Blue versus Green: Rocking the Byzantine Empire

Smithsonian Magazine ^ | 3-2-2012

[Renfield]

“Bread and circuses,” the poet Juvenal wrote scathingly. “That’s all the common people want.” Food and entertainment. Or to put it another way, basic sustenance and bloodshed, because the most popular entertainments offered by the circuses of Rome were the gladiators and chariot racing, the latter often as deadly as the former. As many as 12 four-horse teams raced one another seven times around the confines of the greatest arenas—the Circus Maximus in Rome was 2,000 feet long, but its track was not more than 150 feet wide—and rules were few, collisions all but inevitable, and hideous injuries to the charioteers extremely commonplace. Ancient inscriptions frequently record the deaths of famous racers in their early 20s, crushed against the stone spina that ran down the center of the race track or dragged behind their horses after their chariots were smashed....

[Renfield]

Check out this article...it's much more interesting than its pedestrian title would suggest.

[Renfield]

Ping

[Venturer]

Sitting around at Daytona, waiting for the “Big One”.

LOL.

[bert]

-——Procopius portrayed Theodora as a wanton of the most promiscuous sort, ———

My take....... Rush is Procopius!!

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Good post!

[PGR88]

very interesting

[Parmenio]

If anyone wants to see 3-D recreations of Constantinople’s Hippodrome, plus many more Byzantine buildings (some of which no longer exist), you can find them at this website:

http://www.byzantium1200.com/

[PapaBear3625]

The Nika Riots marked the end of an era in which circus factions held some sway over the greatest empire west of China, and signaled the end of chariot racing as a mass spectator sport within Byzantium. Within a few years the great races and Green-Blue rivalries were memories. They would be replaced, however, with something yet more threatening–for as Norwich observes, within a few years of Justinian’s death theological debate had become what amounted to the empire’s national sport. And with the Orthodox battling the Monophysites, and the iconoclasts waiting in the wings, Byzantium was set on course for rioting and civil war that would put even the massacre in the Hippodrome in sorry context.

The Nika riots happened in 532. A hundred years later, the damage and dissension within the Byzantine Empire would be taken advantage of by the Muslims.

[cizinec]

Theodora, regardless of Procopius’s opinion, was an extremely strong woman who led better than most men, a fact which frustrated men like Procopius. Comparing that little tart to Theodora is insulting.

[bert]

My bad.

You are of course correct and to compare rush to Procopius is wrong because the spinster slut is not Theodora.

[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
Thanks Renfield. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

[null and void]

Left turn! Left turn! That’s my fav-o-rite part!