Note 670 — Chapter XI · THE STATE (B) STATE AND HISTORY

Estate or Class was the basis, too, of the two great political associations in Byzantium, which are quite wrongly described as “Circus parties.” These Blues and Greens called themselves “Demoi” and had their regular leaders. The circus was simply like the Palais Royal of 1789, the scene of public manifestations, and behind them were the class-associations of the Senate. When in 520 Anastasius I gave effect to the Monophysite tendency, the Greens sang orthodox hymns all day there, and so forced the Emperor publicly to cry off. The Western counterpart to this is formed by the Parisian parties under the “three Henries” (1580), the Guelphs and Ghibellines of Savonarola’s Florence, and above all the insurgent faction in Rome under Pope Eugene IV. The suppression of the Nika Rebellion by Justinian in 532 was thus also the foundation of State-absolutism vis-à-vis the Estates.