Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 1).djvu/366

 distinguished herself by her impudicity above any of her companions. Her ingenuity was inexhaustible in inventing occasions for the exposition of her nudities, and in sexual vice she became a mistress of everything fantastic and unnatural. She dispensed with drapery as far as was permissible by law, and one of her favourite devices was to prostrate herself on the stage, with grains of corn distributed about her person, so that a number of geese, in searching for their food, might throw her scanty clothing into obscene disorder. At orgies of the dissolute she was the life and soul of the festivities; and she assumed the rôle of instructress in depravity among her compeers of the theatre. Yet*