla, Anna, Anastasia, Pulcheria and Maria--are a puzzle, to which the wretched Byzantine chroniclers give us no clue. They make Thecla, the eldest, a gay and dissolute woman thirty years afterwards, and they marry Maria, the youngest, about 832; while they speak of the whole of them as young girls, playing with their grandmother’s dolls, about the time when the youngest of them marries Alexius. It is frequently suggested that they were the daughters of an earlier wife of Theophilus, but this is hardly consistent with the later gaiety of Thecla (down to 868) or the doll story; nor, although we do not know the exact age of Theophilus, can we easily admit that he had been married for twenty years--which is necessary to make Maria fifteen in 832--before he chose Theodora under the guidance of his stepmother. [20] “Zwei Griechische Texte über die H. Theophano,” edited by E. Kurtz, in the “Mémoires de l’Academie Impériale de St Petersbourg,” viii. series, vol 3. Unfortunately, the legendary and partisan character of the essays compels us to use them with discretion. I have also taken much from the Greek life of the patriarch Euthymius, and have been much helped by the notes of its editor, de Boor. [21] The mixture of palaces and monasteries may cause some perplexity. The explanation is that for a long time it was a pious and very common custom of wealthy Constantinopolitans to ensure prayers for their soul by leaving their palaces to the monks, and even converting them into monasteries before they died, so as to die in the ranks of the monks. We shall find the next Emperor checking this practice, to the great anger of the monks. [22] G. Schlumherger. “Un Empereur Byzantin au Dixième Siècle.” (1890); a very fine and ample study of Byzantine life. [23] Basil was a natural son of Romanus I. and a Russian (or else Bulgarian) slave. It is a curious mistake on the part of Gibbon, and even of Schlumberger, to confuse the Basil whom she belaboured with her own son Basil. [24] In point of fact, a writer of the time, Michael Atteliates, says that he had no wife. Flach (“Die Kaiserin Eudokia,” 1876) seems to have overlooked this authority. [25] Until recent years Eudocia was, as one reads in Gibbon, reputed to have been the authoress of “Ionia,” but later writers have shown that this was an error. She undoubtedly wandered in the fields of letters and philosophy under the guidance of Psellus, and seems to have written a little. [26] _Sebastos_ is the Greek equivalent of the Latin _Augustus_. It must not be forgotten that, while I continue to use the words “Emperor” and “Empress,” they were now more commonly called “King” and “Queen,” “Lord” and “Lady,” or “Master” and “Mistress.”