The Blues and Greens

People love sports, and people love their sports teams, and rivalries abound. 'Twas ever thus, and Ancient Rome was no exception.In Rome and the later Byzantine Empire, chariot races were extremely popular, so popular that the different teams, called demes (from a Greek word meaning "people" as in the words democracy and demography, but here used to mean "faction"), that were so persistently popular and polarizing that they became social and political forces and could be fiercely opposed to each other. The Blues included many of higher status, while the Greens were more of a working-class group.There were four factions: Blue, Green, White, and Red (these colors first mentioned by Pliny the Elder). The largest and most powerful were the Blues and Greens. These factions maintained their identities over centuries, starting with the time of Augustus in the 1st century BCE and lasting into the 8th century CE and beyond.It is the 6th century in the Eastern Roman Empire that we will concern…