The Blues and Greens

People love sports, and people love their sports teams, and rivalries abound. 'Twas ever thus, and Ancient Rome was no exception.

In Rome and the later Byzantine Empire, chariot races were extremely popular, so popular that the different teams, called demes (from a Greek word meaning "people" as in the words democracy and demography, but here used to mean "faction"), that were so persistently popular and polarizing that they became social and political forces and could be fiercely opposed to each other. The Blues included many of higher status, while the Greens were more of a working-class group.

There were four factions: Blue, Green, White, and Red (these colors first mentioned by Pliny the Elder). The largest and most powerful were the Blues and Greens. These factions maintained their identities over centuries, starting with the time of Augustus in the 1st century BCE and lasting into the 8th century CE and beyond.

It is the 6th century in the Eastern Roman Empire that we will concern ourselves with, and the time of Emperor Justinian I (482 - 565). Although some modern scholars minimize the impact these factions had on society, evidence of the Nika Riots shows how strong an effect they could have on major cities where large numbers of the different colors resided.

Whole neighborhoods were described as pro-Blue or pro-Green. The factions created their own militias, and the emperor would sometimes request help from them in military matters. They even got involved in religious matters. When the Council of Chalcedon met, their conclusions were supported by the Blues, while the Greens were opposed (although these distinctions were not universal).

Even a 12th-century scholar, Theodore Balsamon, whose writings preserved information from earlier sources now lost to us, when writing about the Council of Trullo (in 692), comments that the emperors had no control over the factions and had to appease them.

Justinian, according to contemporary chroniclers Procopius and Evagrius Scholasticus, favored the Blues, likely because they included more elites and politicians. This made the Blues more arrogant and likely to cause trouble in Constantinople. Despite this, there were times when all factions felt the need to speak out against the state and join forces. One such time was the Nika Riots, when the Blues and the Greens united against Justinian. It started when the prefect of Constantinople arrested some members of the Blues and Greens in connection with some deaths during riots after (what else?) a chariot race.

The suspects were all to be executed, and on 10 January 532, the sentence was carried out. The Riots did not come about because of the executed men, but because of two—one Blue and one Green—escaped execution by luck. I'll explain tomorrow.