First, we are not sure that the vices existed, and were not the impure inventions of a malignant calumniator.

Secondly, Gibbon is far from painting the manners of the time as a moralist or an historian; he paints them with a zest for pruriency worthy of Bayle or Brantome.

It was an occasion for a wise scepticism to register grave doubts as to the infamous stories of Procopius.

A rehabilitation of Theodora is not a theme calculated to provoke enthusiasm, and is impossible besides from the entire want of adequate evidence.

But a thoughtful writer would not have lost his time, if he referred to the subject at all, in pointing out the moral improbability of the current accounts.