Note 19 — Chapter VII · SAINT THEODORA

The mystery of the children of Theophilus is yet unsolved. Michael was born, of Theodora, about 828, and we know that another boy, named Constantine, was born. But the five daughters—Thecla, Anna, Anastasia, Pulcheria and Maria—are a puzzle, to which the wretched Byzantine chroniclers give us no clue. They make Thecla, the eldest, a gay and dissolute woman thirty years afterwards, and they marry Maria, the youngest, about 832; while they speak of the whole of them as young girls, playing with their grandmother’s dolls, about the time when the youngest of them marries Alexius. It is frequently suggested that they were the daughters of an earlier wife of Theophilus, but this is hardly consistent with the later gaiety of Thecla (down to 868) or the doll story; nor, although we do not know the exact age of Theophilus, can we easily admit that he had been married for twenty years—which is necessary to make Maria fifteen in 832—before he chose Theodora under the guidance of his stepmother.