Chariots of Blood
There was a time when bloodlust played a more integral part in sports than it does today. Gladiatorial contests, of course, are the prime examples. Still, for me, the rivalry of Byzantium’s Blue and Green chariot teams stand out in the fanaticism and the savagery of their supporters. It was as if the scientist/god of history decided to do an experiment with our species: take away principles, religious and political, take away territory, take away all the reasons cited for conflict and substitute the colors Blue and Green, give them to two different chariot teams, then see what happens. To be fair, chariot races were sporting competitions, and there is no dearth of examples of the fanaticism of fans of such events. However, the depth and bloodiness of the hatred of these competing colors is startling, as when in 501 CE, the Greens ambushed the Blues and slaughtered 3000 of them.
There is speculation that the Blues were more the favorite of the upper classes while the Greens were the Byzantine working man’s choice. The Greens may have been followers of a popular Christian heresy. I think the stronger argument is the human need to belong to something, even a color used by charioteers, over belonging to nothing. Each color had its own circus that was a venue of entertainment, and I imagine its own masonry repairmen, purveyors of fine tunics, and preferred vendors of honey cakes, cheese, and wine.
Chariot racing was exciting. Eight four-horse teams careened in the wild races around the Hippodrome, five football fields long and one and a half football fields wide. The drivers frequently were crushed against the stone spina that ran down the center of the Hippodrome or dragged to death behind their chariots or mangled underneath the wheels. On one side of the track stood the imperial palace. A hundred thousand plus spectators might watch. Many drivers were slaves whose motto could have been: “Give me liberty with a bunch of money or give me death.”
Political rivalry, religious rivalry, Blue and Green rivalry, and twenty-six new taxes brought Constantinople to the boiling point. Justinian decided to arrest the ringleaders of both the Blue and Green factions and hang them. The scaffolding broke before hanging the last two ringleaders, a Blue and a Green. They were given sanctuary in a church. The bitter rival groups united against a greater evil: Justinian. One hundred fifty thousand crowded into the Hippodrome for the ultimate extreme sport of overthrowing an emperor. They unearthed the nephew of a former emperor, Hypatius, from obscurity as a replacement for Justinian and were ready to take on the empire. Being in the Hippodrome, the Blues and Greens naturally took to chanting, “Nika! Nika!” “Win! Win!” the words used to spur their charioteers on to victory.
That didn’t happen.
But it almost did.
Enter Empress Theodora. Daughter of a bear trainer for the Greens (or wife: the Smithsonian and Wikipedia disagree) and a dancer and actress (and/or acrobat). Married, abandoned with a daughter (or maybe three), an actress in a world where little distinction was made between that profession and prostitution (or a wool spinner after a brief stint as an actress) and probably—the only verifiable fact of her early life—the cleverest woman in Byzantium. It was illegal to marry an actress, so the emperor Justin did his nephew Justinian the favor of nullifying that law so he could marry the wool-spinning prostitute single mother. The family conference where Justinian introduced his future wife-to-be must have been interesting. An early job application rejection by the Greens made Theodora a partisan of the Blues. Justinian not only married her but made her a co-ruler, where she was to demonstrate both intelligence and courage.
Justinian was all for getting out of town when the mob gathered in the Hippodrome. Theodora held a different opinion:
“If you wish to save your skin, you will have no difficulty in doing so. We are rich, there is the sea, there too are our ships. But consider first whether, when you reach safety, you will regret that you did not choose death in preference. As for me, I stand by the ancient saying: the purple is the noblest winding-sheet.”
What followed was horrible and likely inevitable. Justinian and Theodora had on their side Belisarius, a brilliant general, and his army of Goths who cared not a whit for chariot racing or Blues or Greens. They invaded the Hippodrome. They were outnumbered 10 to 1, but they were soldiers, organized, and accustomed to showing no mercy.
Thirty thousand innocent and guilty men and women and children were massacred. In shock over the bloodletting of perhaps a tenth of its population, the city of Constantinople quieted down.
Theodora was considered a wise and able regent. One of her reforms involved chasing the pimps out of town and giving money to the prostitutes so they could return to their parents.
I could speculate on a less brutal way to resolve the crisis of the Nika riots. Still, all such speculations assume that the parties involved were rational and could be persuaded to act with moderation and the spirit of compromise. Neither Blues nor Greens seemed to be of that ilk.
Likely leaving Constantinople in the hands of a mob composed of the temporarily united bitter enemies, the Blues and the Greens, would have been much bloodier.
History is overflowing with parables of the eventual self-destruction of warring tribes. There is an undervalued dynamic in these stories. We all recognized the importance of belonging. It is an innate pre-rational drive. I think the same can be said for excluding. We define ourselves through those who are different. The criteria for those we choose to exclude—religion, politics, skin color, or simply color—as long as we do it. Because people who prefer Blue, for example, are less human, then we acquire a license to kill them.
Our only salvation is recognizing the humanity of those we exclude.
Chariot races continued but never did the fervor match those that occurred before the Nika riots.