At this Antonina entirely lost her reason, showed her distress by putting on mourning and by her general behaviour, and roamed about the house, wailing and lamenting (even in the presence of her husband) the good friend she had lost--so faithful, so pleasant, so tender a companion, so prompt in action.

At last she even won over her husband, who began to utter the same lamentations.

The poor fool kept calling for the return of his well-beloved Theodosius, and afterwards went to the Emperor and besought him and the Empress, till he prevailed upon them to send for Theodosius, as a man whose services always had been and always would be indispensable in the household.

Theodosius, however, refused to obey, declaring that it was his fixed determination to remain in the cloister and embrace the monastic life.

But this language was by no means sincere, for it was his intention, as soon as Belisarius left the country, to rejoin Antonina by stealth at Byzantium, as, in fact, he did..