Empress Theodora
I have been fascinated with the story of the Empress Theodora for years. I knew that she was an actress who’d caught the eye of the Emperor Justinian I but that was really all I knew apart from the amazing mosaics of her (an early form of portraiture). Unfortunately my eye wandered to other fascinating Queens of the East, Zenobia, and Cleopatra and that trio of Roman Empresses of the early Christian era, Livia, Messalina and Agrippina. However, last year when I was invited to participate in H2’s series HOW SEX CHANGED THE WORLD (which recently aired) my interest in Theodora was once again. She was actually one of the women that I was supposed to talk about but it ended up not happening. Time passed and I once again forgot about Theodora until yesterday when I was killing time in Barnes and Noble looking at all the books that I wish that I could afford to buy. After all, one can never have too many books! I noticed that there was not just one but two historical novels