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Speaker 1: Welcome to This Day in History Class from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot Com and from the desk of Stuff You

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Speaker 1: Missed in History Class. It's the show where we explore

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Speaker 1: the past one day at a time with a quick

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Speaker 1: look at what happened today in history. Hello, and welcome

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Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and it's January.

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Speaker 1: The Nika Riots, also called the Nika Insurrection, started on

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Speaker 1: this day in five thirty two. This riot started during

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Speaker 1: a chariot race, and of course chariot races were really

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Speaker 1: popular forms of entertainment in ancient Rome. They were very

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Speaker 1: high stakes and could be deadly. Crashes and other accidents

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Speaker 1: happened all of the time, and a lot of charioteers

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Speaker 1: started out enslaved. They were doing this really dangerous stunt,

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Speaker 1: almost to try to elevate their status and get out

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Speaker 1: of the position that they were in. Also part of

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Speaker 1: the world of chariot racing where teams with extremely devoted fans.

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Speaker 1: At first there had been four They were color coded,

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Speaker 1: the greens, the blues, the whites, and the reds. But

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Speaker 1: by the time Emperor Justinian came to power when five seven,

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Speaker 1: there were only two left in the Byzantine Empire, the

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Speaker 1: Greens and the Blues. The Hippodrome in the Byzantine capital

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Speaker 1: of Constantinople was home to intense chariot races, even though

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Speaker 1: by that point the sports popularity had really waned elsewhere,

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Speaker 1: and the rivalry and the tension between the Greens and

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Speaker 1: the Blues was just enormous. The violence and friction between

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Speaker 1: these two factions probably wasn't just about the chariots. Historians

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Speaker 1: have tried to figure out class and religious divisions among

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Speaker 1: the Greens and the Blues as well, although some of

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Speaker 1: that is still being figured out. Regardless, though, there was

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Speaker 1: just a lot of violence, including massacres, in this rivalry

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Speaker 1: between the Greens and the Blues. During the reign of

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Speaker 1: Emperor Justinian, things were really turbulent. His tax advisor kept

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Speaker 1: raising taxes to raise the money to support Justinian's ongoing wars.

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Speaker 1: He was trying to get back territory that he had

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Speaker 1: previously lost, and of course all these tax increases were

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Speaker 1: really unpopular. Also unpopular was his Empress Theodora. She was

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Speaker 1: from the working class and had been an actress. Often.

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Speaker 1: Her role as an actress is described as being more

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Speaker 1: like a court design although most of the information we

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Speaker 1: know about her is from people who hated her, so

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Speaker 1: we might want to take some of the things they

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Speaker 1: said with a grain of salt. In addition to the

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Speaker 1: fact that she was from the working class, she also

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Speaker 1: just refused to act like a proper empress. She was

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Speaker 1: supposed to be submissive to her husband, and instead she

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Speaker 1: took a really active role in the empire. And she

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Speaker 1: was also passionately for the Blues. This was because her

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Speaker 1: father had been a bear handler affiliated with the Greens.

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Speaker 1: After he died suddenly, her mother went to the Greens

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Speaker 1: for help and they ignored her. It was the Blues

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Speaker 1: who were finally able to find her new husband a job,

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Speaker 1: so Theodora understandably had a lifelong loyalty to the Blues,

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Speaker 1: and having an empress b for the Blues made the

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Speaker 1: Greens really angry. On January tenth, there had been a

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Speaker 1: fight between the Greens and the Blues, and after this fight,

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Speaker 1: seven men were arrested and sentenced to death. Justinian really

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Speaker 1: wanted to clamp down on this violence and make sure

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Speaker 1: there wasn't going to be ongoing rioting among the spectators

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Speaker 1: at this chariot races. But during the execution, the scaffold

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Speaker 1: broke just as the last two men were supposed to

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Speaker 1: be hanged. People in the crowd got these two men

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Speaker 1: away from the execution site and hid them in a church.

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Speaker 1: One of the men was a Green and the other

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Speaker 1: was a Blue. At the next race on January, the

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Speaker 1: crowd kept shouting for the Emperor to free the these

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Speaker 1: two men on the grounds that God had already spared

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Speaker 1: them by causing the scaffold to break. It was really

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Speaker 1: typical for people to shout out their demands to the

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Speaker 1: emperor during the chariot races. This was really part of

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Speaker 1: what they were for. But Justinian didn't want to back down.

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Speaker 1: So as the races went on, the crowd became more

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Speaker 1: and more vocal and got angrier and angrier, and the

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Speaker 1: Emperor just refused to budge. After the twenty second race

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Speaker 1: of the day out of four, the two factions that

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Speaker 1: the Blues and the Greens, gave up their division. They

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Speaker 1: started shouting together, long live the merciful Blues and Greens,

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Speaker 1: And then they started shouting Nika, Nika and Nika over

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Speaker 1: and over. That basically meant when when win or victory, victory, victory,

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Speaker 1: the crowd turned on the Emperor, and the Emperor and

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Speaker 1: Empress fled the hippodrome, and these two factions, now united together,

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Speaker 1: poured out of the Hippodrome and started just laying waste

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Speaker 1: to the city, setting buildings on fire, calling for a

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Speaker 1: new tax advisor and a new emperor. This went on

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Speaker 1: for five days. The Rioters named a new emperor and

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Speaker 1: put him on the Emperor's throne at the Hippodrome on

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Speaker 1: January nineteen. Just sitting in at this point, was prepared

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Speaker 1: to flee Constantinople entirely, but his wife, Theodora, shamed him

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Speaker 1: into staying, saying, purple is the noblest winding sheet. In

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Speaker 1: other words, if you die, at least you would die royalty.

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Speaker 1: There was not really any kind of law enforcement in Constantinople,

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Speaker 1: but at this point Justinian gathered members of the military

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Speaker 1: who had no allegiance to either the Green or the Blues,

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Speaker 1: sent them to the hippodrome where the Blues and the

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Speaker 1: Greens were gathered, trapped them in there, and massacred almost

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Speaker 1: thirty thousand people. The Emperor and Empress regained control of

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Speaker 1: the city and they started rebuilding some of the buildings

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Speaker 1: that are still landmarks today. We're built during this time,

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Speaker 1: but chariot racing really started to fall out of favor.

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Speaker 1: They thanks to Casey Pegram and Chandler Maze for their

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Speaker 1: audio work on this show. You can subscribe to This

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Speaker 1: Day in History Class on Apple podcast, Google podcast, the

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Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app, and where every else to get podcasts,

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Speaker 1: And you can tune in tomorrow for an infamous inauguration