The Greeks by Roderick Beaton

Author:Roderick Beaton [Beaton, Roderick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2021-10-26T00:00:00+00:00

Modern historians frequently dismiss Justinian’s conquests in the west as a mere flash in the pan. The empire’s dwindling resources had been disastrously overstretched, so the story goes; the ‘regained’ provinces in the west could never have been sustainable in the long term. Procopius, writing in darkly satirical mode during the last years of Justinian’s reign, foreshadowed that modern interpretation when he caricatured the emperor and his wife Theodora as ‘blood-thirsty demons’ who had taken on human form for no other purpose than ‘to find the easiest and swiftest means of destroying all races of men and all their works’.34 But some modern historians take a more upbeat view. Most of Justinian’s conquests were still holding up, come the turn of the next century, and some would last for much longer. By the year 600, although more ground had recently been lost in the Balkans, many towns and cities in the east, including Antioch, that had previously fallen to Persia, had been regained. Yet another peace treaty with the Sassanids had been concluded as recently as 591.35

The architect of that treaty was a former general by the name of Maurice, who had become emperor nine years before. At the start of the seventh century, Maurice led a series of campaigns to win back territory in the Balkans. By the end of the campaigning season in 602, the troops had had considerable success. But when the emperor gave the order to keep up the pressure on the tribesmen during the Balkan winter, this was too much for the legionaries and they mutinied. The leader of the mutiny, a junior officer by the name of Phocas, led them towards Constantinople. So far, so traditional. It was a legacy of the earlier turmoil during the third century that emperors could be made, and also unmade, by the men they led into battle. But this was different.

As rumours of the troops’ approach swirled through Constantinople, the emperor announced a chariot race and everybody poured into the Hippodrome to watch their favourite champions. It is doubtful whether the fans of either the Blues or the Greens in the Hippodrome that November day had any coherent political objective at all. The same probably goes for the charioteers, though their managers had links to high places and probably did have an agenda of their own. Maurice’s calculation must have been that if he could secure the backing of both factions, as Justin had done a century before, he would have sufficient support in the city to face down the rebel army.

What followed was in many ways a rerun of the Nika riot. Fighting broke out in the Hippodrome and then spread through the city. It was not the soldiers gathered outside the walls who forced Maurice and his immediate family to flee for their lives, but the populace, whipped up to a frenzy by the cheerleaders of the rival sporting factions. Order was not restored until the emperor and four of his five sons had been apprehended and their severed heads displayed to the crowd in the Hippodrome.

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