Note: The malice of court scandal is proverbially inventive; and of such scandal the "Anecdota" may be an embellished record .-- M.] [Footnote 113: Procopius intimates (Anecdot.c.

4) that when Belisarius returned to Italy, (A.D.

543,) Antonina was sixty years of age.

A forced, but more polite construction, which refers that date to the moment when he was writing, (A.D.

559,) would be compatible with the manhood of Photius, (Gothic.l.i.c.