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The Empress Theodora and Justinian Essay examples

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The Empress Theodora and Justinian

The birth of an eastern circus woman attracted no attention at all in mid-millennium year 500. No one could ever imagine that this baby would grow up to be one of the most remarkable women in history of the World. She was the daughter of the bear keeper, a public performer,wife of Justinian, Empress of the Byzantine Empire and a natural beauty whose name became the one name in the voluminous annals of the Byzantine empire known to almost everyone; Theodora. Once the former show girl settled down to respectable married life, she touched every branch of life in the Empire. She had her finger on everything including military campaigns, architectural developments, and government policy and law reforms. …show more content…

The teams also had aspects of political parties and street gangs where they grouped people by religion and social class. These groups shouted their political beliefs and demands during the races and they began to put pressure on Justinian. By this time, The Blues were smarting from what they considered the Emperor's callous abandonment. They created violent disturbances in both the capital and the other cities.

In the early days of January 532, the Greens started to complain about the actions of authorities and they put a demonstration on the Hippodrome saying the Blues were murderers. "You are the only murderers here" replied the Blues and the demonstration turned into a fight ending with the departure of the Greens in high dudgeon. The fights continued in the next days and the City Prefect's police and many Blues and Greens were arrested several were condemned to death. The crowd that gathered to watch the executions was really nervous and hard to control. The hangman bungled the job and these two men, one a Green and the other a Blue had whisked away still alive to sanctuary in a church. The Prefect sent soldiers to the church and he didn't let anyone to enter or to leave the building. To prevent their further arrest, the factions appealed to Justinian to pardon the two men on January 13. Justinian ignored them and the crowd started to hurl curses at him. Unexpectedly, the two opposite factions had agreed to cooperate in pressing their demands.

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