HIST 1250 lecture 10 sports and violence

sports in the stadium

At their hearts, the Faction partisans were supposed to be organized
primarily to cheer on their side in the Games.
• From the mid fifth century, the Factions were allotted special reserved seats in the middle of the Hippodrome, opposite the imperial box. There were dividers to keep the four seating areas apart.
• Faction partisans tended to dress similarly, always in the colour of their
team and sometimes in other special clothes. Ancient sources highlight their long billowing sleeves, which they would wave in the wind to create a great rush of air.
• At some point, the Factions each developed an overall leader, known as the demarch, who was recognized by the imperial government itself.

sports in the stadium continued

Within the Stadium, however, it was not the demarch who mattered most but a sort of area captain in each city, whom we may dub the capo after his equivalent in modern Ultras groups.
• The job of the capo was to stand with his back to the racetrack, facing the masses of partisans, and direct them in their acclamations (ritual chants). This probably meant shouting phrases himself, which would then be picked up and chanted back to him by the thousands of gathered partisans for all to hear.
• These chants were highly rhythmic and often relatively memorable; some could even be reasonably long.

ancient sport chants example

1) The most ubiquitous and popular: “Nika _____”
= Literally ‘Victory to [The Greens/Blues]
=Better: “LET’S GO [GREENS/BLUES]!”
2) “I’d Rather Be a Pagan Than A Blue!” (Green Chant)
3) “We can’t stand to see your face, your jealousy is a disgrace”! (Blue Chant)

blood sports in the streets

However there is one thing that the Circus Factions would become notorious for in our sources, it is not their chanting at the Games or their passionate sports fandom more broadly but rather their frequently violent conduct, especially towards other partisans.
• The hatred of the Greens and the Blues for each other became legendary. The result was that on Game Day, Constantinople and other major cities became tinderboxes. Within the Hippodrome, soldiers could separate the two groups of fans as they howled one another down.
• Outside the stadium however, there was nothing to stop gangs of Greens and Blues from falling on one another for the crime of supporting the wrong team.

“A kind of civil war”

The violence of the Greens and Blues towards one another frequently spilled out into violence against others too. As gangs of overwhelmingly young men organized across the empire, the Factions became an easy organ for Organized Crime to spread.
• Smuggling, theft, extortion and even murder rackets used the Factions as cover to wage their own operations. Faction capos often doubled as local gang leaders.
• One horrified contemporary source claims that the violence between the Factions in the street functioned as ‘A Kind of Civil War’. The largest faction riots could kill hundreds of people and cause mass arson and damage.

the circus factions and public opinion

The popularity of both chariot racing and the Circus Factions meant that these teams came to represent an influential swathe of the East Roman public calling on mass support from urban populations, especially in the capital of Constantinople.
• This popularity is the reason that successive emperors felt unable to ban them or even often to take too much direct action, despite their activities regularly deteriorating into such urban violence and rioting. At the same time, emperors were also afraid of looking weak, posing a real dilemma.
• As a result, the Caesars of East Rome vacillated between different approaches to the factions, seeking variously to defuse their wrath or else to co-opt it for their own political ends.

case study 1; Anastasios and the Reds

One approach was demonstrated by the East Roman emperor Anastasios (491 – 518). Anastasios took the throne as a relatively weak
emperor, a former officer who was chosen by the widow of the deceased
former emperor as her new husband.
• Since emperors were at this time expected to declare a team to support
in the races, Anastasios chose the Reds, one of the lesser factions. This
allowed him to pose as neutral in the driving rivalry: that of the Greens
and Blues.
• This approach was largely successful. While his early reign was marred
by significant factional violence, these faded late in his tenure, as
Anastsios was able to convincingly sell himself as a neutral arbiter

Case study 2: Justinian and the Blues

A very different approach was pursued under Anastasios’ successor. From 518 to 527, the East Roman Empire was ruled by the elderly Justin, who had no son or heir apparent.
• Justin’s nephew Justinian was the most obvious candidate for the
succession. Justinian was a brilliant, ambitious, and ruthless political
schemer who was determined to secure the throne for himself.
• In order to do this, Justinian deliberately posed as the patron of the
Blue Faction. He cheered them on in the Races, he bestowed money on
their team, and he even helped the partisans and street-fighters

As the historian Prokopios tells us, Justinian used his considerable
influence to lean on judges so that Blues would not be convicted after their arrests. He also influenced the military to crack down on dissident Greens at the same time.
• The public knowledge that Justinian favoured the Blue Faction was a signal to other elite Romans to do the same. The result was that the races themselves were increasingly rigged in their favour, while the Blues became more emboldened and violent on the streets.
• The trade-off largely worked. When Justin died in 527, the Blues acted as Justinian’s loyal heavies and street enforcers, helping to ensure his
unchallenged succession to his uncle as the new emperor .

Pros and Cons

The difficulties and different choices of the East Roman emperors in the face of the intransigence and violence of the Factions illustrates some of the trade-offs that would be faced with sports violence in other cultures.
• Even powerful autocrats like the emperors believed that fierce sporting allegiance tapped into popular support which they did not wish to directly challenge. Unlike the example of the emperors and the games, sports in authoritarian states did not have to serve the interests of the ruler; sometimes it was a force he had to manage instead.
• At first, Justinian might have appeared an exception, able to ride the tiger of the Blue Faction to power. However events would show that his approach too had perils – and sports loyalties could trigger a larger crisis for him than that faced by almost any other emperor…

The Nika Riot

In January 532, Justinian, now the East Roman Emperor, would accidentally ignite a massive conflagration which nearly cost him both his capital and his crown.
• The so-called ‘Nika Riot’ was the largest popular uprising ever faced by either a Roman or an East Roman emperor. It did not begin with imperial elites or rivals, although they attempted to take advantage of it, but rather as a groundswell of mass rage with the emperor among his subjects.
• This rage would ultimately be channeled not through the army or formal political institutions but through the most popular mass-membership organizations in ancient society: the Circus Factions.

forgetting who got him there

The root cause of the Nika Riot was Justinian’s policy towards the two
Factions. As we have just seen, during his rise to power, the emperor
deliberately targeted and persecuted the Green Faction while boosting
their Blue rivals, stoking divisions and cultivating loyalties to help ease
his transition to the throne.
• However after securing the Great Palace of Constantinople for himself,
Justinian no longer needed his old friends. Suddenly, the Blues found
the corridors of power closed to them. The new emperor did not wish to
be associated with common street thugs, whatever colour they wore.
• Resentment with the emperor grew rapidly, especially as the outraged
Blues discovered that they too now faced arrest and punishment for
rioting, as the emperor distanced himself from his favour staunch pro-
Blue partisanship.

Inciting Incident

One weekend in January 532, after a brutal street fight, capos from the
Greens and Blues alike were arrested and sentenced to hanging. Angry
partisans attacked the execution and freed the leaders, who were spirited
away to a Church.
• Undeterred, the emperor ordered that they be dragged out and executed. He then attended the Games as normal. But on this particular day, 13th January, the present Factions did not simply chant their usual sports
chants, but instead began to chant demands for pardons for the rioters.
• The emperor did not even bother to decline them. Instead, he sat in the
imperial box and ignored both the Greens who had long hated him and the Blues he had formerly favoured, pretending not to hear them.

Nika!

As the day went on, the races continued, and the chants grew louder. Now even many of the Reds, Whites, and non-partisans joined in as the demands for mercy became ever louder and more strident.
• Justinian continued to ignore them, ever less convincingly and to their ever-growing fury.
• Finally, something new happened for the very first time. In the face of the emperor’s wrath, the Greens and Blues began to acclaim in unison. The formerly bitter foes, normally at one another’s throats, all began to chant:
• “NIKA! NIKA! NIKA! NIKA!” – Or in this context, “Let’s Go, Let’s Go, Let’s Go”

ciyu of flames

following the mass shared chant, absolute pandemonium broke out as the Greens and Blues began to riot together. They hurled debris at both the guards and the emperor in his box, even ripping up their own seats.
Justinian was forced to flee back into his palace as the rioters poured out
into the streets.
• For the next week, the unified Circus Factions rioted through the middle of Constantinople. Day and night, crowds besieged the gates of the Great Palace, forcing the emperor to shut himself up inside, refusing demands to address the crowd. The Public Baths, the Great Church, the prison, the City
Prefect’s office – all were burnt to the ground by the furious rioters.
• Even the imperial guards were unable to help, forced to engage in close
quarters narrow street fighting where they could make little headway.

Escalation

Justinian was slow to grasp the seriousness of the situation, proving continually slow. When the rioters began to chant demands that he sack the minister responsible for disciplining the Factions, he refused for a day. When he eventually gave in, it was too little, too late, and the
Factions were not minded to accept.
• The emperor tried the traditional trick of hosting more Games; this too failed as the partisans, normally race-crazy, refused to watch and instead abused the emperor when he appeared in the box, forcing him again to retreat.
• By the end of the week, Justinian’s political rivals were seeking to capitalize on his weakness, convincing the Blues and Greens to support a rival senator as emperor in Justinian’s place. The mob began to chant “Dig Up Justinian’s Bones!’, a traditional call for deposing a tyrant

the last stand

The despairing Justinian was now in very deep trouble, and prepared
a ship in the harbour to flee the city. Doing so would be tantamount to
abdication, with no real prospect of regaining his crown.
• Before doing so however, he elected to try one last alternative –
fortified, our sources claim, by his wife, the impressive and ambitious Theodora, who refused to leave the city, claiming she would rather die
as an empress than live as a commoner.
• Justinian thus let it be known that he would be appearing in the
Imperial Box to address the Greens and Blues, spreading the story
that he might well be formally abdicating and accepting their
judgement.

Denouement

On Sunday January 18, the Greens, Blues and the other rioters flocked into the Hippodrome to hear the emperor speak, as Justinian appeared carrying the Gospel above his head.
• However, the meeting was rapidly revealed as a trap. Once the Hippodrome was full, Justinian’s guards locked the gates and then advanced from all entrances. Now they could attack the rioters not in the narrow confines of street fighting, with rioters throwing roof tiles
from above and surrounding them, but in the open confines of the sports stadium.
• The result was a brutal and horrific massacre. When the dust cleared, over 30,000 people lay dead, including the vast majority of the hardcore Green and Blue partisans and countless thousands of others. Something like 5-10% of the total population of Constantinople were slaughtered by the regime in a single day.

Consequences

After Nika, Justinian would go on to rule for another thirty years,
never again facing the same level of popular opposition. The Circus
Factions would survive and rebuild, but the level of rioting and urban
violence took decades to recover to pre-532 levels.
• Later emperors would ruthlessly strip the Factions of their
independence, bringing them under imperial control so that the
Partisans acted as glorified cheerleaders at official events.
• In this way, the independent sports culture of East Rome would be
tamed and brought to the heel of authoritarian rulers.

implications

1) Sports Loyalty and Political Identity: The Nika Riot had demonstrated the immense power of sporting loyalties. Fervent loyalty to the teams had become a core part of personal, social and even political identity for partisans, leading them ultimately to violence even to the point of insurrection.
2) Sporting Venues as Political Arenas: It also showed the immense role of the Hippodrome as a social and political space; while emperors had sought to utilize this sporting stadium to mount displays of loyalty, it was transformed by the Factions into a site of violent resistance, and ultimately further became one of violent repression.
3) The Perils of Mixing Sports and Politics: Justinian’s efforts to harness the power of sports for his own political ends ultimately backfired and contributed to the energies of the crowds being turned against him, very nearly costing him the crown they helped him win.