by even greater crimes committed to further her plans. Indeed,
Antonina had only betrayed one man to her by her wiles, her enemy John
of Cappadocia, but the Empress caused the death of a large number of
innocent persons, whom she sacrificed to the vengeance of Antonina.
The intimates of Belisarius and Photius were some of them flogged,
although the only charge against them was their friendship for these
two persons; and no one, to the present day, knows what afterwards
became of them; while she sent others into exile, who were accused of
the same crime--friendship for Photius and Belisarius. One of those
who accompanied Photius to Ephesus, Theodosius by name, although he
had attained the rank of senator, was deprived of all his property,
and imprisoned by Theodora in an underground dungeon, where she kept
him fastened to a kind of manger by a rope round his neck, which was
so short that it was always quite tense and never slack. The wretched
man was always forced to stand upright at this manger, and there to
eat and sleep, and do all his other needs; there was no difference
between him and an ass, save that he did not bray. No less than four
months were passed by him in this condition, until he was seized with
melancholy and became violently mad, upon which he was released from
his prison and soon afterwards died.

As for Belisarius, she forced him against his will to become
reconciled to his wife Antonina. Photius, by her orders, was tortured
like a slave, and was beaten with rods upon the back and shoulders,
and ordered to disclose where Theodosius and the pander eunuch were.
But he, although cruelly tortured, kept the oath which he had sworn
inviolate; and although he was naturally weak and delicate, and had
always been forced to take care of his health, and had never had any
experience of ill-treatment or discomfort of any kind, yet he never
revealed any of Belisarius's secrets.