During the Nika riots it was his wife who stopped Justinian from fleeing.
Empress Theodora, Procopius says, declared that 'royalty is a fine burial shroud'. The emperor stayed — and crushed the revolt.
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More amazing facts
- 525 · 731 For five centuries nobody knew they were living in AD anything.
- 532 Emperor Justinian was nearly overthrown by sports fans.
- 532 · 537 Constantinople owes Hagia Sophia to rioting sports fans.
- 536 · 541 536 is called one of the worst years to be alive: volcanic haze dimmed the sun across the Northern Hemisphere, and five years later the Plague of Justinian began.
- 537 Hagia Sophia remained the world's largest church for more than 500 years: consecrated in 537, it was surpassed only when the abbey church of Cluny in France was completed in the 12th century.
- 537 Byzantine sources claimed that Hagia Sophia's Imperial Gate was made from the timber of Noah's Ark. The seven-metre, 6th-century door was used only by the emperor and his retinue.