A youth of distinguished family, belonging to the Green faction, named Basianus, had incurred the Empress’s displeasure by speaking of her in sarcastic terms.  Hearing that she was incensed against him, he fled for refuge to the church of St. Michael the Archangel.  Theodora immediately sent the Praetor of the people to seize him, bidding him charge him, however, not with insolence towards herself, but with the crime of sodomy.  The magistrate, having dragged him from the church, 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 lost his sight.  But Theodorus refused to tell a lie.  The judges, for want of proof, acquitted him; and his acquittal was made the occasion of public rejoicing.

Such was the manner in which Theodorus was treated.

CHAPTER XVII

As for the manner in which she treated Belisarius, Photius, and Buzes, I have already spoken of it at the commencement of this work.