From: "Andrew Bollen" 
Subject: Re: (urth) Blues vs Greens
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2002 22:54:13 +0800


----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Straight" 
> Wow.  How is it I've never heard of this?  What years would this be?

The team colors went back as early as anyone discover in Roman
(pre-Imperial) history. The factions became an important  factor (so to
speak) around the 5th century, and continued to be a problem for several
hundred years. The most notorious incident involving the factions was the
Nika Riot in Justinian's reign - a general pillaging of Constantinople, many
deaths. This is a link to a (probably) verbatim transcript of a dispute
between representatives of the Greens & Blues before Justinian in the circus
(or theater?), possibly at the commencement of the riots, tho others say it
should be dated earlier.

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/theophanes-chron1.html

IMO it's one of the most bizarre historical documents out there.

> You're thinking of "When I Was Ming the Merciless."  I believe that in the
> story there were four colors--Yellow, Blue, Green, and Red--and that the
> color divisions were an original part of the experiment.  "Ming" was, I
> think, part of the Yellow group.
>
> -Rostrum
>
Thanks!


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