Of
course this style of living is no more to be recommended to
healthy, hearty, fun-loving girls of fifteen than is its extreme
of gayety and indulgence, but it had its effect in those bad old
days of dissipation and excess, and the simplicity and soberness
of this wise young girl's life in the very midst of so much power
and luxury, made even the worst elements in the empire respect
and honor her.
It would be interesting, did space permit, to sketch at length
some of the devisings and doings of this girl regent of sixteen.
"She superintended with extraordinary wisdom," says the old
chronicler Sozemon, "the transactions of the Roman government,"
and "afforded the spectacle," says Ozanam, a later historian, "of
a girlish princess of sixteen, granddaughter and sole inheritor
of the genius and courage of Theodosius the Great, governing the
empires of the east and west, and being proclaimed on the death
of her brother, Augusta, Imperatrix, and mistress of the world!"
This last event--the death of Theodosius the Younger--occurred in
the year 449, and Pulcheria ascended the golden throne of
Constantinople--the first woman that ever ruled as sole empress
of the Roman world.
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