was an easy and a decisive measure to revive the animosity of the factions; the blue were astonished at their own guilt and folly, that a trifling injury should provoke them to conspire with their implacable enemies against a gracious and liberable benefactor; they again proclaimed the majesty of Justinian, and the greens, with their upstart emperor, were left alone in the hippodrome. The sedition is suppressed The fidelity of the guards was doubtful; but the military force of Justinian consisted in three thousand veterans, who had been trained to valour and discipline in the Persian and Illyrian wars. Under the command of Belisarius and Mundus, they silently marched in two divisions from the palace, forced their obscure way through narrow passages, expiring flames, and falling edifices, and burst open at the same moment the two opposite gates of the hippodrome. In this narrow space, the disorderly and affrighted crowd was incapable of resisting on either side a firm and regular attack; the blues signalized the fury of their repentance; and it is computed that above thirty thousand persons were slain in the merciless and promiscuous carnage of the day. Hypatius was dragged from his throne, and conducted with his brother Pompey to the feet of the emperor; they implored his clemency; but their crime was manifest, their innocence uncertain, and Justinian had been too much terrified to forgive. The next morning the two nephews of Anastasius, with eighteen illustrious accomplices of patrician or consular rank, were privately executed by the soldiers; their bodies were thrown into the sea, their palaces razed, and their fortunes confiscated. The hippodrome itself was condemned during several years to a mournful silence; with the restoration of the games, the same disorders revived; and the blue and green factions continued to afflict the reign of Justinian, and to disturb the tranquillity of the Eastern empire.[1]
Agriculture and manufactures of the Eastern empire III. That empire, after Rome was barbarous, still embraced the nations whom she had conquered beyond the Hadriatic and as far as the frontiers of Ethiopia and Persia. Justinian reigned over sixty-four provinces and nine hundred and thirty five cities;[2] his dominions were blessed by nature with the advan-- ↑ Marcellinus says in general terms, innumeris populis in circo trucidatis. Procopius numbers 30,000 victims [so Marius of Aventicum (ad ann.) who was probably drawing from Consularia Italica]: and the 35,000 of Theophanes are swelled to 40,000 by the more recent Zonaras. Such is the usual progress of exaggeration. [This remark is blunted by the fact that John Lydus, a contemporary, gives a still higher number, 50,000. De Mag. p. 266.]
- ↑ Hierocles, a contemporary of Justinian, composed his Συνέκδημος (Itineraria, p. 631), or review of the eastern provinces and cities, before the year 535 (Wesseling in Præfat. and Not. ad p. 623, &c.). [Best edition by A. Burckhardt, 1893.]
