Justinian

by Ross Laidlaw

  ‘But how will we live unless we sell our produce?’ cried the woman, and began to weep. ‘If we can’t get it to market, our corn will just rot in the fields.’

  ‘Hush, my dear,’ soothed Basil, putting his arms around her. ‘Let it rot. We can harvest enough for ourselves to see us through the winter. Next year perhaps, the emperor will come to his senses and appoint another prefect. We can but hope.’

  Basil’s plight was shared by countless other coloni. Everywhere, farmers went bankrupt and flocked to the cities in search of employment, adding more hungry mouths to a near-starving urban population. For, with food production stalling, a state of famine threatened to develop in many areas. The farmers were not alone in their resentment. At the beginning of a bitterly cold January in Justinian’s sixth regnal year — the two hundred and third from the Founding of New Rome* — there converged upon the capital a host of angry citizens: members of the upper classes (senators and councillors making common cause with the great landowners); small farmers, representative of the great mass of the population; supporters of the Blues; Church leaders; intellectuals; those ruined by the tax-collectors, or denied justice because they lacked the cash to bribe Tribonian, Justinian’s brilliant but corrupt top jurist. Disparate they might be, but all groups were united by a single purpose — to make the emperor listen to their grievances (above all those to do with John of Cappadocia), when he opened the races in the Hippodrome on the Ides of January.**

  Meanwhile, delighted with the spate of revenue pouring into the Treasury (surely a sign of God’s approval), and blissfully unaware of the impending storm, Justinian was preoccupied with plans to replace his native village with a splendid new city — to be named Justiniana Prima. In doing this, he would be honouring his promise to fulfil his mother’s wish, to ‘make us proud of you’.

  * Senatus Populusque Romanus — the Senate and People of Rome.

  * In 529.

  * It was in fact completed in just under fourteen months: begun on 13 February 528, and published on 8 April 529 — a staggering achievement!

  ** Confucius.

  * 532. (See Notes.)

  ** Tuesday the 13th.

  ELEVEN

  Nika!*

  Cry of the mob rioting in Constantinople, 13 January 532

  The ninth day of January of that year, the two hundred and third from the Founding of New Rome, dawned cold and grey. A bitter wind from the Bosphorus gusted through Constantinople’s streets, causing beggars and the destitute huddled in doorways to wrap rags and blankets more tightly round their shivering frames. As the city stirred into life, angry restless crowds everywhere materialized, swirling about the squares and thoroughfares in sullen knots and eddies. Above the throngs placards bobbed: ‘Give us work’. . ‘Give us food’. . ‘Down with Tribonian’. . ‘Hang the Cappadocian’. As the morning wore on, the mood of the crowds grew steadily more tense and menacing. They began to search for a target on which they could vent their wrath. That target would soon, obligingly, present itself. .

  Eudaemon, the city prefect, was a worried man. A report had just reached him in his headquarters — the Praetorium — by messenger from the curator of Region V, informing him that the crowds, now grown noisy and unruly, were massing in the Forum of Constantine.

  ‘Too close to the Palace for comfort, Phocas,’ Eudaemon muttered to his second-in-command. ‘Time perhaps to show the flag.’

  ‘No “perhaps” about it, sir,’ the optio retorted. ‘We should have cracked down hard hours ago. Arrested the ringleaders. Dispersed the rest by force. Now, we’ll be lucky not to have a riot on our hands.’

  ‘You’re forgetting, Phocas,’ responded the prefect with asperity, ‘these people have good reason to be angry.’ He regarded his Number Two — a burly six-footer with a nose broken in suppressing some street brawl — disapprovingly. ‘They’re not your average troublemakers, like the Circus factions, say. Most are ordinary decent citizens — frightened and desperate, thanks largely to the policy of John of Cappadocia. What they need are reassurances, not threats.’

  ‘My heart bleeds, sir. Meanwhile, as we sit here discussing the rights and wrongs of the situation, things out there are getting out of hand. Permission to call the men to action stations?’

  Minutes later, Eudaemon and Phocas, at the head of several hundred vigiles, set out from the Praetorium near the Palace towards ‘the Forum’, as the Forum of Constantine was colloquially known. Each policeman, helmeted and carrying a riot shield, in addition to his nightstick, had been issued a baldric from which was suspended a military spatha. As the force entered the vast circular enclosure dominated by a tall column surmounted by a statue of the City’s Founder, via the easternmost of its two great gates, Eudaemon’s heart sank. The crowds had now morphed into that most dangerous of entities — a mob. Such an assembly was animated by a seemingly collective will, which could, in an instant, turn mindlessly ferocious, however rational its constituent parts might be.

  Orchestrated by prominent members of the Greens and Blues, the huge concourse, on spotting the vigiles, broke into a baying chorus of boos and jeers, chilling in its menacing hostility. Mounting the tribunal beneath the gate’s central arch, Eudaemon tried to reason with the mob, assuring them that if they went home quietly, their grievances would be addressed. His (largely inaudible) words seemed merely to inflame his audience, who responded with a barrage of catcalls and abuse.

  Then someone threw a stone, and things turned ugly. The air was suddenly filled with flying missiles, one of which struck the prefect (who, in order to appear less confontational, had removed his helmet) on the head. Blood pouring from his temple, the prefect staggered, but before he could collapse, was helped down from the platform by two of his men.

  ‘Enough of this,’ snarled Phocas, to no one in particular. Without waiting to consult his wounded superior, he turned to the helmeted ranks behind him and shouted, ‘Charge!’

  Now thirsting for revenge on behalf of their stricken leader, the vigiles advanced behind a wall of shields, and commenced laying into the densely packed mass of people with their batons. Beneath a steady rain of blows from the disciplined ranks of police, the crowds began to waver and fall back — until rallied by demagogues of the Blues and Greens, who urged them to fight back with stones and other improvised weapons. Soon, a pitched battle was raging, with individuals falling on both sides. Then, as the vigiles lost patience and exchanged their clubs for swords, the mob broke up in panic, leaving the Forum strewn with bloody corpses — but not before several of the ringleaders had been identified and rounded up.

  ‘Bring in the defendants and the witnesses!’ shouted the sergeant-at-arms. Accompanied by guards and ushers, the two respective parties filed into the basilica, the expressions on the faces of the accused variously defiant, terrified, or resigned. The witnesses (their role in this case doubling as accusers) took up their positions to the right of the judge. This was Tribonian, — hastily appointed as quaesitor to investigate the serious breach of public order that had occurred in the Forum of Constantine the previous day. The accused then lined up to Tribonian’s left. A State of Emergency having been proclaimed throughout the city following the riot in the Forum, the prefect, with the emperor’s authority, had decreed that this was to be a summary trial. Niceties like the offices of defensor (whose function was to weigh up evidence from both Defence and Prosecution) and adsessor (a legal expert to advise the defensor on finer points of law) would be dispensed with, and the court barred to the public. Other than the abovementioned, the only other persons in the courtroom were, seated on benches, a selection of the vigiles present at the scene of the disturbance, and Eudaemon the prefect, his head swathed in bandages.

  The first accused being called, the man shuffled forward nervously to face the judge.

  ‘Your name is Peter, a cobbler to trade, of Aphrodisias in Caria?’ enquired Tribonian, his expression benevolent, his tone polite, kindly even.

  The man nodded.

&n
bsp; ‘The charge against you is most serious, Peter: namely that, maliciously, feloniously, and seditiously, you did throw a stone or some such hard and weighty projectile at the Praefectus Urbis, causing it to strike him on the head, to his severe distress and hurt. How plead you to the charge?’

  ‘I wouldn’t do a thing like that, Your Most Notable!’ cried the man in desperation. ‘I’ve never hurt anyone in my life. I–I just got caught up in the crowd and happened to be there when the prefect got hit.’

  ‘It were him all right, Most Notable,’ affirmed the first witness — one of the dreaded crew of delatores or informers, whose evidence was much called upon in public order cases. ‘I recognize him from that birthmark on his cheek.’

  ‘Then, Peter, I must find you guilty as charged,’ pronounced Tribonian in a sad voice. ‘As your action seems, on the evidence, to have been contributory to causing a violent affray in which several innocent parties were killed or injured, there can only be one sentence: death by hanging. Remove the prisoner.’

  As Peter, white-faced and protesting, was bundled from the courtroom, an usher came up to the judge and whispered in his ear, ‘Next one’s a bigwig in the Blues, Spectabilis. Says the management’ll stump up five hundred solidi on his behalf.’

  The next accused was found not guilty, despite two witnesses — one of them a vigil, swearing they had seen and heard him urging on the mob. .

  The vast crowd assembled at Blachernae — a suburb of the capital just outside the great Wall of Theodosius where it sloped down towards the Golden Horn — fell silent as the last of those condemned following the riot in the Forum mounted the scaffold. Sweating and nervous, the hangman with trembling fingers tied the nooses round the necks of the ashen-faced damnati. He’d be glad when this particular job was over, the man thought fervently. Usually, the spectators were in a holiday mood at hangings. This time however, the crowd was hostile, roaring its sympathy and disapproval as each of the two previous batches was despatched. He modded to his assistant.

  The hangman’s helper pulled away the bolt securing the platform on which the condemned men stood. The trap swung down on its hinges; the three men dropped. One hung suspended, his neck broken by the jerk, but the other two fell to the ground, the nooses having come untied. As they lay wriggling on the ground, their hands tied behind their backs, the crowd roared once more, surging forward in a menacing wave as the executioners, now visibly frightened, made to resume their grim task. Shouts of ‘String them up!’ — directed at the hangmen not their victims, filled the air. At the same time, a party of monks from the nearby monastery of St Conon ran forward, seized the prostrate pair and, protected by a wildly cheering crowd, rushed them to the Church of St Lawrence in the vicinity, where they were granted sanctuary.

  The following day — Monday the twelfth of January — as the news spread that one of the men taken to St Lawrence was a Blue, the other a Green, the two Circus factions abandoned their traditional hostility, and joined forces to become the mouthpiece of the mob. Mass demonstrations organized by the Blues-cum-Greens assembled in front of the Praetorium, the Palace, and the Law Courts, shouting for the dismissal of the prefect, of Tribonian, and of John the Cappadocian, as well as for the pardon of the two in St Lawrence.

  ‘Best they get it out of their systems; by tomorrow they’ll have calmed down,’ Eudaemon said to his Number Two in the Praetorium, raising his voice in order to be heard above the baying of the mob outside. ‘With the opening of the races, they’ll be able to put their grievances directly to the emperor. Justinian’s basically decent and fair-minded. I’m sure he’ll listen to what they have to say, and try to put things right.’

  ‘Listen to yourself,’ sighed Phocas, shaking his head. ‘There are times, sir, when your faith in human nature is most touching. Unfortunately, things have got beyond the point where appeals to reason will — ’ He broke off, as the shutters over the windows started juddering as a barrage of missiles from outside thumped against them. ‘See what I mean, sir?’ he went on with a sardonic grin. He shrugged. ‘Still, I suppose I could be wrong. Let’s hope I am, for all our sakes. Pray for rain, sir. A solid downpour will disperse a crowd far better than a baton charge.’

  But the weather held. Tuesday, the thirteenth day of January — the Ides — dawned crisp and clear. From an early hour, the crowds, noticeably much larger than in previous years, poured into the Hippodrome, filling up the tiers in a close-packed mass, with standing-room only in the topmost row. And something else was different compared to previous occasions: instead of the usual background hum of excited chatter, silence, ominous and oppressive, hung over the scene. Justinian however, seated in the kathisma or royal box, alongside his spokesman, the Mandator, and the city prefect, seemed unaware of any tension in the atmosphere.

  ‘How’s the head?’ he enquired solicitously of Eudaemon, whose cranium was still swathed in bandages.

  ‘Still throbs a bit, Serenity, but improving by the day. My medicus assures me there’s no permanent damage.’ He went on in anxious tones, ‘Serenity — if I may presume to suggest, the sooner we get the races started the better. I don’t like the mood of the crowd.’

  ‘Really? The fact that they seem unusually quiet suggests to me they know they’ve gone too far, and are feeling chastened and contrite.’ He smiled at Eudaemon and patted his arm reassuringly. ‘I bow, however, to your judgement.’ Summoning one of the attendants on duty below the kathisma, he told the man, ‘Tell the editor* to hurry things along.’

  Shortly afterwards, the man returned with a message: the editor would forego the usual perquisite of staging a procession, and let the races start immediately. A trumpet sounded, and from the open end of the stadium’s vast U shot the competing chariots, extremely light affairs with wide tyres for extra grip, each drawn by four horses, the inner pair yoked to the pole, the outer held on traces. As the vehicles flashed around the Spina — the long central barrier — it became immediately obvious, from their continued silence, that for once, the crowd had not come here for entertainment, but to confront the emperor. At the end of the first race, the two Demarchs — the official spokesmen for the Greens and Blues — addressed Justinian.

  ‘Thrice August One, knowing that you are just and merciful, we beg you to pardon the two damnati who have sought sanctuary in the Church of St Lawrence.’ Their tone, though respectful, held a hint of steel, suggesting they would not be satisfied until they had an answer — one moreover that acceded to their request (or rather, their politely framed demand).

  While the Demarchs waited for a reply, Justinian whispered to Eudaemon, ‘Are the criminals securely held? We wouldn’t want a gang of vigilantes springing them from the church.’

  ‘Absolutely, Serenity,’ replied the prefect. ‘I’ve posted armed guards around St Lawrence. No one can get in or out. However, I do think it might be wise to do as the Demarchs ask. That would defuse the situation, and we’d still be seen to be acting from a position of strength.’

  ‘Certainly not,’ declared the emperor, sotto voce. ‘I’m surprised at you, Eudaemon. By letting the two men off, we’d appear weak, not strong. If we give in to pressure over this, the plebs will stage a riot every time they imagine they’ve a grievance.’ He turned to the Mandator. ‘Say nothing,’ he instructed.

  The racing continued, the Demarchs, with mounting insistence, repeating their demand at the end of every race, only to be ignored. The silence of the spectators gradually gave way to an ominous low buzz of anger and frustration. Even a spectacular crash (known as a naufragia or ‘shipwreck’) failed to move the crowd.

  Closely followed by a rival chariot, the leading vehicle, a Blue, had just rounded the end of the Spina for the seventh and last time, to hurtle down the final straight. But the pursuing Green, coming up on the inside, rapidly eroding the other’s lead drew level three hundred paces from the finish. Then the Blue, in a supremely daring move, swerved his chariot in beside the Green, hooked his right-hand wheel inside the other’s le
ft then suddenly swung his team out, wrenching the wheel clean off. The Green’s axle bit the ground, causing the whole equipage to somersault and smash against the Spina in a tangle of flailing hooves, splintering wood, and whipping traces. The wretched driver, unable in time to draw his knife and cut the traces (tied around his waist for extra leverage on the turns), died, mangled in the wreckage. Normally, such an event would have elicited a collective gasp of fascinated horror from the spectators. This time however, preoccupied by the duel between Demarchs and Mandator, they remained indifferent.

  The final race of the day, the twenty-second, ended without the emperor breaking his silence. The Demarchs, abandoning their appeals to spare the fugitives, suddenly began to shout, ‘Long live the humane Greens and Blues!’ — an unprecedented show of co-operation, clearly evidence of a pre-arranged plan. Again and again, the cry was repeated, the Hippodrome erupting into a deafening uproar as the crowd joined in. Suddenly, a new, and chilling, watchword rose above the din: ‘Nika! — Conquer.’ This was incitement to revolt; as if animated by a single mind, the crowd, chanting its new-found war cry, ‘Nika! Nika! Nika!’, began streaming from the Hippodrome, intent on forcing the authorities to answer its demands.

  Bewildered, Justinian turned to the prefect. ‘Eudaemon — what’s happening?’

  ‘Their patience has finally snapped, Serenity. I did try to warn you. No telling what they’ll do in the mood they’re in now. You must return at once to the Palace; meanwhile, I’ll go to the Praetorium and try to stall things. What shall I say to them?’

  Dismayed and alarmed by the course events were taking, Justinian hesitated. Then he remembered: had he not received assurance he was God’s Appointed? As his actions were determined by Jehovah’s Will, surely then he need not fear their consequences? With confidence flooding back, he answered Eudaemon’s query, ‘Why — tell them nothing, of course.’