She ordered all marriages as it were by a kind of divine authority; men never made a voluntary agreement before marriage.  A wife was found for each without any previous notice, not because she pleased him (as is generally the case even amongst the barbarians) but because Theodora so desired it.  Brides also had to put up with the same treatment, and were obliged to marry husbands whom they did not desire.  She often turned the bride out of bed herself, and, without any reason, dismissed the bridegroom before the marriage had been consummated, merely saying, in great anger, that she disapproved of her.  Amongst others whom she treated in this manner was Leontius the “referendary,” and Saturninus, the son of Hermogenes the late Master of Offices, whom she deprived of their wives.  This Saturninus had a young maiden cousin of an age to marry, free-born and modest, whom Cyrillus, her father, had betrothed to him after the death of Hermogenes.  After the bridal chamber had been made ready and everything prepared, Theodora imprisoned the youthful bridegroom, who was afterwards conducted to another chamber, and forced, in spite of his violent lamentations and tears, to wed the daughter of Chrysomallo.  This Chrysomallo had formerly been a dancer and a common prostitute, and at that time lived with another woman like her, and with Indaro, in the palace, where, instead of devoting themselves to phallic worship and theatrical amusements, they occupied themselves with affairs of State together with Theodora.

Saturninus, having lain with his new wife and discovered that she had already lost her maidenhead, informed one of his friends that his wife was no virgin.  When this reached the ears of Theodora, she ordered the servants to hoist him up, like a boy at school, upbraiding him with having behaved too saucily and having taken an unbecoming oath.  She then had him severely flogged on the bare back, and advised him to restrain his talkative tongue for the future.

In my former writings I have already related her treatment of John of Cappadocia, which was due to a desire to avenge personal injuries, not to punish him for offences against the State, as is proved by the fact that she did nothing of the kind in the case of those who committed far greater cruelties against their subjects.  The real cause of her hatred was, that he ventured to oppose her designs and accused her to the Emperor, so that they nearly came to open hostilities.  I mention this here because, as I have already stated, in this work I am bound to state the real causes of events.  When, after having inflicted upon him the sufferings I have related, she had confined him in Egypt, she was not even then satisfied with his punishment, but was incessantly on the look out to find false witnesses against him.  Four years afterwards, she succeeded in finding two of the Green faction who had taken part in the sedition at Cyzicus, and were accused of having been accessory to the assault