Niece of the empress Theodora and wife of Justin II, Sophia shared power with her husband from 565, governed with Tiberius II Constantine during Justin's mental collapse in 573–578, and remained a force at court into the reign of Maurice.
Sophia was empress of the Eastern Roman Empire from 565 as the wife of Justin II, and she kept the rank of augusta until her death some time after 601. A niece of the empress Theodora, she married a nephew of Justinian I and helped him take the throne on the night the old emperor died. Contemporaries treated her as a partner in power: the court poet Corippus gave her equal place in his account of the accession, and the bronze coinage showed the couple enthroned side by side.
Her greatest power came after Justin II lost his reason in 573, when she ran the government with Tiberius, commander of the palace guard. When Tiberius became emperor in 578 he refused to leave his wife for her and curbed her influence, but she plotted against him, survived into the reign of Maurice, and is last heard of in 601.
Sophia was born around 530. John of Ephesus and Victor of Tunnuna both call her a niece of Theodora, which makes her the daughter of one of Theodora's two sisters, Comito or Anastasia; if her mother was Comito, her father was probably the general Sittas, whom Comito married in 528. She married Justin, son of Justinian's sister Vigilantia, probably while Theodora was still alive, and the match is generally thought to have been the empress's work. They had a son, Justus, who died young, and a daughter, Arabia, who married the general Baduarius.
Sophia's reputation depends on who was writing. Corippus, whose poem In Praise of Justin the Younger celebrated the new reign, plays on her name, which means wisdom, and presents a pious and dignified partner who weaves Justinian's shroud and prays beside her husband. Hostile writers saw ambition and greed. John of Ephesus, a Miaphysite bishop imprisoned in the persecution of Justin's reign, reports her boasting that the empire had come through her and had come back to her, and that Justin had been struck down for failing to value her. Evagrius tells how the couple kicked the severed head of a murdered rival, and Gregory of Tours, writing far away in Gaul, makes her a scheming and avaricious widow.
None of these writers was neutral, and the stories of cruelty come from men with reasons to dislike her. What they share is more reliable: all of them treat Sophia as a decision-maker, and her recorded actions bear that out. She took charge of repaying the debts Justinian had run up with bankers and money-lenders, which Theophanes says won her praise, and her quarrels with Tiberius were over his lavish spending. Paul the Deacon's tale that she mocked the eunuch Narses by offering him a post among the palace weaving women, provoking him to invite the Lombards into Italy, was written two centuries later and is usually treated as legend.
Justinian I died on the night of 14 November 565 without naming an heir. Justin, who held the palace office of kouropalates, was already in the Great Palace; with the senate's support he was proclaimed and crowned before his cousins could act, and Corippus describes Sophia arranging Justinian's funeral. She took the name Aelia, used by empresses of the fifth century. The strongest rival for the throne, Justin, son of Germanus, was exiled to Alexandria and murdered there in 568, by Sophia's supporters according to John of Biclaro.
The couple acted together in religion and diplomacy. In 569 they sent a relic of the True Cross to Radegund's convent at Poitiers, a gift celebrated by Venantius Fortunatus in the hymn Vexilla regis and in poems that hailed them as a new Constantine and Helena. They also gave Rome the jewelled cross now in the Treasury of Saint Peter's, whose inscription says that Justin gives Rome his help and his consort gives its adornment.
In November 573 the Persian king Khosrow I captured Dara, the empire's chief fortress on the eastern frontier, and Justin II collapsed into what the sources call madness. Gregory of Tours says Sophia took over the government; Evagrius and Menander Protector, closer to events, say she shared it with Tiberius, commander of the Excubitors. In 574 she negotiated with Khosrow on her own authority and bought a one-year truce, reversing Justin's refusal to pay Persia. Theophanes records that she had bars fitted to the palace windows after Justin tried to throw himself out.
With the senate's agreement, Justin proclaimed Tiberius caesar on 7 December 574 and adopted him as his heir. Sophia seems to have hoped to marry Tiberius once Justin died, but he already had a wife, Ino Anastasia, whom Sophia would not admit to the Great Palace; Tiberius lodged his family in the Hormisdas Palace and visited them each evening.
Justin II died on 5 October 578 and Tiberius II Constantine became sole emperor. John of Ephesus says Sophia sent the patriarch Eutychius to urge him to divorce Ino and marry her or her daughter Arabia, and that Tiberius refused. Ino was crowned augusta and Sophia, though still an augusta herself, lost control of affairs. Gregory of Tours reports that she then backed a plot to put Justinian, a son of Germanus, on the throne; Tiberius confiscated much of her property and replaced her servants but left her rank untouched.
When Tiberius lay dying in August 582 he is said to have consulted her about the succession, and the general Maurice, betrothed to Tiberius's daughter Constantina, became emperor. Sophia got on better with Constantina than with her mother. At Easter 601 the two augustae gave Maurice a jewelled crown; he hung it above the altar of Hagia Sophia as his own offering, and Theophanes says both women took it as an insult.