The Nika Riots, Part 3

Emperor Justinian's plan to end the Nika Riots involved bribes. One difficulty about the Riots was that two large and influential rival factions, the Blues and the Greens, had joined together against the imperial administration. The Greens were mostly working class: merchants, tradesmen, craftsmen. The Blues, however, were more elite, and more willing to listen to money coming from the emperor.

These two factions filled the Hippodrome, the site of chariot races and attached to the imperial palace. Narses, a eunuch, was given gold with which to bribe the Blues. He entered the Hippodrome through the entrance used by the Blues chariot teams, going to the most influential members of the Blues. He reminded them that Justinian considered them his favorites instead of the Greens. He gave them the gold for their embers, and told them what the emperor wanted in return.

The riots had called for replacing Justinian with Hypatius, a nephew of a former emperor, Anastasius I. Hypatius had taken refuge in the palace with Justinian. A announcement went out that Hypatius would be crowned emperor at the Hippodrome. The teams let down their guard, thinking they were getting a happy outcome.

During the mock coronation, the Blues stood apart from the Greens, having been informed what would happen next. General Belisarius and his troops entered the Hippodrome and and started killing rioters. Belisarius took Hypatius and his brother Pompeius into custody while the soldiers killed anyone, Blues as well as Greens.

Procopius claimed that 30,000 people were killed, although it is likely that many of those deaths were caused not by the soldiers but by the stampede to get out of the Hippodrome. Although it would seem that Hypatius and Pompeius were innocent, Justinian now saw them as a potential threat to his power and had them executed (although later he gave their properties and royal titles to the men's children). Senators who had supported the rioters were exiled and their properties confiscated. John the Cappadocian, whose dismissal was demanded (and received) by the rioters, was reinstated.

Theophanes (c.759 - 817), writing over 200 years later, said the chariot races were not held for a long time afterward. A contemporary chronicler, John Malalas (c.491 - 578), says 35,000 were killed, although he did not have the "inside track" that Procopius had.

General Belisarius went on to be Justinian's chief commander of the military, involved in the first phase of the Gothic Wars, then having to return to northern Italy after the Justinian Plague when the Lombards took advantage of a weakened Byzantine Empire to invade. We'll start looking at that venture tomorrow.