[1253] Jn. Malala, xvii, etc.
[1254] According to Michael the Syrian, Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch, Theodora was the daughter of an “orthodox” (i.e., Monophysite) priest, who would not part with his daughter until Justinian had pledged his word not to coerce her to conform to Chalcedon! See Chabot’s trans. from the Syriac, 1901, ix, 20. She built St. P. (p. 344) on the site of her chaste pre-nuptial life.
[1255] Procopius, Anecdot., 1. Aimoin (Hist. Franc., ii, 5), a western author of the eleventh century, but in great part fabulous, relates that Belisarius and Justinian entered a brothel and chose there two prostitutes, Antonina and Antonia, sisters, whom they subsequently married. If this is not merely loose hearsay emanating originally from a reader of Procopius, it shows the sort of stories which were popularly current on the subject. Although the anecdote is scarcely far-fetched, it is rendered impossible by the fact that the ages of the two men differed by something like a score of years.
[1256] Later we hear from Procopius (De Bel. Goth., i, 5) that in 535 he had just become old enough to receive a separate command in the army; which probably indicates that he had then attained to the age of eighteen, the period when a young Roman was freed from his guardian (curator) and became sui juris. About nine years earlier (c. 526, De Bel. Pers., i, 12) Belisarius is referred to in very similar terms, so that the relative ages of these two characters can be determined with tolerable accuracy. Belisarius was then “πρῶτος ὑπηνήτης.”
[1257] Antonina and her son Photius are personages almost peculiar to Procopius and do not come to light noticeably in the ordinary chronographers.