The Blues, the Greens, and Belisarius
At the commencement of the year 532, by one of those sudden caprices which are often displayed by the populace, the two factions united, and turned their vengeance against Justinian. The prisons were forced, and the guards massacred. The city was then fired in various parts, the cathedral of St Sophia, a part of the imperial palace, and a great number of public and private buildings, were wrapped in conflagration. The cry of “Nika! Nika!” Vanquish! Vanquish! ran through every part of the capital.
The principal citizens hurried to the opposite shore of the Bosphorus,* and the emperor entrenched himself within his palace. In the mean time, Hypatius, nephew of the emperor Anastatius, was declared emperor by the rioters, and so formidable had the insurrection now become, that Justinian was ready to abdicate his crown. For the first and last time, Theodora seemed worthy of the throne,* for she withstood the pusillanimity of her husband, and, through her animated exhortations, it was determined to take the chance of victory or death.
* The Bosphorus is a narrow strait leading west from the Black Sea into the Sea of Marmara, and thence to the Dardanelles (Hellespont) and the Aegean Sea. The city of Constantinople (Istanbul) straddles the strait; the north bank lies in Europe, and the south in Asia. The Cathedral stands on the European side.
* Theodora (?490-548) married Justinian in 525 and became empress on his accession in 527. She came from a humble background: her father kept the bears used in the Circus for gladiatorial contests, and according to a salacious account by Procopius (a contemporary, who served with Belisarius) in his Secret History, Theodora herself had worked as an actress, stripper and prostitute. Goodrich’s judgment that she was ‘unworthy of her throne’ is not really fair. Theodora’s name appears on nearly all of Justinian’s significant legislation, including laws to prohibit the traffic in young girls and protect the interests of women in divorce proceedings. She was full of contradictions, a challenge to the established order, and sometimes very wrong, but John Buchan would say that this just enrolled her in the same irresistible sisterhood as Cleopatra: see Koré.