Comito
Comito was a Byzantine stage performer, the daughter of Acacius "the bear-keeper", and an elder sister to Theodora and Anastasia. Through Theodora, Comito was a sister-in-law of Justinian I. The main source of information on Comito's life is Procopius, although Comito is also mentioned by John Malalas, Theophanes the Confessor and Georgios Kedrenos.
Life
Comito's father, Acacius, was a bear trainer of the hippodrome's Green faction in Constantinople. Her mother, whose name is not recorded, was a dancer and actress. Acacius died when Comito and her sisters were young, and their mother swiftly remarried in the hopes that the post of animal trainer, which often passed from father to son, would be given to her new husband. However, because Acacius left no son and the second husband of his widow had a weaker claim to the position, the bear-trainer post was given to another man. Comito's mother took her daughters to the hippodrome and presented them to the crowd as supplicants, but the Greens rejected them and they were instead taken in by the Blues.Evans notes that Theodora would later favor the Blues as an empress, which could point to them having earned her loyalty through saving her family from the threat of unemployment and poverty.
Once she was determined to be old enough, Comito became a hetaera. According to Procopius, when Theodora was a child, she acted as an assistant to Comito, carrying the bench on which Comito sat during public gatherings.