Two Cilicians, belonging to the Blue faction, during a mutiny, laid violent hands upon Callinicus, governor of the second Cilicia, and slew his groom, who was standing near him, and endeavoured to defend his master, in the presence of the governor and all the people.  Callinicus condemned them to death, since they had been convicted of several other murders besides this.  When Theodora heard of this, in order to show her devotion to the party of the Blues, she ordered that the governor, while he still held office, should be crucified in the place where the two offenders had been executed, although he had committed no crime.  The Emperor, pretending that he bitterly lamented his loss, remained at home, grumbling and threatening all kinds of vengeance upon the perpetrators of the deed.  He did nothing, however; but, without scruple, appropriated the property of the dead man to his own use.  Theodora likewise devoted her attention to punishing those women who prostituted their persons.  She collected more than five 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 office, the interests of the State, or any other consideration, provided only she could accomplish her wishes.