5.
“What did you think when McLean fired Garner and Purpura?” Berkman seemed to lean forward, and for the first time Reuben could see the steely glint in his eyes.
“I don’t know, I guess I was kinda neutral.” There was a long silence. Berkman tried to control his obvious anger.
“Neutral,” he spat the word. “Neutral . . . you can’t be neutral. You can’t be neutral in the face of horror.
“Tell me what you know about ancient Constantinople.”
Reuben thought. “Well, at U of H I majored in groundskeeping, but I minored in Byzantine Studies. I also speak a little classical Greek, no Latin though, and none of the vernacular Romaic.”
“Good enough. You know about the blues and greens?”
Reuben searched his memory. “They were chariot teams, weren’t they? At the arena? I remember that at one point in Byzantine history chariot racing was the center of the culture, along with religion, but everyone was aligned with one of the two teams. There was a massacre of some kind, wasn’t there?”
“That’s right. It was 532 AD. The blues and greens raced at the Hippodrome, in the center of Constantinople. The races were the heart of secular culture. The races were also tied up with political life. Justinian the First supported the Blues, the Senate the Greens, and their supporters aligned themselves, like political parties. The Hippodrome was next to the palace, and the senators saw the races as a chance to overthrow the Emperor. There was always violence, like English soccer, but when the Senate’s planned riots broke out it was different, more violent, more organized.
“They besieged the palace. They burned the second Hagia Sophia. It was a strike at church and state. Constantinople was as much Greek as Roman, and the senators planned to overthrow Roman Imperium and Christianity and reinstitute Greek democracy and paganism.
“Teodora was Justinian’s empress— she had been a prostitute, and she was street smart. Historians say she was the one who sent the army into the streets. She lured the rioters into the Hippodrome for a race, then they were slaughtered by the army. Historians estimate there were 30,000 race fans murdered by the army.”
Reuben was getting impatient. “Yeah, I took Byzantine sports and culture, just like everyone else. But what’s a bunch of 6th Century riots got to do with Garner and Purpura?”
“You know about the Blues and the Greens, right.”
“Yeah, I just told you.”
“What you don’t know was that there were four teams.”
