Here we are, near the end of another football season.  College partisans, at least those who reside outside of Alabama, are licking their wounds and thinking about next year.  Football fans who prefer the NFL are nervously eyeing next month’s big prize in Miami.  There will be a new Super Bowl champion this year, and maybe, just maybe, the team that owns your loyalty will go on to take it all (unless, of course, you live in Wisconsin, Eastern Pennsylvania, Southern Ohio, or New England).  In my own town, where loyalties are evenly divided between the Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers, there is a noticeable hush in the air.  The Blue and Orange colors were retired weeks ago, and those who sported the Green and Gold began packing away their colorful paraphernalia Monday morning.  The fans are mostly silent now, but their enthusiasm will arise once again next autumn.

Sports are a huge influence in society, probably more so outside of North America.  I once attended a soccer game in Mexico City, and have never witnessed such rabid partisanship in my life as I did that night when the home town team was playing against Monterrey.  Once walking down the main pedestrian street of downtown Munich, I thought that a riot was approaching from the direction of the rundown neighborhoods near the train station.  As the raucous crowd grew nearer, I realized it was nothing but a group of mostly peaceful young Fussball fans noisily celebrating Munich’s triumph over another German soccer team.

Yes, sports are big nowadays, no doubt about it.  But if you really want to know when sports reigned supreme, you have to go back in time – way back – to the 5^th and 6^th centuries.  With the possible exception of the bloody games Meso-American Natives played before the arrival of Columbus, there was probably never a time when sports wielded greater influence on society than during the Late Roman Empire.  By then, the gladiatorial contests had largely been shut down out of Christian piety.  That piety, however, did not extend to the racing contests held throughout the Empire in the various circii, such as Rome’s Circus Maximus, and especially Constantinople’s famed Hippodrome.  Our modern sensibilities are rightly shocked at the drunken antics of “soccer thugs” whose violence has been known to get out of hand far too easily.  In 6^th century Constantinople, on the other hand, violent partisanship very frequently resulted in death, and could even threaten to topple the Emperor himself.

There were two main racing teams in the Late Roman Empire, the Blues and the Greens.  One or the other of these two teams owned the loyalties of nearly every Hellenized subject of the Empire.  The emperors learned to use the factions as a way of controlling the secular passions of the populace.  Dissatisfaction with imperial policies, especially the increasingly high taxation, could be managed by funneling the people’s energies to their racing zeal, rather than simmering revolutionary fervor.  Those who preferred the Greens, for instance, could be persuaded to vent their anger at the hated Blues, rather than the remote and autocratic emperor.   

It was not unusual for an emperor to show great favoritism to one or another of the racing factions.  After the death of an emperor, the factions sometimes played a role in the selection of a successor when there was no obvious heir.  Early in the 6th century, Emperor Anastasius had supported the Greens.  When he died, his eventual successor, Justin, claimed the support of the Blues.  Justin’s rival for the throne favored the Greens.  He was eventually murdered, and it is conceivable that the murder was committed by a Blue partisan.

After a short reign, Justin was succeeded by his nephew, Justinian, who usually continued his uncle’s preference for the Blues.  Like each of his predecessors, he attended the races frequently, and would enter the Hippodrome via a secret passageway from the palace.  Once safely ensconced in his royal box, he would sometimes  allow the crowds to air their grievances to him prior to the races.  The crowds would use a spokesperson from their preferred team, either the Greens or the Blues.  Of course, the emperor himself would not speak to the crowds directly.  He would answer the crowds through a Herald.

There is one famous exchange that took place in the Hippodrome between Emperor Justinian and the spokesman for the Greens.  The Greens complained that Justinian was treating them unfairly in his preference for the Blues.  Here is a little bit of the dialog, complete with unfortunate 6^th century anti-Semitism, that gives a taste of the partisanship that existed then:

GREENS:  Long live Emperor Justinian!  May he be ever victorious!  But, best of princes, we are suffering all kinds of injustice.  God knows we cannot stand it any longer…A single man persecutes us.  O Mother of God, protect us! 

HERALD:  If anyone is persecuting you, I do not know who it is.

GREENS:  Whoever it is will suffer the fate of Judas, and God will very soon punish him for his injustice!

HERALD:  You didn’t come here to see the show, but only to insult the officials…Shut up, you Jews, Manicheans, Samaritans!

GREENS:  You call us Jews and Samaritans, may the Mother of God protect us all equally!

GREENS:  If our remarks hurt you, we hope you will not be irritated.  He who is divine ought to bear everything patiently.  But, we shall call a spade a spade.  We no longer know where the palace is, or the government.  The only way we know the city now is when we pass through it on an ass’s back.  And that is unjust, thrice August.

HERALD:  Every freeman can appear publicly wherever he likes, without danger.

GREENS:  We know we are free, but we are not allowed to use our freedom.  And if any freeman is suspected of being a Green, he is always punished by public authority.

HERALD:  Jail-birds, don’t you fear for your souls?

GREENS:  You allow us to be assassinated, and in addition, you order us to be punished.  You are the source of life, and you kill whomsoever you choose…Would to heaven that your father had never been born.  He would not have begotten an assassin!

BLUES:  All the murderers in the Stadium belong to your party!

GREENS:  You do the killing, and you escape punishment!

BLUES:  You do the killing, and keep on talking!  All the assassins in the Stadium belong to your faction!

GREENS:  O Emperor Justinian!  They complain, and yet no one is killing them…May the Lord have mercy on us!  Truth is getting the worst of it.  If it is true that God governs the world, where do so many calamities come from?

HERALD:  God is a stranger to evil.

GREENS:  God is a stranger to evil!  Then why are we persecuted?

HERALD:  Blasphemers, enemies of God, will you not keep still?

GREENS:  If your Majesty orders us, we shall keep still, thrice August, but it will be against our will…Justice, thou dost not exist any longer.  We are going away; we’ll become Jews.  God knows it is better to be a pagan than a Blue.

BLUES:  Oh horrors!  We don’t want to see them any longer!  Such hatred frightens us! 

GREENS:  We hope the bones of the spectators will be thrown into the sewer some day.

As long as the anger and passion of the People could stay directed toward one or the other of the circus factions, the ruler could maintain some semblance of social order.  However, on a few rare occasions the Blues and the Greens set aside their differences a made a common front against perceived injustices perpetrated by the emperor.  In fact, that very thing happened this week in the year AD 532.  Burdened by the high taxes Justinian needed to finance his conquest of Italy and North Africa, both Blues and Greens erupted in violent revolt just before the races were to start in the Hippodrome.  Justinian barely escaped from the stadium with his life, a new emperor was proclaimed, and Justinian nearly fled the city.  Eventually, the revolt was put down and Justinian was restored to the throne, but thousands lay dead inside the Hippodrome, and much of the city of Constantinople burned to the ground.  (In fact, the city’s main cathedral was destroyed by fire.  A new one was built in its place, and that became known as the great Haggia Sophia, or Church of the Holy Wisdom, that still stands today.)

There was another instance when the Blues and Greens united, too.  In the early 7th century, both factions united in the city of Alexandria against the emperor’s repression of Christians who did not follow the Orthodox doctrines favored in Constantinople.  Blues and Greens took up arms and laid siege to a Romano-Byzantine fortress in the Nile delta, and actually assisted the Persian conquest that soon followed.

So sports fans, if you really want to support your team, you can follow the Roman example.  Maybe the crowds in Indiana will accuse Ravens fans of being Samaritans, Manicheans, and murderers!  Perhaps the Minneapolis fans will rise up in unison to demand that Jerry Jones stop persecuting them!  Who knows, maybe fans of every team will unite to bring down the hated reign of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell!

Let the games begin!