subjected him to such intolerable torments, that the whole assembled
people, deeply moved at seeing a person of such noble mien, and one
who had been so delicately brought up, exposed to such shameful
treatment, immediately commiserated his sufferings, and cried out with
loud lamentations that reached the heavens, imploring pardon for the
young man. But Theodora persisted in her work of punishment, and
caused his death by ordering him to be castrated, although he had been
neither tried nor condemned. His property was confiscated by the
Emperor. Thus this woman, when infuriated, respected neither the
sanctuary of the church, nor the prohibitive authority of the laws,
nor the intercession of the people, nor any other obstacle whatsoever.
Nothing was able to save from her vengeance anyone who had given her
offence. She conceived a hatred, on the ground of his belonging to the
Green faction, for a certain Diogenes, a native of Constantinople, an
agreeable person, who was liked by the Emperor and everyone else. In
her wrath, she accused him, in like manner, of sodomy, and, having
suborned two of his servants, put them up to give evidence against and
to accuse their master. But, as he was not tried secretly and in
private, as was the usual custom, but in public, owing to the
reputation he enjoyed, a number of distinguished persons were selected
as judges, and they, scrupulous in the discharge of their duties,
rejected the testimony of his servants as insufficient, especially on
the ground of their not being of legal age. The Empress thereupon
caused one of the intimate friends of Diogenes, named Theodorus, to be
shut up in one of her ordinary prisons, and endeavoured to win him
over, at one time by flattery, at another by ill-treatment. When none
of these measures proved successful, she ordered a cord of ox-hide to
be bound round his head, over his forehead and ears and then to be
twisted and tightened. She expected that, under this treatment, his
eyes would have started from their sockets, and that he would have