Who fought? I Imperial forces (Justinian) vs. Constantinople mob (Green and Blue leaders).
What was at stake? Not Clear Enough
The hangman was probably new. He certainly didn't know his craft. And his ignorance almost killed Western civilization.It wouldn't have taken much to kill Western civilization in the year 532. In distant Britain, which had not seen a Roman soldier in more than a century, the Saxons had recovered from the defeat the man known as "Arthur the Soldier" had inflicted on them at Mt. Badon, 16 years earlier. Their chiefs, Cynric and Ceawlin, were preparing new invasions. But Arthur had another project on his mind—he was preparing to battle his own son, Medraut (or Modred). The savage Franks owned Gaul and western Germany. The Visigoths, defeated by the Franks, ruled Spain. Across the Straits of Gibraltar, the Vandals controlled the province of Africa, the breadbasket of the Empire, and all of the Mediterranean. Italy, including Rome itself, was under the sway of the Ostrogoths.
The once-mighty Roman Empire consisted only of the Balkan Peninsula, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt. It was menaced not only by the barbarians in the west, but by the civilized and powerful kingdom of Persia in the East. To the north, the Huns, despite the destruction of Attila's empire, were still the best cavalry in Europe. They and their allies, the Heruls, a Hunnicized German nation, remained a threat, and a new threat was joining them. The Slavs, a people savage enough to make the Huns look like exemplars of civilization, were massing on the Balkan boundaries.But to the people of Constantinople, capital of the Empire, these external threats were not as serious as the internal troubles. The emperor, Justinian, had coped well with the external problems during the five years he wore the purple. Surprisingly well.
When the Persians attacked, Justinian had put a young, unknown officer named Belisarius in charge of the Imperial forces. At Daras, Belisarius lured the Persians into a trap and scattered their army.But another of the emperor's appointments, John of Cappadocia, was bringing disaster at home. As praetorian prefect, or chief financial officer, John was balancing the budget by levying crushing taxes and curtailing essential services. John's measures were driving small farmers out of business. They began swarming into Constan-tinople, where they strained the city's relief facilities and increased its crime rate.Even more serious was religious dissension.
Paganism among the Romans was defunct. The two principal Christian sects in Constantinople, however, showed no Christian charity toward each other. Quarreling between the Catholics and the Monophysites was continuous and often violent. Three men to be hanged had committed their murders in one of those quarrels.
The factions
The men belonged to street gangs sponsored by two factions known as the Blues and the Greens. They took their names from the colors of the chariots they entered in the Hippodrome races. The government recognized the factions and established them as civilian militia divisions charged with defending the walls of the city. With official recognition came political affiliation, and, after Christianity became the reli-gion of the Empire, affiliation with either the Catholics or the Monophysites.
The Blues were Catholic and supported Catholic emperors; the Greens were Monophysite and supported Monophysite emperors. The factions sponsored street gangs, called partisans. The partisans dressed like Huns. They shaved the front of their scalps and let their hair grow long in the back. They wore Hunnish trousers and boots and shirts with baggy sleeves. Inside the sleeves, they carried daggers.A large crowd had assembled to watch the execution on January 10, 532. The three men were marched to the scaffold and nooses placed around their necks.
When the floor gave way beneath them, the three bodies dropped.But two of the bodies dropped all the way to the ground. The ropes had broken. After a moment of embarrassment, the hangman and his assistants hustled the two convicts—one a Green, the other a Blue—back up on the scaffold and tried to hang them again. The ropes broke again.The executioners were stunned. The crowd murmured.
Was God sending them a sign? A crowd of monks from a nearby monastery rushed up to the prisoners and carried them to a boat, rowed them across the Golden Horn and gave them sanctuary in a church. The city prefect, who had condemned the men to death, sent guards to the church to seize the men as soon as they stepped out.
Nika!
That pleased neither the Blues nor the Greens. Three days later was the Ides of January, a traditional occasion for chariot races. As tradition demanded, the emperor appeared at the Hippodrome. Both the Blues and the Greens implored him to pardon the fugitives.
He gave them no answer. As the 22nd race began, a cry went up from all parts of the Hippodrome, "Long live the humane Greens and Blues." It must have shocked any neutral observers (if there were any). The Greens and Blues had never agreed on anything before.That night, a mob of Blues and Greens demanded that the prefect remove his guards.
He refused. The mob burst into his headquarters, killed several officials, opened the jail, and released all the prisoners. Then the rioters set fire to a number of buildings. The fire spread,and many more buildings burned, including the huge church of Hagia Sophia.
Rioting went on and on. The mob was organized. Officers of the Green and Blue factions—high-ranking Romans—provided the leadership. The partisans, the dispossessed farmers, and the armed retainers of the great magnates supplied muscle. To identify themselves, the rioters shouted the traditional cheer of a winning faction at a chariot race—"Nika!" (Victory!). Historians later named this movement the Nika Rebellion.The two regiments stationed in the city refused to move. Belisarius, who had returned triumphant from the Persian War, led his private army of retainers against the rioters, as did another general, Mundus, who had arrived leading a group of Herul auxiliaries. The mob, however, swarmed around the soldiers in the labyrinthine streets of the city and attacked them from all sides. The troops could accomplish nothing.On January 18, a week after the failed hangings, Justinian, his empress
Theodora, Belisarius, Mundus, their troops, and a few picked officials were huddled in the palace while the Blues and Greens assembled in the Hippodrome crowning a new emperor. John of Cappadocia urged the emperor to flee.Although probably none of the participants realized it, the moment was a turning point in history. If Justinian had fled, his dreamed-of project, the codification of Roman law, would probably never have happened. The civil and criminal law of most of Europe, Africa, and the Americas is based on Justinian's code. The law in the United Kingdom, most of the United States, and the rest of the world, although not based directly on the Roman code, is strongly influenced by it.The shape of civilization for the next two millennia depended on the actions of as unlikely a cast of characters as fate had ever brought together.First, there was the emperor, Justinian, who had been born Peter Sabbatius on a small farm in Illyria, north of Greece.
His uncle, Justin, years before had joined the army. Justin could barely read and write, but he learned enough about military tactics to become count of the Excubitors, commander of one of the elite units of the army. Stationed in the capital, Justin sent for his nephew and arranged for his education.Peter became Justin's secretary. To Justin, that meant confidential agent.Succession to the throne in the Roman Empire did not depend on heredity. Theoretically, the senate, the army, and the populace proclaimed the emperor. Actually, the army did most of the choosing, with the factions playing an important part in the process. When the old emperor died, Peter's intrigues with military and religious officials resulted in Justin becoming emperor. Justin gave Peter the rank of patrician and promoted him to Master of Soldiers, or commander-in-chief of the armed forces. When Justin became ill, he made his nephew co-emperor. Peter Sabbatius changed his name to Justinian.
When Justin died, Justinian became sole emperor. A tall, cadaverous, and humorless man, he shared the throne with his wife, Theodora, who had an even stranger background.The empress, a pretty dark-haired woman, was much younger than Justinian, who was now about 50. She had once been an actress, which in those days was practi-cally synonymous with prostitute. Also, she was a Monophysite, and Justinian was a Catholic. But when Justinian met her, long before he became emperor, he fell madly in love. He wanted to marry Theodora, but the empress Euphemia—herself a former slave—forbade a wedding.
The patrician and the former prostitute married after Euphemia died.In spite of their differences, and in spite of her background, Theodora remained passionately loyal to Justinian all her life, and he to her. At this moment, her voice resolved a crisis."If you wish, O Emperor, to save yourself, there is no difficulty," she said. "We have ample funds. Yonder is the sea, and there are the ships. Yet reflect whether, when you have once escaped to a place of security, you will not prefer death to safety. I agree with an old saying 'Purple makes a fair winding sheet.'"Justinian agreed, too. He wasn't ready to die, though. He had a plan. But the plan depended on two other unlikely people: Belisarius and the emperor's private secretary, Narses.Belisarius, not yet 30, had also married an actress, a friend of Theodora.
The wedding, in fact, had taken place shortly before the riot. Antonina's affair with Belisarius may have had something to do with the young soldier's rise in the world. In the war against Persia, he had fully justified the emperor's faith in him. In Constantinople, though, his best efforts had been futile. His success in carrying out Justinian's plan would depend on the performance of the man who had to play the hardest role: Narses. And Narses was the most unlikely of this entire unlikely group.Justinian planned to make him grand chamberlain, the second most powerful civilian in the Empire. But Narses had once been a slave. He was also a eunuch, castrated as a boy in his native Persarmenia (the portion of Armenia occupied by Persia), so he could be a servant in Persian harems.
Somehow, he ended up in the slave market of Constantinople, and somehow, he attracted the attention of Justinian.Justinian was impressed with the slave's intelligence, loyalty, and capacity for hard work. The emperor had no need for a harem guard, but he could always find a use for brains. Narses, about four years older than Justinian, became a free man and rose rapidly in the imperial service. He was not only smart, but also generous and gregarious. These characteristics made him one of the most popular of court officials. And he was also, as he was to prove at this time, utterly fearless.Justinian told Belisarius and Mundus to take their troops to the two entrances of the Hippodrome.
Once again they would meet the rioters. But this time, Narses would prepare the way for them. To Narses, he gave a bag of gold. The skinny little eunuch entered the Hippodrome alone and unarmed, walking through the howling mob that had already killed several hundred people. He circulated through the Blue section, waving to acquaintances and approaching important Blues. He reminded them that Justinian was a Catholic and had favored the Blues during Justin's reign. He pointed out that Hypatius, the man they were now proclaiming emperor, was a Green. He asked how they could support a Green. And he passed out the gold.
The Blue leaders conferred quietly with each other. Then they unobtrusively spoke to their followers. Suddenly, in the middle of the coro-nation, all of the Blues turned and streamed out of the Hippodrome. The Greens were stunned. Before they could recover from their surprise, the soldiers of Belisarius and Mundus attacked. The Greens had no chance to organize. The soldiers killed 30,000, and Justinian had no more trouble with the factions.The emperor was now free to rebuild the fire-ravaged city and build a new Hagia Sophia, a church still considered one of the marvels of the world. He could now start the reconquest of Africa and Italy—a Herculean task actually performed by Belisarius and the incredible Narses. Finally, Justinian could commence his greatest accomplish-ment: the codification of the law. Thanks to that, the rule of law, not the changing whims of a succession of tyrants, became established in Western civilization.
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