hundred harlots, who sold themselves for three obols in the
market-place, thereby securing a bare subsistence, and transported
them to the other side of the Bosphorus, where she shut them up in the
Monastery of Repentance, with the object of forcing them to change
their manner of life. Some of them, however, threw themselves from the
walls during the night, and in this manner escaped a change of life so
contrary to their inclinations.

There were at Byzantium two young sisters, illustrious not only by the
consulships of their father and grandfather, but by a long descent of
nobility, and belonging to one of the chief families of the Senate.
They had married early and lost their husbands. Theodora, charging
them with living an immoral life, selected two debauchees from the
common people and designed to make them their husbands. The young
widows, fearing that they might be forced to obey, took refuge in the
church of St. Sophia, and, approaching the sacred bath, clung closely
to the font. But the Empress inflicted such privations and cruel
treatment upon them, that they preferred marriage in order to escape
from their immediate distress. In this manner Theodora showed that she
regarded no sanctuary as inviolable, no spot as sacred. Although
suitors of noble birth were ready to espouse these ladies, they were
married against their will to two men, poor and outcast, and far below
them in rank. Their mother, who was a widow like themselves, was
present at the marriage, but did not venture to cry out or express her
sorrow at this atrocious act. Afterwards, Theodora, repenting of what
she had done, endeavoured to console them by promoting their husbands
to high offices to the public detriment. But even this was no
consolation to these young women, for their husbands inflicted
incurable and insupportable woes upon almost all their subjects, as I
will describe later; for Theodora paid no heed to the dignity of the