Herodotus, traveling with the Icthyophagi people, recorded the bathing habits of one particularly long lived tribe. They lived on average, to 120 and attributed it entirely to their baths. Theodora suffered from cancer, most likely a type of leukemia, for the greater part of her life, but her activities - until her death- show no sign of sloth. The footnoted observation of her illness, added long after Procopious wrote the Secret History, attaches only to descibe the consistency of her behavior. When she died in 548, at age 43, she had a spotless record of lasciviousness behind her, one that endured both cancer and tedium and Byzantium.

And though she brought three openings into service, she often found fault with Nature, grumbling because Nature had not made the openings in her nipples wider than is normal, so that she could devise another variety of intercourse in that region. Naturally, she was frequently pregnant...