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Being educated in this manner, and her conversation being agreeable, she became the most famous of all Women that ever were debauched. She had not been long at Constantinople, before Justinian fell most desperately in love with her. At first he entertained her only as a Miss, though he preferred her to the dignity of a Patrician: The fondness of Justinian (to whose pleasures she devoted her self wholly) made her way easie to a most eminent degree of authority, and to the amassing and heaping up immense riches in a very short time; for (according to the custom of those Lovers, whose Passion is extravagant) he gave her what ever she desired, and she desired what ever was to be given, and the redundancy of her wealth added new fewel to his flames.
This was the Theodora, which was Justinians colleague in the destruction of the State, and the ruine of the People, not in Constantinople alone, but in all places under the Roman Dominion, and the rather, because being both of the party of the Venetes, they had put the Government into the hands of that faction, though indeed the evil was delayed for some time by this following accident.
Justinian was surprised with a long, and tedious sickness, and it was reported in many places he was dead. During his indisposition, that faction committed all the exorbitancies aforesaid, and they proceeded so far as to kill a person of quality, called Hypatius, in the very Church of S. Sophia: The wickedness of that
