Miscellany
A riot erupted in Constantinople in 532 that forced Justinian and his advisers to consider fleeing. Procopius wrote in History of the Wars that the emperor’s wife, Theodora—the only time in the work in which she speaks—told her husband, “If now it is your wish to save yourself, O Emperor, there is no difficulty.” On hand, she noted, were money and boats. “For myself,” she went on, “I approve a certain ancient saying that royalty is a good burial shroud.” Justinian stayed, put down the revolt, and in the ashes of the city’s old church built the still-standing Hagia Sophia.