<P> Procopius (in his Secret History) relates that Theodora from an early age followed her sister Komito's example and worked in a Constantinople brothel serving low - status customers; later she performed on stage . Lynda Garland in "Byzantine Empresses: Women and Power in Byzantium, AD 527--1204" notes that there seems to be little reason to believe she worked out of a brothel "managed by a pimp". Employment as an actress at the time would include both "indecent exhibitions on stage" and providing sexual services off stage . In what Garland calls the "sleazy entertainment business in the capital", Theodora earned her living by a combination of her theatrical and sexual skills . In Procopius' account that confirms to rhetorical conventions for slander (or invective), Theodora purportedly made a name for herself with her salacious portrayal of Leda and the Swan . These salacious allegations conform to the a tradition of slander against the women of imperial house evident since the allegations of prostitution made against the daughter the Roman Emperor Augustus, Julia the Elder . </P> <P> During this time she met the future wife of Belisarius, Antonina, with whom she would remain lifelong friends . </P> <P> At the age of 16, she traveled to North Africa as the companion of a Syrian official named Hecebolus when he went to the Libyan Pentapolis as governor . She stayed with him for almost four years before returning to Constantinople . Abandoned and maltreated by Hecebolus, on her way back to the capital of the Byzantine Empire, she settled for a while in Alexandria, Egypt . She is said to have met Patriarch Timothy III in Alexandria, who was Miaphysite, and it was at that time that she converted to Miaphysite Christianity . From Alexandria she went to Antioch, where she met a Blue faction's dancer, Macedonia, who was perhaps an informer of Justinian . </P> <P> She returned to Constantinople in 522 and, according to John of Ephesus, gave up her former lifestyle, settling as a wool spinner in a house near the palace . The extreme and conventional nature of the negative rhetoric of Procopius and the positive rhetoric of John of Ephesus has led most scholars to conclude that the veracity of both writers might be questioned . </P>

Who did the byzantines believe their emperor represented