Theodora is a woman about whom we are supposed to believe the worst. She has the misfortune to have become one of the main subjects, alongside her husband, the emperor Justinian, of one of the most famous, accessible, and lurid texts from antiquity: The Secret History, by Procopius. The Secret History is a book that has defied classification; it is not exactly a history and not exactly a biography – in Byzantine times, the writer of the Suda labelled it both a comedy and an invective. Peter Sarris, in his introduction to one translation, rightly calls it ‘vitriolic’ – with ‘carefully calibrated pieces of character assassination aimed at the Emperor and his wife’.1 ‘Our’ Theodora is fundamentally entangled with Procopius’ own vision of his times revealed in The Secret History and to approach her we must approach him too.2