Malalas characterized her as charitable and pious.11 But Procopius gleefully repeated rumors that Theodora had once been a child prostitute who specialized in anal sex, a sharp-tongued teenage streetwalker who cracked dirty jokes and sold her body to large groups of men, a burlesque dancer who trained geese to peck barley grains from her knickers, and finally a courtesan to depraved imperial officials, in which capacity Justinian picked her up.12
