The youth of the Empress Theodora
 

Now, for the time, Theodora was still too young to be able to sleep with a man, or have sex with them as a woman does, but she did have intercourse of the masculine kind with evil-minded slaves, who, following their masters to the theatre, took advantage of their leisure to commit this outrage; and she spent a lot of time in a brothel at this unnatural bodily activity. But, as soon as she came of age and reached maturity, she went on the stage and became a prostitute of the sort the men of the past used to call 'a streetwalker': for she was not a flute or harp player, and had not even learned to dance, but she sold her youth to anyone who came along, giving herself with total abandonment. Later, she went with the mime actors of the theatre and took part in their performances, getting laughs with bawdy comedy. For she was unusually witty and full of fun, and soon became known for that sort of act. For she had no modesty, and no one ever saw her embarrassed, but she'd take on shameless jobs without hesitation - she was the sort of person, for instance, who delights the audience by letting herself be knocked around and beaten over the head, and makes them laugh by stripping and showing bare to the spectators, those parts, back and front, which should be unseen and hidden from men.

As she toyed with her lovers, she kept trying new kinds of intercourse, succeeding in binding to her those of a licentious temperament. For she did not even wait for those she happened to meet to make the approach, but she swung into action, joking and waggling her hips in a comic way, tempting everyone, especially young boys. For there was never anyone who was such an addict to pleasure in all its forms. Often she'd go to dinner with ten young men or more, all at the peak of physical perfection, and sexual athletes as well, and have sex with all her banquet companions, all through the night; and when they were too worn out to go on, she would go on to their house-slaves, perhaps thirty in number, and pair off with each in turn - even so, she could not get her fill of this lewdness.

Once, visiting the house of someone well-known, during the after- dinner drinking, they say that, in full view of the drinkers, she climbed on to the projecting part of a couch, pulled up her clothes without decency and didn't refrain from showing her eagerness. And although she made use of three bore-holes, she used to lament that Nature hadn't pierced a similar one between her tits, so that she could contrive another method of intercourse. She became pregnant frequently, but was practically always able to arrange to miscarry immediately.

Often, even in the theatre, before all the people, she undressed and stood naked in the midst; she had a G-string covering her private parts - not that she'd have minded showing them to the audience, as well as the rest - but because no one was allowed to enter there wholly naked, but must have a G-string over the groin. Dressed like this, she would spread her limbs, lying on her back on the stage; servants, whose work this was, scattered barley from above on to her genitals, and geese, provided for this purpose, ate it, picking it off with their beaks, grain by grain.

Transl. F.P.