Procopius asks the question...
This one comes courtesy of Amiculus: A Secret History's own Procopius of Caesarea, posing the following theory in his most famous work, The Secret History:
PROVING THAT JUSTINIAN AND THEODORA
WERE ACTUALLY FIENDS IN HUMAN FORM
- That Justinian's own mother supposedly claimed he was the son of a demon, an incubus who "was there with her as a man...and then disappeared as in a dream";
- That a holy man who went to see Justinian was seized "like a man who had suffered a stroke" upon entering the throne room, and then "declared outright that he had seen the Lord of the Demons in the Palace sitting on the throne";
- That friends of the emperor, when meeting with him late at night, saw his head vanish from his shoulders and reappear as he walked about the room;
- That his face would periodically melt into "featureless flesh; for neither eyebrows nor eyes were in their proper place, nor did it shew any other means of identification whatsoever" and then slowly reform;
- That Theodora had been prophesied to marry the Lord of Demons, and that when she was an actress on the stage (yes!), she would be visited by a demon that would swoop down on her and drive all others from the room.
The thing about a demon-in-human-form is: they aren't known to die in the fashion that we humans do, are they? Procopius reputedly only outlived Justinian by a few years. Perhaps a copy of The Secret History made its way down to Gehenna, and Justinian decided to make a comeback to retrieve Procopius's "autograph?"