The Nika Riot Author(s): J. B. Bury Source: The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 17 (1897), pp. 92-119 Published by: The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/623820 . Accessed: 31/07/2013 12:43 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Hellenic Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.248.155.225 on Wed, 31 Jul 2013 12:43:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 92 THE NIKA RIOT. THE NIKA RIOT. THE great popular insurrection which shook the throne of Justinian in the fifth year of his reign and laid in ashes the imperial quarter of Constan- tinople has been treated again and again by historians, but never in a com- pletely satisfactory way.' Its import has not been quite clearly grasped, owing to an imperfect apprehension of the meaning of the circus factions; the sources have not been systematically correlated; the chronology has not been finally fixed; and the topographical questions have caused much perplexity. It is not therefore superfluous to submit the material to a new investigation. I do not propose to enter upon the subject of the circus factions, as they have been well treated recently by the Russian scholar, Th. Uspenski;2 but shall confine myself to problems relating to the authorities, the chronology, and the topography. I.-AUTHORITIES. The accounts of several contemporaries,some of whom were eye-witnesses of the event, have come down to us directly; two or three other contemporary notices have been preserved in the works of later writers. ? 1. The Count Marcellinus was an Illyrian by birth, like Justinian him- self. He had been an official3 in the service of Justinian when that Emperor was a Master of Soldiers in the first year of Justin. He retired from public life and embraced the clerical profession, before his patron came to the throne. The first edition of his Chronicle reached the year A.D. 518, but he sub- sequently re-edited it, bringing it down to A.D. 534. His notice of the insurrection of A.D. 532 is brief,4 but highly important, not so much for the 1 Gibbon, Decline and Fall, c. xl. 618 sqq. Lebeau, ed St. Martin, vol. 8, 184-196. J. B. Bury, Later Roman Empire, i. p. 340 W. A. Schmidt, Der Aptfstand in Constan- sqq. tinopel unter Kaiser Justinian, 1854. 2 In the Vizantiski i. p. 1 sqq. 3 VremennikE, P. Kalligas, n pl S ordEa'Ts NIKca, in Cancellarius. Justinian was mag. equitum ,r 'roi, MEA'-ratical hyor (1882), p. 329 sqq. et peditum praesentalis, in A.D. 521. See C. J. Labarte, Le Palais impdrial de Constantinople, L. 5, 8120, 3. Cp. Monmmsen,Chron. Min., 2, etc., p. 13-15. p. 41. A. Paspates, The Great Palace of Constan- 4 Ed. Mommsen, Chron. Min., 2, p. 103. It tinople, (transl. W. Metcalfe), p. 59 sqq. is strange that M. Kalligas, whose study on L. von Ranke, Weltgeschichte, ii. 2, p. 23 the Nika revolt is fuller than any other (except sqq. Schmidt's), should have entirely ignored the T. Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders, iii. p. notice of Marcellinus. This content downloaded from 128.248.155.225 on Wed, 31 Jul 2013 12:43:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE NIKA RIOT. 93 details as for the colouring it gives to the event. The revolt is represented as a conspiracy organized by the nephews of Anastasius for their own personal ends, and not a hint is breathed of any other causes. This account is at variance with our other sources, in which the part played by Hypatius and his brothers is represented as merely an after-thought and quite unconnected with the origin of the tumult. When we remember the close personal connexion of Marcellinus with Justinian, we are justified in regarding the notice in his Chronicle as a quasi-official account. I do not mean to say that it was directly 'inspired'; I mean only that Marcellinus, in sympathy with the existing regime, gave utterance to that interpretation of the revolt which Justinian and the court wished or feigned to believe,-namely, that it was not a genuine expression of popular feeling, but merely due to the machinations of Hypatius and his friends. At the same time Marcellinus lets out a very significant fact. A large number of the higher classes took part in the insurrection.1 This confirms the statements of other sources.2 ? 2. The narrative of Procopius3 presents a marked contrast to that of Marcellinus; it is full and circumstantial, it sets forth the causes of the revolt, and, though nothing disrespectful is said, we are permitted to read between the lines that the writer's sympathy is not with Justinian, but with the nephews of Anastasius. It is abundantly clear that in the Public History Pro- copius adopted the plan of placing his own hostile criticisms on the government in the mouths of the actors who appear on the stage of his story. He might thus defy censorship. If he were called to account for enumerating the evils which Justinian's administration brought upon Italy,4 he had only to reply: 'But I was only recording the lies uttered by the barbarian Totila.' We are therefore justified in seeing a reflexion of the personal sympathies of Procopius in the last words of Hypatius: 'We are innocent. We could not resist the people. It was from no illwill to the Emperor that we entered the Hippodrome.' This is a blank denial of the view reflected in the notice of Marcellinus. The nephews of Anastasius are represented as innocent victims; the sentence of Justinian as unjust. And there is no doubt that it was the view of Procopius himself. I have said that the narrative of Procopius is circumstantial, but here it contrasts with the other circumstantial narrative which has been preserved, that of John Malalas. The historian leaves out no point essential for the com- of the prehension general course of the revolt and its political significance; but he omits a great many details where the Chronicler is circumstantial, and 1am nobilium 1 plerisque coniuratis. Mommsen, IlHermnes,6, p. 377, and in Theoph- 2 In the account of Procopius, we find the anes, p. 185, 1. 30 ed. de Boor). Cp. Panchenko, senator Origen among the rebels; and the 0 tainoi istorii Prokopiia, in Viz. Vrem., iii. property of the senators who supported Hypa- p. 302. tius is confiscated. 3 Malalas mentioned the Bell. Pers., i. c. 24 ; vol. 1, p. 119 sqq. ed. banishment of 'eighteen illustres and senators' Bonn. (omitted in the of abridgement the Baroccianus, * B. G., iii. 21, p. 340 ed. Comparetti. but preserved in the Escurial fragment ed. by This content downloaded from 128.248.155.225 on Wed, 31 Jul 2013 12:43:10 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 94 THE NIKA RIOT. on the other hand he is circumstantial where the Chronicler is meagre. Pro- copius summarizes the tumults and conflagrations of the first days of the rebellion, in a few lines; he omits altogether the scene in the Hippodrome on Jan. 13; and he begins his circumstantial story on the evening of Saturday, Jan. 17. The great interest in his relation is that he describes what happened in the palace. Malalas only knows what went on in the city and the Hippodrome, but the secretary of Belisarius knew the doings and the deliberations of the court, nor can there be much doubt that he was in the palace with Belisarius during the last days of the insurrection. We may, I think, safely contrast the story of Procopius with that of Malalas by saying that: Procopiusfollowed the revolt from the Palace, while in the account of Malalas the point of view is that of a spectatorin the town. ? 3. John the Lydian gives a brief account of the revolt in his treatise De Magistratibus (written after A.D. 551).1 He does not relate its course, but enumerates some of the buildings which were burned down, and states that nigh fifty thousand of the populace were killed. The main interest of his notice lies in the fact that he ascribes it mainly to the rapacity and malad- ministration of John of Cappadocia. This is significant, when we remember that the writer, although disappointed, was loyal to Justinian and had still hopes from the court which would have prevented him from saying anything offensive.2 We may infer that, after the disgrace of John of Cappadocia in A.D. 541, Justinian was willing to let fall on that minister's administration part of the blame which, when Marcellinus wrote in A.D. 534, was imputed entirely to Hypatius and his adherents. ? 4. The notice of Victor Tonnennensis, though very brief,3 supplies two points which we find in no other source. (a) Hypatius and Pompeius were slain at night.