ABSTRACT
The notion that a species of disillusionment allowed the reassertion of old patterns of belief and social order, which then in turn had to cope with unforeseen novelties, has fundamental consequences for our understanding of what those novelties were, and of their religious character. According to the contemporary historian Procopius, that emperor's effectiveness was threatened by an unhealthy confusion between the imperial family and the imperial state; a confusion symbolized by the meddlesome hostility and hypocritical religiosity of the empress Theodora. Here was another woman who allowed personal principles and domestic jealousies to infect public policy. Such was the main drift of Procopius's notorious Secret History, but it was also a longstanding theme in Roman political literature. Most of the emperors before Constantine, especially within the sacred spaces of the old Roman religion, had shown a comparable appreciation of the influence thus enhanced.
