She Rewrote the Laws of Rome Just to Marry Her | Theodora's Rise!

[00:00:00]Welcome to the fourth episode about the world's most famous and powerful prostitutes in history. History is full of epic tales about wild people stepping into power, kings who were born to rule and generals who found their way to the throne. But a story of Empress Theodoras, it is a whole other beast.

[00:00:20]This is not a fairy tale about fate, but rather the sheer defiance. Born on the darkest level at all, she was to lead a life of exploitation in order to be forgotten. Instead, she tore herself to pieces to become the world's most powerful woman in the Roman Empire. This was the tale of a stranger, a playwright and a victor in an extraordinary moment of personal growth when with a simple combination of sheer determination and cleverness, a runaway slave in a brothel ended up co-ruler of the most powerful empire on earth. The year is 532 AD.

[00:00:59]Constantinople, the gleaming center of the Roman Empire, is on fire. Tens of thousands strong, they are in a raging mob for the emperor's head scream. They have torched half the city, including the great church of Hagya Sophia, and are already announcing a new emperor on them. Inside the imperial palace, the world's most powerful men have their hand on their gold, prepared to leave in search of blood. Their emperor Justinian once the man who dreamed of taking over by restoring Rome's glory said yes already. He is ready to give up all this. His city, his throne, his empire.

[00:01:44]All is lost. But one person won't run away. A woman who pushed her way from the gutter up to the throne room. And whatever follows isn't just saving an empire. It's stoking a legend. To comprehend how that former outcast turned into the steel skeleton of the world's most powerful, you have to date back to the beginning, to a world of shocking brutality and an emergence of an unbreakable will. A girl named Theodora was born in circa 497 into a world of chaos and noise. Her father, Aacius, was a bearer for the green faction at the Constantinople Hippodromeome. The Hippodromeome was the heart of the city, a huge stadium for chariot races that could put one at the center of good fortune and ruined the lot. But it was much more than that. It was the site of social rivalries. The Blues and the Greens were a bitter battle in it. Think of them as part political parties, part diehard sports hooligans. Their rival was more than just a competitive sport. It ruled the landscape of the city socially and politically. Theodora's family subsisted on the scraps of the spectacle. Their fragile life came crashing down when her father died suddenly. Suddenly, her mother was a widow with three very young daughters and no wage. Praying hopelessly, she sent her girls to the green faction, begging them to give her new husband his old job. They said no.

[00:03:14]As one last humiliating gesture, she turned to the rival blues, who took pity on her and gave him an insignificant post. Theodora received her first harsh lesson. Loyalty is cheap and adaptability is key. But things were going to get much, much worse. With no alternative, Theodora's mother brought her daughters to the stage. In the sixth century, the distinction between actress and prostitute didn't simply blur. It didn't exist. They were the same thing.

[00:03:48]Placed as a child in a brothel, Theodora was thrown into a lifetime of impossible exploitation. Indeed, her early life, as described by the historian Precopius in his infamous secret history, is scandalous in the way that it is deeply biased. He describes her performing obscene acts on stage serving the lowest of clients before she was even a teenager. Although Precopius wrote with a pen dipped in poison, openly loathing the empress, even friendly sources later acknowledged she came from the brothel, hinting at a kernel of truth in his liel. She was an outsider in a group of people viewed as expendable. It was the bleak life she was meant for. But Theodora had something that could not be bought or sold. A razor sharp mind and a will made of iron. At 16, it seemed as if her luck had shifted. She joined an official named Hessibis when he was named governor of a province in modern-day Libya. She left with him from Constantinople, probably seeing her exit. But the escape didn't last. After 4 years, he Sebilis abandoned her.

[00:05:00]Mistreated and abandoned in poverty thousands of miles away, Theodora was again on her own. For most people, that would be the end. But for Theodora, it was a trial by fire. Then she started her long trek back to Constantinople through Alexandria, Egypt. It was there, sources say, she underwent a deep spiritual awakening, meeting leaders of the Mayaphysicite faith, a branch of Christianity that the state church deemed heretical. This encounter would influence her conviction for the remainder of her life. She quit performing, taking work as a humble wool spinner, making her way home slowly, not as the girl who left, but as a woman molded and suffering. By Theodora's return to Constantinople around 522, she was a changed woman. She lived quietly, weaving wool in a house near the palace.

[00:05:50]Her former contacts, especially with a dancer named Macedonia, who had been an informer on the heir to the throne, were going to change her life so drastically.

[00:06:00]That was where she encountered the guy who would rewrite her fate in his favor.

[00:06:04]Justinian. Justinian, the nephew and heir of the reigning emperor Justin I was an immensely brilliant, ambitious, and seriously earnest man obsessed with law, religion, and the destiny of reopening the Roman Empire. He was also around 20 years older than Theodora and he was totally captivated. It wasn't only a famous beauty. It was her mind.

[00:06:28]He considered her an intellectual equal, a woman whose sharp wit was a match for his own ambition. He fell hopelessly in love and made her into his mistress. But Justinian didn't just want a mistress.

[00:06:42]He wanted a wife, empress. There was only one major issue. Roman law dating back to Emperor Constantine had ruled that no man of senatorial rank could marry an actress. To the Roman elite, a woman like Theodora was legally untouchable, a stain that could never be washed away. The court was scandalized.

[00:07:05]Justinian's aunt herself, the Empress Euphemia, was dead set against the match. But Justinian wasn't a man who backed down. He was the king's power and he would not be refused. He lobbied his uncle incessantly. It wasn't until the death of Emperor Sufimia that he was finally able to get his way. In 525, Emperor Justin issued a new law primarily for one person, allowing repentant actresses to marry the elite.

[00:07:34]They married that same year. Now, the Bearkeeper's daughter was the wife of the heir to the greatest throne in the world. Two years later in 527, Emperor Justin died. Justinian ascended the throne and in an elaborate ceremony he crowned Theodora Augusta, Empress of the Byzantine Roman Empire. He never made her a consort. From day one, she was his accomplice in ruling. From the moment she was crowned, the Adora knew she would not be a quiet decorative empress.

[00:08:06]Justinian in his own laws referred to her as his partner in deliberations. And it wasn't just that he was being kind.

[00:08:13]He was sincere. She attended the councils of the states, met foreign ambassadors, and corresponded with the other rulers of the time. All things typically done by the emperor himself.

[00:08:24]Provincial governors had to swear an oath of loyalty not only to Justinian, but also to Theodora. At court, many murmured that she was the genuine force behind the throne. Now it was for the empire that the intelligence which had mesmerized Justinian had now been turned to serving. She had a great capacity for politics which Justinian depended entirely on. If he was the grand visionary, Theodora was the pragmatist, the one whose reading of people was uncanny. They were power couples unlike any the world had ever known. Their aim was to create a new golden age for Rome.

[00:08:59]But on the rise of success, the old aristocracy looked down their noses at her, talking of her past. The historian Proopius, who served in their court, poured all that resentment into his secret history, which depicted her as a mean, vindictive puppet master who controlled her husband through seduction. He said she destroyed those who had stepped outside her path. The book is rife with blatant slander, but is also an indicator of how much the establishment hated her. She was an outsider who had decimated their exclusive club and now wielded more power than any of them. They just could not bear to consider that a woman from the gutter could outperform them all.

[00:09:39]Not naive, Theodora understood the concept of power. She developed her own network of spies and allies alongside even the emperor. She was playing the great game of Byzantine politics and was winning. She had passed through the treacherous court, reckoned with the snobbery of the nobles, and established herself at the very heart of it all. And then, five years into their rule, it was all on their plates that power, their city, and their lives were at stake.

[00:10:11]January 13, 532.

[00:10:15]The Hippodrome was all buzz with tension. The green and blue factions had been arrested after a bloody riot a few days earlier. Two were successful. One blue, the other green, survived an execution gone wrong and were hiding in a church. The crowds at the races started chanting, insisting on a pardon.

[00:10:34]Sitting in the imperial box, Justinian refused. The chants were getting louder, angrier. Then a new eerie, chilling cry came. Na, na, na. It meant conquer or win. The two rival factions, mortal foes, had joined in against their emperor. The city exploded. The people exploded out of the hippodromeome, their wrath directly to Justinian. They ignited fires that burned for 5 days, burning half of the city to ash, including the magnificent Hayes Sophia.

[00:11:12]The rioters even devised a new leader, Hipacius, who was a noble, and named him emperor. Inside the palace, Justinian's world was falling apart. His terrified advisers instructed him to flee. They had ships waiting, the sea an easy way out. Justinian, watching his empire burn, said, "Yes, it was already over."

[00:11:34]One voice broke the panic as men came at their final escape route. It was Theodora. She had stood before them and according to Brocopius gave one of the most powerful speeches in history. The present occasion is too serious, she said in a steady voice, to follow the convention that a woman should not speak in a man's council. She admitted that running might have saved their lives, but she ignored it entirely. It is impossible for a person having been born into this world not to die. But for one who once ruled, it is intolerable to be a fugitive. She glanced at the men who are about to escape, and at last her narrowed eyes fell on her husband. May I never be stripped of this purple robe, and may I never witness the day when those that come to greet me do not name me empress. Then she gave the line that would seal her legend. If you desire to save yourself, my lord, it is no difficulty. We are rich. There is the sea over there and yonder are the ships.

[00:12:38]And ponder for a second then if after you can escape to safety you would not rather give such safety up for death.

[00:12:46]She paused. As for me I subscribe to the saying the royal purple is the noblelest shroud. I choose to die as an empress than to live a fugitive. Silence. The adora's iron force had shamed them all.

[00:13:00]Justinian's courage returned. The escape plan was off. He called in his best general, the brilliant Belisarius. The plan was straightforward, brutal, and decisive. Belisarius's troops locked the exits to the Hippodromeome, where tens of thousands of rioters were celebrating their purported victory. Then the soldiers marched in with swords drawn.

[00:13:23]An estimated 30,000 people were killed that day. The Na riots were over, drowned in blood. The throne was safe, not because of armies or consultants, but only because of that one woman who refused to run. The Adora stand at the Nika riots bolstered her position as head of state and transformed history.

[00:13:46]Her story is testimony to the idea that true power is not inherited, it's forged in crisis. If you believe this story is as crazy as we are, hit that subscribe box so that no one else misses our upcoming video. Justinian and Theodora believed the smoking ruins of Constantinople represented an opportunity and so they had come through their toughest ordeal and this handed them an unbreakable mandate. They initiated one of the most ambitious building programs in all of history with the intent of creating their capital as the most splendid city on earth. At the heart of the whole picture was the new Hya Sophia, an architectural marvel with its massive dome which seemed to soar above the city in a kind of power metaphor. But a vision of Theodora's transcends stone and mortar. She now possessed political capital to help prop up an agenda that was bred from her own scars. She was one of the first and most effective champions of women's rights in history. She spurred a revolutionary tide of legal reform based on her own experience. Her reforms were astonishing. She enacted laws prohibiting forced prostitution and outlawing brothel keepers trapping women in the profession. She even created a convent she called the metaninoia or repentance, a refuge for former prostitutes to recreate new lives. She made rape a capital crime punishable by death. Most crucially, the law stated that the rapist property would be given to the victim, securing her financial freedom. She solidified women's rights in marriage and divorce, guaranteeing that a bride's dowy should remain hers.

[00:15:24]She also gave women the right to own and inherit property and secured guardianship rights for mothers over their own children. These were not just legalities on paper. Theodora pursued abusers and ensured that her laws were followed. She'd witnessed the worst the world ever did to powerless women. And now as the dominant woman in the world, she was dismantling the systems that permitted it. It's not an understatement to say that she was among the first state sponsored feminists in history. In addition to social reform, the Adora was also a zealous sectarian politicist. She also continued to worship the Myophosites, the heretical Christian sect that her husband and the authorities felt were the true enemy of the church. This could have been a calamity, but it became a nifty good cop bad cop routine. Whereas Justinian officially persecuted the Maphysicites to keep the Orthodox Western Empire happy, Theodora secretly defended them.

[00:16:19]For years, she hid fugitive bishops in her own private quarters in the palace.

[00:16:23]She paid to support their monasteries and put their allies at the top, not just through military connections.

[00:16:29]Whether or not this was a result of disharmony between two individuals or a brilliant unity attempt by Theodora to make all sides of the empire stay with one side remains to be seen by historians. She operated her own political network on occasion openly defying her husband's official policy but always in trust. In 548 after 21 years as empress Theodora died probably from cancer. She was just a little under 50 years old. Justinian was devastated.

[00:16:59]He would reign another 17 years, but the golden age was over. After her death, virtually no significant laws were passed. A quiet recognition of how much she had been the power behind their kingdom. Theodora's legacy is as complicated as her life. To the bitter historian Precopius, she was a demon-like villain. Theodora from the brothel. Yet to both those whom she protected and to the Eastern Orthodox Church today, she's St. Theodora, a brave and dutiful ruler. She travels from the bottom to the top of power, a path almost impossible to fathom. For herself, she was a survivor who survived the worst of mankind only to break free of it. She was a political genius who guided an empire through its most desperate crisis. and she was a reformer who wielded her power to lift the vulnerable, taking a legacy from the page of law and stone and in the iron hard power of her own will. Theodora's story is a stark rebuke to the idea that history is made by those who declined to take on the role it has assigned them.

[00:18:08]What do you believe was her most amazing task? Let us know in the comments. For more stories of history's most fascinating figures, please like and subscribe. Thanks for watching.