42
By 600 A.D., Byzantium was the mistress of a territory that
included the lands of modern Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Greece,
Yugoslavia and parts of Libya, Algeria and Spain.126 She was rich
beyond measure, and had signed a highly favorable peace treaty with
her biggest superpower rival--Persia.127
But things were not as cheerful as at first they seemed. The
Byzantines had a nasty habit: blaming everything in sight on each
other. And fighting--to the death--over every trivial detail on which
they disagreed. The most famous of these conflicts were the battles
between the Greens and the Blues--the conservatives and liberals of the
day. The two groups were followers of different teams in the sporting
matches at the local Hippodrome. But they were also rivals for the
soul of the city. One was led by aristocratic landowners, the other by
merchants and industrialists. One supported orthodox religion, the
other was drawn to unconventional spiritual notions.128
The greens and blues killed each other over petty issues like
which words truly belonged in a prayer. They had pitched battles in
the streets over economic policy, toppling statues and burning down
public buildings as they went. They murdered each other during riots
at sporting events. And they were not content with one or two
accidental homicides during a heated melee. On one occasion, the
greens hid stones and daggers in baskets of fruit, showed up at a
solemn festival, and massacred three thousand of their blue
opponents.129
Eventually the Greens and the Blues led a revolution in which
they indulged their love for murdering neighbors to the nth degree.
They killed the sons of the Emperor before his eyes, then slew him as
well. The revolutionary factions installed their own imperial
candidate, Phocas, on the throne. This reformer indulged in a political
bloodbath of devastating proportions.130 Determined to return the
state to "moral" and religious purity, he rubbed out anyone whose
views were the least bit unconventional.
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