She was a very practical woman, in everything, including death. Sixteen years before she died, she gave a speech in which she said, “It is impossible for someone who has seen the light of this world not to die.” She was thirty-four years old. And she spoke the words just after mercilessly ordering the slaughter of 30,000 rebels in the city’s sports stadium.
The great chest of her sarcophagus is made of rosy alabaster marble, which is highly prized because of its rarity. Some call it ‘golden’ marble. It was mined from the great quarries at Hierapolis, which is present day Pamukkale, Turkey. The sarcophagus sits in the imperial mausoleum of the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), a church which, along with many others, she had commissioned.
The Church of the Holy Apostles still stands, and her sarcophagus may be visited.
She died on June 28, 548. It was cancer, according to modern medical evaluations of the symptoms. The official histories of that day record that the entire year prior to her death was accompanied by earthquakes, thunder, and lightning and, of course, the shattering of a column. The last item, an obvious concession to superstition, was a sinister omen, which, in hindsight, should have forewarned everyone. But it didn’t, as was so often the case.
