    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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