"There is no other book that gives Theodora as extensive or as penetrating treatment as this one... The task is worthwhile, because Theodora is a figure of historical importance and great interest and perhaps the only Byzantine woman about whom the sources say enough to make even a short book feasible." Warren Treadgold, author of A Concise History of Byzantium "[Evans's] book is informative and entertaining. He writes with clarity and lucidity, virtues which are particularly evident in his acount of the theological disputes of the age. He has successfully set before us the woman "whose strange elevation" as Gibbon puts it, "cannot be applauded as the triumph of female virtue"."--Les Etudes Classiques, 71,3, July-Sept 2003