Envy struck Zeus’ wife Hera, who proceeded to strike pregnant Semele with a thunderbolt. The messenger god Hermes rescued the baby from his mother’s womb and gave him to Zeus to incubate in his thigh until he reached full term. Dionysus was therefore known as ‘Twice Born’.

INTRIGUES AT THE PALACE

Secret History

Procopius

Translated by Richard Atwater, 1961

The Secret History is one of the most salacious books from antiquity. Written by a prominent Christian historian, Procopius of Caesarea (c. AD 500–c. 554), in the mid-sixth century AD, it describes life in the Late Eastern Roman Empire under Emperor Justinian and his wife Theodora. While Procopius elsewhere documented Justinian’s wars and building projects without malice, in this book he let loose. Justinian is a cruel villain; Theodora a harlot. The author is no kinder in his characterisation of the wife of his patron Belisarius. Antonina, the daughter of a charioteer and theatre actress, is described as having used magic to charm Belisarius into marrying her, only to prove shamefully unfaithful to him. Procopius had served under Belisarius in Justinian’s war on the Vandals in North Africa, and his loyalty to his former commander is patent. The Constantine referred to in this story is an officer of Belisarius, and Photius is Antonina’s son by a previous relationship.

There was a youth from Thrace in the house of Belisarius: Theodosius by name, and of the Eunomian heresy by descent. On the eve of his expedition to Libya, Belisarius baptized this boy in holy water and received him in his arms as a member henceforth of the family, welcoming him with his wife as their son, according to the Christian rite of adoption. And Antonina not only embraced Theodosius with reasonable fondness as her son by holy word, and thus cared for him, but soon, while her husband was away on his campaign, became wildly in love with him; and, out of her senses with this malady, shook off all fear and shame of God and man. She began by enjoying him surreptitiously, and ended by dallying with him in the presence of the men servants and waiting maids. For she was now possessed by passion and, openly overwhelmed with love, could see no hindrance to its consummation.

Once, in Carthage, Belisarius caught her in the very act, but allowed himself to be deceived by his wife. Finding the two in an underground room, he was very angry; but she said, showing no fear or attempt to keep anything hidden, “I came here with the boy to bury the most precious part of our plunder, where the Emperor will not discover it.” So she said by way of excuse, and he dismissed the matter as if he believed her, even as he saw Theodosius’s trousers belt somewhat unmodestly unfastened. For so bound by love for the woman was he, that he preferred to distrust the evidence of his own eyes.