Did an empress really stop Justinian from running away, and who tells us so?

Perhaps, but the speech comes to us only through the historian Procopius, and his writing needs care. When the Nika riots shook Constantinople in January 532, Justinian considered fleeing. His wife Theodora is said to have dissuaded him, saying, "Those who have worn the crown should never survive its loss." One reading is that the speech, as Procopius quotes it, represents the discussions in the palace rather than a literal record.

The riots began with chariot racing. Teams were backed by factions, and by the 6th century the only influential ones were the Blues and the Greens. On 10 January 532 two condemned men, a Blue and a Green, survived their execution when the scaffolding broke. The crowd's chants at the Hippodrome changed from "Blue" or "Green" to a unified "Nika", meaning "Victory!", and they began to assault the palace. Fires destroyed much of the city, including its foremost church, the Hagia Sophia, and the crowd declared a rival emperor, Hypatius.

Then Justinian's side struck back. The eunuch Narses, carrying a bag of gold, went alone and unarmed into the Hippodrome and reminded the Blues that Justinian supported them over the Greens. The generals Belisarius and Mundus then crushed the riot with a massacre in the Hippodrome: according to Procopius, around 30,000 people were killed.

Procopius gave two different faces of the couple. In On Buildings, likely written at Justinian's behest, he presents Justinian as an idealised Christian emperor. The Secret History, which claims to report scandals he could not publish for fear of angering the emperor and his wife, reveals an author deeply disillusioned with them. Most modern scholars regard that secret book as often unreliable and slanderous on Theodora's early life. So the empress's speech may echo a real argument, but its exact words are uncertain.