There was only one man who could be entrusted with the African campaign, but Belisarius was busy fighting on the Persian frontier. In 531, he managed to fight a much larger Persian army to a standstill, and, with his customary good luck, this proved to be the decisive conflict of the war. A few days later, the demoralized Persian king unexpectedly died, leaving a young but shrewd son named Chosroes to take his place. The new king desperately needed peace to consolidate his power, and hastily agreed to an “Everlasting Peace,” leaving Justinian’s favorite general free.* Nothing, it seemed, could now stop the reconquest of North Africa.
But Belisarius had barely arrived in Constantinople when a very different sort of war erupted. While Justinian was dreaming of glory in Africa, tensions in the capital had built to a fever pitch. Upset by the rising taxes and increasing corruption, the population had reached its boiling point when the emperor severely restricted the privileges of the Blues and the Greens in order to cope with a rise in factional violence. Not only had Justinian allowed his surrogates to fleece the citizens with cruel taxes, but now he was interfering in their sports as well. Games celebrating the ides of January were held to defuse the situation, but when the spectators caught sight of Justinian taking his usual seat, things began to get ugly. The anonymity of the crowd gave someone the courage to taunt the emperor, shouting out that he wished Justinian’s father had never been born, and the stadium shook with the roar of approval. When Justinian furiously asked if they had gone mad to address him so, the mob exploded in a rage, bursting out of the Hippodrome intent on destruction.
Justinian beat a hasty retreat to the Great Palace, and, after a few hours of rioting, his imperial police managed to get control of the situation. Seven of the ringleaders were arrested and sentenced to death, but the large crowd that soon gathered seemed to unnerve the executioners, and they managed to botch the final two hangings. The first attempt was embarrassing enough, as the rope broke and both men were found to be still breathing, but when the hangmen tried again, the entire scaffold collapsed. Naturally, such excitement drew a larger crowd, and in the uproar that followed, several monks from the nearby monastery of Saint Conon managed to spirit the condemned men to safety.
The commander of the imperial guard was hesitant to pursue them, fearful that forcing his way into a sacred building would touch off a riot, so he elected to starve them out instead. If this plan was meant to ease tension, however, it backfired badly as a large mob quickly surrounded the soldiers and loudly demanded that the two men—one Blue and one Green—be pardoned immediately. The sight of heavily armed soldiers besieging a monastery seemed the very embodiment of tyranny to the populace, a bitter betrayal of everything they had been promised. Justinian’s coronation had hinted of imperial largesse, of bread and circuses and enlightened rule by a supporter of the Blues who was one of them and understood their passions. Now, however, they found their emperor as austere as any of his predecessors, and his heavy-handed threatening of unarmed monks revealed him as the worst sort of tyrant.
Justinian tried to defuse the situation by announcing new games, but when the Hippodrome opened for the races three days later, tempers were even worse. When the emperor arrived to take his place in the imperial loggia, the normal babble of the crowd swelled to a deafening roar. The traditional practice of the Blues and the Greens was to try to drown each other out by shouting “Níka!” (“Conquer!”), followed by the name of their favorite charioteer, but by the end of the races they were united against the emperor. Thirty thousand throats screamed the single word in unison, unleashing their pent-up rage at Justinian in a horrifying crescendo. For a moment, the emperor tried to brave the terrifying sound as the very ground beneath him seemed to tremble, but the palpable fury threatened to sweep him off his feet. He was but a single man, a lone figure against the rage of the crowd, and he prudently turned and fled into the recesses of the imperial palace, slamming the doors shut behind him.
The crowd spilled out into the streets, looking for ways to vent their frustration. Finding the palace impregnable, they stormed the city prisons, swelling their numbers with freed convicts. Justinian once again sent out the imperial police, but by now things were slipping completely out of control. Women flung roof tiles and pottery from upstairs windows onto the heads of guards, and the mob erected barricades in the streets. Hooligans set fire to shops, and before long the wind had spread it, burning a nearby hospital to the ground with all its patients inside. Order might have been restored if the powerful aristocratic families had rallied behind the throne, but they had always considered Justinian a pretentious upstart and in any case hated him for the policies of John the Cappadocian. As far as they were concerned, the emperor had sowed every bit of what he was about to reap. This was the perfect opportunity to replace him with one of their number.
Providing the rioters with weapons, the patricians joined the looters in the streets, watching as half the city went up in flames. The next day, the mob returned to the Hippodrome and demanded the immediate dismissal of the hated Tribonian and John the Cappadocian. A severely alarmed Justinian acceded to their demands on the spot, but the aristocracy was now in control, and they would accept nothing less than his abdication.
In the excitement of the moment, neither the patricians nor the mob were quite certain of exactly how to proceed. Half of them wanted to wait to see if Justinian gave up the crown, while the other half wanted to force his hand by storming the palace. Finally, a senator got up and urged immediate violent action. If the emperor was allowed to escape, he warned, he would sooner or later return at the head of an army. The only thing to do was to overwhelm and kill him before he could slip away. This advice carried the day, and the crowd began eagerly heaving against the walls of the imperial palace.
The noise was deafening, and, inside the palace, Justinian’s advisers were trying to make themselves heard over the terrifying din. They still had access to the harbor, and most were shouting for the panicked emperor to flee the city while there was still time. Justinian was just about to order the ships prepared when Theodora, who had held back while the men argued, rose and silenced them with perhaps the most eloquent speech in Byzantine history. “I do not care,” she said, “whether or not it is proper for a woman to give brave counsel to frightened men; but in moments of extreme danger, conscience is the only guide. Every man who is born into the light of day must sooner or later die; and how can an Emperor ever allow himself to become a fugitive? If you, my Lord, wish to save your skin, you will have no difficulty in doing so. We are rich, there is the sea, there too are our ships. But consider first whether, when you reach safety, you will not regret that you did not choose death in preference. As for me, I stand by the ancient saying: royalty makes the best shroud.”*
With those words ringing above the muted roar of the crowds outside, there could obviously be no thought of retreat, and Justinian and his advisers were infused with some much-needed spine. If his throne were to be saved, he clearly needed to go on the offensive, but the troops in the city had already proven untrustworthy. There were other options, however. A large group of Scandinavian mercenaries had recently arrived, and, as luck would have it, Belisarius, the greatest general in Byzantine history, just happened to be in the city awaiting his deployment to Africa.
Quickly taking command of the situation, Belisarius gathered his men and slipped out into the streets. Most of the rioters were still in the Hippodrome howling for Justinian’s death, unaware of the changing mood in the palace or of the danger of congregating in one place. An elderly eunuch named Narses, who was the commander of the imperial bodyguard, blocked the exits of the Hippodrome while Belisarius and his men burst in, catching the infuriated crowd completely by surprise.† At first, the mob hurled themselves at the heavily armed soldiers in a frenzy, but they stood no chance against the swords and armor of Belisarius’s men, and the angry shouts were soon replaced by the screams of dying men. When the killing finally stopped, the Hippodrome resembled a ghastly charnel house, with the bodies of thirty thousand citizens lying where they had fallen. The Nika revolt was over, and as looters carefully stripped the bodies of valuables, an eerie quiet descended on Constantinople, broken only by the occasional crash of a burning building.