TY - JOUR
AU - , de Oliveira, Julio Cesar Magalhães
AB - Abstract The objective of this article is to place the study of urban protest and violence in the period from about 300 to about 600 CE in a broader perspective and to subject the investigation of plebeian activism to the basic precepts of analysis of collective action developed by social scientists and historians studying other periods. Its main argument is that, contrary to wide held assumptions in the historiography, what characterized Late Antiquity was not simply the exacerbation of violence or its tighter control, but the crisis of aristocratic hegemony and the expansion of opportunities for popular intervention in city life. What has been perceived as the product fanaticism, irrationality and deprivation of the masses, of the manipulation of bishops and aristocrats or of the failure of the mechanisms of coercion was actually the result of a dramatic social change that, on the one hand, involved a new dynamic of power and, on the other, a shift in the way the people understood their role and power in local communities. At the beginning of the fifth century ce, St Augustine devoted a sermon to reprimanding members of his congregation for taking part in a lynching. The target was a rapacious imperial official who had been colluding in systematic extortion from merchants and craftsmen in the port of Hippo. He had been dragged from the Christian basilica where he had sought refuge, and lynched by rioters in the city streets. For those who had participated in the unrest, this was simply an act of popular justice, the capital punishment of a ‘bad man’. But for the bishop, who had himself been blamed by his own congregation for not having intervened sooner on behalf of the miscreant’s victims, the incident was the strongest proof of the ‘audacity’ (audacia) of an ‘undisciplined mob’.1 Reporting even more serious events in Antioch in 354, the pagan historian Ammianus Marcellinus also attributed the lynching of the governor and the burning down of the house of a leading notable to the ‘audacity of the most vile populace’, and he recalled the fears that this action had raised: ‘After his wretched death each man saw in the end of one person an image of his own peril and dreaded a fate like that which he had just witnessed’.2 From Constantine (306–37) to Justinian (527–65), urban elites continued to be haunted by what they perceived as the rebelliousness of crowds, even when it was civil or ecclesiastical leaders who had mobilized them. As Ammianus himself wrote concerning the clashes between the rival supporters of Damasus and Ursinus, the contenders for the Episcopal See of Rome in 366, once provoked, ‘it was only with difficulty that the long-continued frenzy of the people was afterwards quieted’.3 The active engagement of the populace of Mediterranean cities in urban politics and religious controversy from about 300 to 600 ce, and the perception of rebellion that it has engendered, are striking; but is the recurrence of these themes in our sources enough to characterize Late Antiquity as an ‘age of crowds’? And if so, in what sense? Historians of Late Antiquity have long been divided over the nature, reality and extent of these conflicts. On the one hand, proponents of the model of decline and fall have tended to associate the apparent increase in levels of collective violence with the end of the Roman empire, seeing it as a natural consequence of the disintegration of classical society or of the religious intolerance that arose with the coming of Christianity. Conversely, adherents of the model of continuity and change within a long Late Antiquity have tended to minimize the extent and impact of the violence, accentuating the social control and peaceful coexistence between ethnic and religious groups that pervaded the period.4 Within both models, the violence of crowds has been taken as little more than an index of the dysfunction of society. Not surprisingly, neither model has been concerned with understanding the reasons and motivations behind the popular unrest. Breaking with these polarities, recent studies have begun to pay far more attention to the strategic uses of the violence and to the meaning of collective action for its participants.5 In line with these developments, in this article I propose to transcend the somewhat misleading quantitative question that orientated much of the earlier historiography: Was there more or less violence in this period? Instead, I intend to place these urban conflicts within a broader perspective and to subject their investigation to the basic precepts of analysis of collective action that have been developed by social scientists and historians of other periods.6 In this way, I hope to restore the notion of agency to the urban lower classes in the political struggles of the age. My main argument runs as follows. What characterized the period from about 300 to 600 ce, particularly in Italy, North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean, was not simply the rise in violence or its tighter control, but the crisis of aristocratic hegemony and the expansion of opportunities for popular intervention in city life. What has been perceived as the product of fanaticism, irrationality and deprivation among the masses, of manipulation by the bishops and aristocrats, or of the failure of the mechanisms of coercion was actually the result of a profound social change that involved both a new dynamic of power and a shift in the way in which ordinary people understood their role and power in local communities. Firstly, however, let me clarify a few points. There are at least three ways in which to perceive the populace of an ancient city: demographically, institutionally and behaviourally. These three different groups are what Nicholas Purcell has labelled population, demos and crowd.7 The populations of the late Roman cities varied greatly across the Mediterranean, tending to shrink in the West but to expand in the East.8 Where substantial populations persisted, however, there is little doubt that the majority of city dwellers were engaged mainly in the urban economy of production, distribution and services (either as specialized craftsmen and traders or as unskilled wage-earners), rather than in the cultivation of surrounding fields or as employees of the great houses.9 At the very bottom of the social scale, cities such as Constantinople, Antioch and Alexandria also included large numbers of beggars and homeless people, who filled the porticoes of the churches and the colonnades of the city centre on winter nights.10 Some were wandering and starving incomers from the countryside, but others were seasonal labourers who spent part of the year unemployed, or even tradespeople who had suffered sudden misfortune.11 In institutional terms, the populus, plebs or demos was only a subset of this wider population. They were the core of local ‘citizens’ as distinct from the town council. At the beginning of our period, members of the demos still had some perquisites, and had an institutional role to play in the functioning of the public polity, although the prevalence of informal modes of popular participation tended to dissolve the civic body in a more indistinct urban community.12 The crowd, as a group able to act collectively, was a different phenomenon and one that had never been restricted to adult male citizens. Crowds, indeed, may be better seen as a changing coalition composed of diverse social categories ‘whose frontiers could vary according to the successive conjunctures that crystallized it’.13 Yet, as social historians studying other periods have shown, participants in crowds depend on existing community structures and goals for protest. That is why, in all periods, the poorest, most isolated sectors of the population can rarely mount collective action.14 Although our sources do not afford us a close-up view of what George Rudé called ‘the faces in the crowd’, I shall argue in this article that there is little reason to believe that the situation in Late Antiquity was significantly different.15 The source materials we have for the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries are very different from the judicial and police records studied by Rudé and other early modern ‘crowd historians’. Narrative histories, chronicles, imperial letters and legislation, proceedings of church councils, sermons and letters of bishops do not always offer much background information and are often restricted to particular cities.16 Nevertheless, they focus on public disorder and social conflict in a way in which earlier texts did not, sometimes even describing in detail the popular acclamations (the rhythmic chanting of slogans used to express wishes, opinions or beliefs) that accompanied them.17 Of course, such descriptions of urban violence were not ideologically neutral. Christian preachers and polemicists, for example, depicted the actions of crowds mobilized by their sectarian enemies in the most negative light while portraying their own crowds as the true ‘people of God’. Yet even so, the disapproving and normative documents of the Christian Church undoubtedly marked a striking change. This is because, as Lucy Grig has put it, ‘for almost the first time in the Mediterranean we can see the elite taking a sustained interest in the activities of the non-elite’.18 The same can be said of sources of other kinds. As Charlotte Roueché has pointed out, the increasing importance that chronicles and narrative histories seem to place upon civic violence and riots, particularly when circus partisans (of whom we shall say more below) were involved, do not mean that the riots themselves were a new phenomenon; however, they gained a new, political significance.19 What remains to be explained, and what lies at the heart of this article, is why popular traditions and forms of action gained this new significance and why they imposed themselves on the consciousness of ancient authors. I POLIS AND STASIS: THE CITY AND ITS CONFLICTS The debate on the nature of social conflicts and collective violence in late antique cities has for long been focused on one basic question, well expressed in the words of Wolfgang Liebeschuetz: Did the collapse of a view of the world that had united city communities for centuries and its replacement by another, embodying a different system of values, and one not centring on the city and its political community have a detrimental effect on the functioning of that community? In other words, did Christianization make cities less stable?20 My own question, however, is: Were classical cities really united by the widespread acceptance of a system of values, and were popular violence and conflict necessarily a sign of their dysfunction? The modern understanding that societies are stable, homogeneous and united by shared values derives, as Pedro Paulo Funari has noted, from a clearly conservative world view whose roots may be traced back to nineteenth-century nationalist movements.21 But the idea was also founded and justified on a partial reading of ancient authors, and especially on the Aristotelian definition of the polis as a koinonia, a partnership established for the common good.22 It is because they have mistaken such political ideals for the reality of ancient cities that many modern interpretations have understood conflict as the antithesis of the polis. On these accounts, the ideal of homonoia, the union of thought that should unite citizens in a good constitution, is seen as the natural state of the polis, and the stasis, the discord, division, as a sort of ‘political disease’.23 We must not forget, however, that Aristotle himself never restricted the causes of factional conflicts to the vices of his society, explicitly recognizing that ‘of all men those who excel in virtue would most justifiably stir up faction’.24 Rather, we should see his counsels to Greek cities to avoid internal conflicts as derived from a pragmatic realization of the ubiquity of stasis in his own time.25 Social conflicts and political struggles were, indeed, never absent from the life of the Greek polis or the Roman civitas, going back to their earliest beginnings.26 Nor did the integration of city-states into the wider structures of the Hellenistic kingdoms and, ultimately, of the Roman empire put an end to these antagonisms. It is true that, by the end of the Hellenistic period, Greek cities came to be dominated by a small group of wealthy and influential citizens. Roman rule further encouraged and expanded this tendency to the West, openly favouring local elites in exchange for their collaboration in tax collection, the maintenance of law and order, and the administration of the city and its territory. How this rise of civic notables and the consequent ‘aristocratization’ of local political life came about is controversial, but we do not need to assume that the process necessarily entailed the internalization of dependency and the passive acceptance in all classes of the dominant values.27 Scholars have often argued that an aristocratic ideology of paternalistic benevolence, expressed by the gift of shows, handouts or public buildings, helped the local elite to legitimize the inequalities of wealth and functions between the city councillors and the plebs or demos by distributing benefits that only the wealthy could provide to the community.28 Yet precisely because civic notables presented their activities as done for the common good, they were on occasion forced to perform them in the interest of the majority of the population.29 In times of dearth, crowds often demanded, under threat of riot, direct measures from the local elite to improve their situation.30 For example, in Prusa (Bithynia, now part of north-western Turkey), as a result of the rising price of grain in the late first century, the wealthy landowner and orator Dio Chrysostom and an unnamed neighbour were almost ‘stoned or burnt to death’, not only because they were suspected of having manipulated the grain market, but also because it was felt that they should have lent money to their fellow citizens to relieve their circumstances.31 On other occasions, even the offering of spectacles and games could be extorted by the crowd. To cite just one example, under Tiberius (14–37 ce) the townsfolk of Pollentia, in Liguria, as Suetonius tells us, ‘would not allow the body of a chief-centurion to be taken from the forum, until their violence had extorted money from his heirs for a gladiatorial show’.32 As we can see, a discourse of paternalistic benevolence did not prevent the expression of popular dissatisfaction and riot; rather, it became itself the very focus of struggle and antagonism.33 To be sure, the oligarchic dominance of the cities of the Roman empire relied ultimately on the backing of the emperor and the power of his army. But troops were not always available, and when soldiers were finally sent they might easily overreact or get out of hand, as often happened in the city of Rome itself.34 What is more, a civic notable who called for imperial intervention might undermine his own reputation and lose the respect of his fellow citizens. Civic notables were therefore prepared to tolerate a large amount of conflict in their cities, not least because they were themselves always engaged in fierce competition for prominence.35 All they could hope for was to confine social conflict and political struggle within strict limits. This was precisely what Plutarch recommended to his contemporaries in his Precepts of Statecraft: The statesman should soothe the ordinary citizens by granting them equality and the powerful by concessions in return, thus keeping them within the bounds of the local government and solving their difficulties as if they were diseases, making for them, as it were, a sort of secret political medicine.36 The rhetoric of the consensus omnium, the consensus of all, should be seen, in this context, as an aspiration, not a fact. It was through such techniques of rule that the civic elite tried to limit or co-opt dissonant voices or the more autonomous actions of the populace by means of a studied demonstration of paternalism and condescension that emphasized the supposed harmony between the parties in order to mask or defuse the conflict.37 But recourse to such techniques of rule, and indeed to what E. P. Thompson called a ‘theatrical style’ of authority, did not amount to the exclusion of conflict from city life.38 It only enabled civic notables to maintain their ‘cultural hegemony’ by avoiding more serious confrontations and by keeping disputes within defined limits, mainly within the sphere of local institutions.39 The novelty of the fourth century was not, therefore, the introduction of conflict into city life. The novelty was the increasing vulnerability of traditional leaders to new challengers, their growing difficulty in keeping conflicts ‘within the bounds of the local government’, and the multiplication of spaces and occasions for popular mobilization. The drastic assertion of state power during the reigns of Diocletian (284–305) and Constantine did not put an end to the relative autonomy of the cities. The cities, indeed, remained the basic cells of the empire and, up to a point, of the successor kingdoms.40 But the unprecedented centralization of power within a significantly enlarged imperial bureaucracy definitely changed the dynamics of power at the local level. Centralization, first of all, drew the attention of collective actors towards the heart of power, making the emperor or his representatives the main target of citizens’ claims. By authorizing the recording and transmission of popular acclamations to the court itself as a means of controlling their own servants, the emperors encouraged urban crowds to bypass local and provincial authorities, which, as Roueché has rightly observed, progressively subverted the traditional concept of life within the bounds of the city-state.41 Centralization also aggravated fractures that already existed among the upper classes as a result of the unequal distribution of taxes, charges and access to imperial dignities.42 The outcome, as Peter Brown has observed, was increased infighting among members of the urban elites, when different groups began to derive their status and power in the locality from differing sources.43 Within the city councils, an inner circle of city leaders became separated from the lesser councillors by their ability to monopolize the distribution of municipal duties.44 Former officials of senatorial rank who returned to their home towns as honorati, that is, as bearers of exemptions and privileges, also brought with them the power and influence acquired in the imperial service.45 The rise of Christian bishops as figures of authority added yet another group of protagonists with whom traditional aristocrats had to reckon.46 In the long run, as has often been argued in the historiography, these trends might have resulted in a decrease in the political and economic importance of the city councils and the rise of more informal elites of landed magnates, clerics and honorati.47 However, as Giovanni Cecconi has rightly put it, until the end of our period these new ruling groups never achieved unchallenged hegemony or completely replaced the traditional curial system.48 From the time of Constantine, the intervention of Christian emperors in church affairs and the outbreak of religious controversies, such as the Donatist schism in North Africa and the Trinitarian and Christological debates in the East, brought another focus of conflict to city life.49 As prelates’ claims to leadership were frequently challenged by these disputes, church leaders were repeatedly compelled to mobilize their congregations and to engage in action that projected their power into the public arena.50 With the mounting of the Christian challenge, members of senatorial or civic elites who wished to maintain a connection with the past were also forced to rely more than ever on their ability to draw large crowds in public meetings in order to legitimize their views.51 In the end, with the multiplication of diverse claims to authority, and with different groups and leaders becoming anxious to put their mark on the cities, their capacity to mobilize and assemble the largest possible number of people became increasingly a source of legitimacy.52 Yet, while the constant rifts within elites exposed their vulnerability to the populace, the frequent mobilization of crowds in factional disputes also allowed the common people new and exciting opportunities to assert their own claims. In this process, the traditional ‘licence of the crowd’ did not disappear, but it could no longer be contained within the strict limits of the past. II THE REASONS FOR UNRULINESS There were certainly good reasons for the late Roman urban lower classes to feel discontented. Although the levels of prosperity and production varied greatly across the empire, the bulk of urban populations, including artisans, shopkeepers, petty traders and casual labourers, continued to face the danger and insecurity characteristic of all ancient cities, with the need to make money for a living and the constant risks of indebtedness and impoverishment.53 This situation is likely to have been further aggravated in the period from Constantine to Justinian, not only by the hardening of currency in favour of gold coinage, which increased the social gap between the fortunate few who had access to gold and the rest of the population (especially the wage-earners), whose only means consisted of the debased bronze coinage, but also by the more aggressive strategies of aristocratic enrichment (either through government power or through major investments and speculation).54 The uncertainties generated by religious change and the passions aroused by partisanships of various kinds are other factors that help to explain the various forms of plebeian activism in our period. One should note, however, that economic distress, social or political oppression, and rivalries among communities and groups are seldom sufficient conditions for popular contention. On the contrary, as Leslie Dossey has pointed out, ‘What causes social tensions is often not the appearance of new grievances, but rather a new ability to articulate grievances in ways those in power find difficult to ignore’.55 As we shall see, the increasing ‘audacity’ and ‘indiscipline’ of the late Roman urban lower classes, which our sources so often critique, should not be primarily attributed to the appearance of new complaints. It was rather the development among various sectors of the urban populace of a new sense of their importance and indispensability that encouraged them to express their grievances and loyalties with increasing self-confidence at the very moment when the distances between dominant and dominated, powerful and weak, also seemed to increase. Let me clarify this point. Scholars have often argued that one of the consequences of the more aggressive strategies of aristocratic enrichment and the growing social inequality of the age would have been the submission of the bulk of the urban population to stricter control by aristocratic patrons.56 I would argue, rather, that the opposite might have been the case. The concentration of wealth into fewer hands seems to have led to patrons becoming even more distant figures in the lives of most workers, craftsmen and traders, with their dominance mainly financial. In Rome, for instance, patronage of collegia (professional associations) in the fourth century was almost entirely restricted to the grandest figures of the increasingly circumscribed Roman aristocracy, and especially to the urban prefects.57 The organization of the manufacturing process and the spatial and social environments in which artisanal and retail activities took place indicate, likewise, that most craftsmen and shopkeepers did not have to live and work under the direct control of their social superiors.58 The basic unit of urban production in Late Antiquity remained the small, independent workshop. Even the large-scale, export-orientated production centres were simply ‘nucleated workshops’.59 On the outskirts of towns and cities such as Meninx and Leptiminus, in North Africa, or Sagalassos and Dor, in the East, the multiplication of such individual units amounted to the formation of real artisanal quarters. After the fifth century, many of these workshops did not disappear, but only tended to be transferred to the city centre, often occupying abandoned public buildings. In major cities such as Carthage and Alexandria, small units for secondary production (including glassblowing, metalworking and textile workshops) often occupied rooms on the ground floor or in the annexes of multi-storey, multi-residential buildings.60 The scattering of shops and workshops through the residential quarters where artisans and shopkeepers lived can also be confirmed for the lesser Egyptian towns, such as Panopolis and Oxyrhynchos, through the records of properties preserved in the papyrological documentation.61 Finally, whole rows of cellular shops along the main avenues and in squares also continued to be built and repaired into the early fifth century in the West and well into the sixth in the East. In some cases, such as at Constantinople, Sagalassos, Scythopolis and Sardis, there was even an expansion in the number of shops in the monumental city centres, in part owing to the filling of previously empty spaces and the reoccupation of former public buildings.62 From the archaeological record alone, we cannot say if these shops and workshops were occupied by owners or tenants, nor if these artisans and shopkeepers were tied to aristocrats by bonds of patronage, even while their rents still lined the pockets of the elite. What we can say, however, is that in all these cases, artisans, small traders and the labourers they employed lived in close proximity, often sharing communal spaces and facilities, and sometimes even sharing the costs of production or co-operating to streamline complex manufacture. Augustine, for instance, once observed how workmen in the street of silversmiths in Carthage worked together to fabricate vessels in a very advanced division of labour, while John Chrysostom noted of Antioch that even artisans working in different trades within the same row of shops contributed to a common fund to pay their rents.63 Streets, shops and bars also favoured a popular culture of discussion that could never be entirely controlled by social superiors. Libanius, for instance, remarked that in Antioch the shops that served simultaneously as workshops (ergasteria) also functioned as centres of social gossip, while Chrysostom implored his congregation in the same city not to use church gatherings to discuss ‘anything of political matters, or the affairs of private families’ as if they were in ‘a barber’s, a perfumer’s or any other trader’s shop in the agora’.64 In his invectives against the vices of the populace of Rome, Ammianus similarly observed ‘the many circles gathered together in the fora, at the crossroads, in the streets and other meeting-places in which people were engaged with one another in quarrelsome strife’.65 As occasions for free speaking and irreverent chatter, such popular meetings were, indeed, a constant source of anxiety for political and religious authorities. Augustine, for instance, linked the bonds of friendship made in taverns by poor young men, recently arrived in the town, with ensuing collective violence; while Ammianus tells us that the Caesar Gallus himself once roamed the taverns and crossroads of Antioch in disguise in order to find out what people actually thought of him (a topos, certainly, but one that demonstrates well the apprehensions of the elite).66 All of this seems to suggest that neither the more powerful aristocrats nor the other urban leaders were able to exert complete direct control over the life of much of the urban population. But while some plebeians were able to maintain the resources that enabled them to engage in collective action, we also have plenty of evidence for wide sections of the urban populace actually growing in self-confidence as they became more essential to the administration of the cities, to the ceremonials of the empire or to the defence of their religious communities. As Jean-Michel Carrié has shown, one consequence of the Tetrarchic tax reform, which made collegia responsible for the allocation and levy of their own professional tax, was that membership in these craft associations ceased to be voluntary and selective and became compulsory and universal. This new situation does not mean that craft associations (except for the corpora contractually committed to the service of the annona, the official department responsible for supplying food to the imperial capitals) were subject to state control or to state orders for goods, as earlier theories of ‘late Roman state corporatism’ supposed. But it certainly implies that associations of artisans, shopkeepers and urban professionals were given quasi-official recognition.67 Several imperial constitutions preserved in the Theodosian Code show the importance that the central power came to attribute to the collegia, not only as a framework for levying professional tax, but also as an institution essential to local government.68 This also appears in one of the twelve laws of the emperor Majorian, known as the Novels, dating from 458, in which the professional associations are recognized as indispensable to the functioning of the cities, second only to the city council. Like the members of the curia, the collegiati were bound to the municipality to which they belonged; and, like them, they had a duty to carry out civic but subaltern tasks, such as the public services (operae) which they were required to perform on a rotating basis in the territory of their city.69 These multiple obligations have often been understood as a negative factor in the lives of urban artisans and petty traders. But the recognition of craft associations as essential to the administration of the city or to the levying of taxes for the empire also increased their leverage when dealing with the authorities. This was especially the case for some professionals who were particularly aware of their economic value.70 As Marco Di Branco has shown in his decisive reinterpretation of the famous inscription from Sardis, by the middle of the fifth century the position of strength among builders was such that even when the public authorities were constrained to intervene to suppress their illegal activities (such as abandoning work already begun and holding up progress on those works for which payment had already been made), it was only by means of ‘extraordinary’ measures that law and order could be somewhat restored.71 Our textual sources even seem to suggest that the greater the recognition of the importance of a professional group for the city or the imperial state, the more its members would have been disposed to engage in collective action. As Gregory of Nazianzus remarked, when his friend Basil faced opposition from a hostile governor, it was the artisan guilds of Caesarea, both men and women, that took up the defence of their bishop. Among them, however, it was ‘the men from the small-arms factory and from the imperial weaving-sheds’ who were at the forefront of the fight: For men at work in these trades are specially hot-tempered and daring, because of the liberty allowed them. Each man was armed with the tool he was using, or with whatever else came to hand at the moment. Torch in hand, amid showers of stones, with cudgels ready, all ran and shouted together in their united zeal.72 The same could be said of the so-called ‘circus factions’, distinguished by the colour of their chariot teams as the Blues and the Greens. Originally these factions were business organizations composed of the performers, and were responsible for chariot racing in Rome and later in Constantinople. But from the later part of the reign of Theodosius II (402–50) the imperial government encouraged them to organize all forms of entertainment in the imperial capitals and in many provincial cities. In the process, existing associations of young men and other organized groups already participating in the public games (such as the associations of Jews, goldsmiths and butchers) were enrolled as partisans in one of the two main factions. By forming single associations that contained both performers and members of the audience, the factions of the later empire became a different phenomenon. In each city, the members of these new associations numbered between one and two thousand. These militant supporters of the Blues and Greens inherited from the earlier claques of theatre fans an important official role in the orchestration of acclamations in honour of the emperor or his representatives. But their growing importance in imperial ceremonials, along with their greater prominence derived from their increased numbers and empire-wide organization, emboldened them to behave with far less restraint than any of their earlier counterparts, outside as well as inside entertainment venues.73 For example, Procopius wrote of the Blues of Tarsus in the 540s that, while others suffered in silence the abuses committed by a certain high imperial official, they, ‘being bold in the licence which the Emperor’s favour gave them, heaped many insults upon Malthanes in the public market-place’. Later, when they were repressed, the Blues of Constantinople, hearing the news, rose up in solidarity.74 Last but not least, we need to bear in mind the new channels and modes through which ordinary people found a voice in the Christian Church and consequently in an urban life in which religion had come to play an increasing role. The doctrinal debates, the increasingly disputed episcopal elections, and the schisms that sometimes arose from them enabled the participation not only of the more integrated sections of the urban populace, but also of casual labourers and the unemployed, and not only of working men, but also of women, as we have seen among the supporters of Bishop Basil of Caesarea.75 In a sense, it was the church leaders themselves who, for their own reasons, opened up this space for the crowd.76 From the beginning of the fourth century, church leaders had developed new, more engaging strategies to engineer public support. This included the expansion of popular preaching, the diffusion of pamphlets and popular songs, contact with the faithful in their homes and workplaces, and displays of strength through the mobilization of crowds. All these strategies opened up roles to the urban populace and enlisted their participation, making the people partners in these disputes.77 Scholars have often taken the ‘shouting and yelling crowds of partisans in the large cities, and occasional outbursts of mass arson, vandalism and lynchings’ that are so characteristic of the late empire ‘as signs that the masses were really excluded from choice of all sorts’.78 My point is rather the reverse: it was the growing integration of various sections of the urban populace into city life, as professional groups, sporting fans or religious militants, and not their social or political exclusion, that increased their collective capacity to resist control, and even to challenge those in power. III FORMS OF CONTENTION IN THE LATE ANTIQUE CITY Given these structural conditions, it is striking how often scholars have played down the historical agency of the common people in the contentious politics of the age. Explanations for the urban violence in Late Antiquity have traditionally ranged from theories of social collapse to an emphasis on elite manipulation.79 Scholars of other periods, however, have long demonstrated the inadequacy of analyses of collective action as the spasmodic consequence of strain or as exclusively the product of the rational choices of leaders.80 They reach this conclusion, firstly, because collective actors are not made up of isolated individuals occasionally affected by external inducements, but are largely composed of previously existing ‘networks deploying partially shared stories, cultures and collective connections with other actors’.81 Secondly, all actors participating in a claim-making process have their own reasons and motivations to do so. Finally, the very existence of collective challenges depends on repertoires of contention, which enable the collective expression of discontent; on cultural frameworks, which justify and give meaning to collective action; and on political opportunities and threats, which open windows for contentious politics. By paying attention to these three features of the dynamics of contention we have a better chance of seeing how the common people, even when mobilized from above, were able to channel collective power by perceiving opportunities to achieve their own specific goals. The repertoire of contention The concept of a ‘repertoire of contention’ was defined by Charles Tilly as ‘a limited set of routines that are learned, shared, and acted out through a relatively deliberate process of choice’.82 Like Bourdieu’s habitus, repertoires are ‘tool kits’ of habits, skills and styles from which people construct ‘strategies of action’.83 In the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries, the repertoire of contention widely available to ordinary people consisted of four main forms of expression: vocal or gestural expressions of approval or discontent, swift direct action aimed at individual targets, the physical and symbolic occupation of buildings and spaces, and street battles between rival groups. Vocal or gestural expressions of approval or discontent, like applause, hisses and threats, mockery and shouted insults, or the expression in unison of desire, opinion or belief, were characteristics of a culture of rhetoric in which crowds were accustomed to express their impressions and opinions to the public figure who spoke to them, be it the lawyer, the actor, the preacher or any public authority. The continuation of this culture well into the sixth century relied on the availability of buildings for public speaking and performance, such as theatres, hippodromes, marketplaces, porticoes and baths, but also churches.84 Although the maintenance of many of these buildings, such as entertainment venues, varied from region to region, where they survived, they remained at the centre of popular culture.85 Indeed, it was the fact that urban plebeians constantly attended events such as spectacles and games that enabled them to improvise quite complex phrases in unison based on a number of established formulas and rhythms.86 There is little doubt, however, that the role of rhythmic acclamations was amplified in our period. As we have seen, from Constantine onwards, emperors deliberately encouraged gatherings of provincials (provinciales, inhabitants of the provinces) to praise or blame governors by acclamation, and established methods of transmitting these opinions to the imperial court.87 Henceforth considered worthy of being written down and passed to the authorities for their attention, acclamations came to be valued as an expression of unanimity and divine inspiration, and, as a source of legitimacy, were increasingly required and orchestrated by anyone who wanted to lay claim to power.88 However, the same groups of specialists that aristocratic patrons could call upon to launch acclamations, such as the theatre claques in the fourth century and, later, the Blues and Greens, were also known for having promoted specific popular grievances.89 Thus, as Roueché has perceptively noted, as participants took upon themselves the role which had been devised for them by those in power … the authorities who accepted the validity of acclamations in confirming their own power, found themselves for a time forced to accept a far wider range of acclamations and public gatherings as significant.90 It is for this reason that popular protests using acclamatory formulas were given such a prominent place in our sources and that the greatest uprising of our period, the Nika Riot of 532, is named after the particular acclamation the rioters used to manifest their unity, Νικά (meaning ‘Victory!’, ‘Win!’ or ‘Conquer!’).91 The swift, evanescent direct action of the crowds was also heir to an older political culture. It included attempts to rescue prisoners and convicts whom the crowd believed to be innocent; attempts to torch the palaces of powerful people; hurling stones at repressive or unpopular figures of authority; the lynching of popularly denounced offenders; and the destruction of statues of public figures, emperors and deities.92 The choice of such forms of expression was often a deliberate way of minimizing the risks for individual participants, and sometimes of asserting the legitimacy of popular justice, a claim that is well expressed in a popular saying reported by Augustine in the aftermath of a lynching: ‘What the people has done, it has done: who will punish all the people?’93 The script underlying these performances was not in itself new. Lynchings and the destruction of statues, for instance, followed a long Roman tradition going back to the late Republic. As a ritual of dishonour, lynching had always involved the quartering of the victim at the hands of the crowd, dragging the corpse through the streets, and disposing of the remains in the sea or a river, or in the sewage system.94 The destruction of statues, as Peter Stewart has observed, followed a similar pattern, involving, even in the case of Christian iconoclasm, the same practices of dishonour as those of the official damnatio and of the ‘illegal’ destruction of images that had been common since the end of the Republic: from the toppling of the statue to its mutilation, dragging and disposal as refuse. In each case, what is expressed is the same desire for revenge, a reversal of roles and subversion of the position of honour in which an individual and his or her honorific images were held. Hence the festive, satirical and mocking character of all these violent rituals, whether crowds were sanctioned by the authorities or not.95 What changed in Late Antiquity was the political context within which individual targets of popular wrath, compassion or solidarity were defined. Take once again the example of lynching. The fact that the clear majority of targeted victims of collective executions reported in our sources were either representatives of the imperial state or leaders of religious factions is indicative of a new political context. On the one hand, the atmosphere of conflict created by religious disputes crystallized hatred in the person of the leaders. On the other, the measures devised by emperors to control their officials, like the rising number of laws authorizing capital punishment for cases of corruption and extortion by imperial representatives, emboldened ordinary citizens to take the law into their own hands.96 Just as in the case of acclamations, therefore, the greater prominence of some forms of direct action in our period was due to the fact that ordinary people took upon themselves the role that was devised for them by those in power. The symbolic or physical appropriation of buildings and spaces, and the street battles between circus factions and rival religious groups, may more accurately be seen as a novelty in Late Antiquity. Even in these cases, however, we are dealing with forms of action derived from customary practices, which only gained new meaning in the context of disputes. Processions, for instance, had been at the very heart of ancient urban life for centuries, supplementing those occasions when the urban populace assembled in one place, such as at chariot races or theatrical performances.97 But in a society divided along religious lines and where the very definition and character of the urban community became an object of disputes, traditional ritual processions easily turned into public displays of force.98 Processions also enabled rival religious groups either to affirm their control or to defy their exclusion from the public space, as we can see in the duelling processions between Nicene and anti-Nicene Christians in Constantinople at the beginning of the fifth century.99 Occasions for street fighting sometimes derived from such displays of force, when rivals tried to interrupt them or when participants responded to the forces of order by fighting back.100 Alternatively, they could result from attempts of rival groups to take control of Christian basilicas.101 Such skirmishes always involved the organization of groups around a single ‘us–them’ boundary, the reinforcement of solidarity within each performing group, and a competitive public display of strength.102 In this sense, physical contests between rival religious groups were not unlike the clashes between the militant fans of the Blues and Greens, who were regularly involved in brawls during or after the races. In both cases, the confrontation assumed an almost ritualistic character, following a strict codification of targets and moments of violence; in both cases, participants saw the opportunity to identify themselves as a group and to affirm their presence in public space in new ways, either as sporting fans or as religious militants.103 For many historians, such as Neil McLynn, the contentious performances I have outlined would only have been carried out by a handful of ‘professionals in violence’. Larger crowds of ordinary people would have featured most of the time only as a passive audience, except for the rare moments when the means of coercion of the controlling powers collapsed. Rita Lizzi, for her part, identifies these specialists as members of professional associations. But, in her view, they would have acted merely as agents for aristocratic patrons.104 It should be noted, however, that most of the forms of action described above did not depend on a high degree of organization but only on the existence of a common culture and of informal interpersonal ties fostered in the workplace and in the various moments of plebeian sociability. Even in the case of more organized forms of contention, such as the forcible occupation of a church, these actions were by no means restricted to ‘professionals in violence’. To carry out an assault on a basilica occupied by followers of his rival, a bishop like Damasus would certainly have had to rely on a combination of clergymen and circus workers, well armed and prepared to fight. But even the most hostile source for these events, the Ursinian account preserved in the Collectio Avellana, had to recognize the role of the ‘ignorant multitude’ among the partisans of Damasus in the assault on churches held by the followers of Ursinus.105 Finally, even when a client crowd or a venal claque is convincingly attested, we should not be too confident of the capacity of leaders to control and manipulate their subordinates. In Antioch, in 387, the simultaneous imposition of two taxes in gold, the aurum coronarium upon the members of the town council and the collatio lustralis upon artisans and traders, encouraged local notables to mobilize the hoi polloi, through the theatrical claque, to ask the imperial authorities for a reduction in these taxes. The participants in the crowd, however, who had their own reasons to act and remembered the scarcities of previous years, not only attacked the imperial statues but ended up turning against the councillors themselves and setting fire to at least one of the most prestigious houses in the city.106 It is thus not enough to distinguish between ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ forms of social conflict, as Peter Bell has recently proposed.107 In all cases, we still have to discover what inspired the participants to engage in a claim-making process. Shared meanings Broad engagement in collective action is only possible when people are able to establish a collective understanding of their situation. It is only when people collectively define their situation as unjust or immoral, and attribute the responsibility for this situation to others, or when they deliberately cultivate anger or hatred as a way of marking themselves off from their opponents, that contentious collective action can get under way. As Georges Lefebvre, E. P. Thompson, Natalie Zemon Davis and other historians have shown, ordinary people may deliberate spontaneously on their situation based on inherited understandings of, for example, the proper social, economic or religious practices in society, or shared stories, such as the past offences of their enemies.108 Political entrepreneurs also participate in this work of naming grievances and portraying antagonists, often aiming to orientate the action towards their own goals.109 But they only succeed if ordinary people agree with the reading of events they are trying to construct.110 This process of meaning-making involves what scholars of social movements, inspired by Ervin Goffman’s concept of ‘framing’, define as ‘cultural framing work’.111 Meaning-making, however, is a process that not only identifies grievances and translates them into claims, but also activates emotions and helps to construct identities.112 In Late Antiquity, we can identify at least three broad collective frames of action or ‘hot cognitions’ infused with mobilizing emotions: revolt against all those who have profited from the precariousness of plebeian life and violated the rights of the people; indignation against the injustice of repression and the arbitrariness of the coercive powers; and a defence of the beliefs and identity of the group and its symbols.113 A sense of outrage at the exploitation of the precariousness of plebeian life, and the consequent response around a framework of rights and reciprocal obligations in society, is one of the most frequently recurring understandings that created solidarity and animated collective action in our period. This can be seen not only in demonstrations and riots in favour of controlling debt or against the debasement of the coinage, for an assured supply or reduced prices of cooking oil, bread and wine, or against new taxes and requisitions of any kind, but also in vocal or physical attacks on unpopular figures accused of corruption, extortion or abuse of power.114 Conversely, the active support of the crowd for a civic or ecclesiastical leader often resulted from the perception that he could act on behalf of ‘the less well off’ among the citizenry or ‘the poor’.115 Take the example of the persistent food riots. As Paul Erdkamp has pointed out, in Late Antiquity, quite as much as in the early empire, rioters responded to what they perceived to be injustice, not to hunger. In the eyes of urban crowds, ‘it was objectionable for wealthy landowners to profit from a stressed market situation or, even worse, to cause dearth in the first place’. Like the English crowd in the eighteenth century, rioters in the Roman empire acted on the basis of moral judgements on the proper functioning of the market, which, to borrow the concept coined by E. P. Thompson, constituted a ‘moral economy’ of the poor.116 The fact that by the fourth century many local magnates ‘felt that they no longer needed to cut a figure by showing love for their own city’, but openly profited from their position of power to enrich themselves, only increased the popular sense of outrage.117 During the siege of Rome by the Gothic army of Alaric in 409–10, for example, the populace of Rome blamed the shortage and consequent rising prices of wheat and wine on ‘those who were responsible for putting goods for sale into the market’. With a touch of black humour, they chanted at the Circus Maximus that, since they would soon be driven to cannibalism, those who hoped to profit from the situation should also, as they chanted, ‘fix a price for human meat!’118 In Antioch, during the Kalends of January 384, a mockery parade of young men gathered in front of the house of a leading notable whom they held responsible for the food shortages of the previous year. Torches in hand, they called upon him ‘to disgorge all that he had unjustly consumed’.119 Of course, in each case, other interests could have been involved. Lizzi, for example, may be right in attributing a rumour to a political enemy of the elder Symmachus according to which the former urban prefect ‘would rather use his own wine for quenching lime-kilns than sell it at the price which the people hoped for’.120 But this is not to say that the riot that resulted in the burning down of Symmachus’ mansion could be reduced, as Lizzi proposed, to ‘nothing more than an index of the ability of the powerful to control the population’ through the chains of patronage. On the contrary, as Nicholas Purcell put it, if the story outraged the people and inspired their punitive action, it was because they shared an understanding that the prefect ‘was expecting to profit from the people’s dependency for building materials as well as for drink’.121 Whatever benefits the rivals of Symmachus derived from this riot, the crowd was appealing not to sectional interests but to essential rights. Indignation against the injustice of repression and the arbitrariness of coercive powers, our second framework for collective action, certainly did not imply any structured resistance to imperial absolutism, just as the French riots of 2005 or the similar events in London in 2011 were far from representing ‘the enlightened vanguard of a “postcolonial” sub-proletariat’.122 Yet, as these same disturbances remind us, anger against brutal treatment by the forces of order, and the sense of injustice aroused by repression, are powerful catalysts for the unleashing of collective violence. The Nika Riot of 532, for example, was provoked by the city prefect refusing to pardon two partisans, one from the Blues and the other from the Greens, who had been saved from hanging as the scaffold broke. The great riot of Antioch in 507 also started when the commander of the Vigils attempted to arrest some troublemakers from the Green faction who had sought refuge in a church outside the city and then murdered one of them inside the church itself. In both cases, the sending in of troops against the rioters only increased the size and severity of the protests, when a large section of the urban population took the side of the original activists.123 A particular feature of our period is the way in which Christians involved in doctrinal and sectarian disputes reframed such military interventions as ‘persecution’ and portrayed the coercive powers as ‘agents of the devil’, thus legitimizing and even sanctifying resistance to imperial authority.124 To cite just one example: in Alexandria, in 451, the officials and soldiers who tried to stop the rioting that followed the deposition of the patriarch Dioscorus were attacked with stones and burnt alive by the crowd after they sought refuge in the old temple of Serapis, undoubtedly because their actions were associated with that of their ‘pagan predecessors’.125 The deliberate cultivation of hatred or anger as a way of reinforcing the identity of a group and marking its members off from their opponents was an obvious component of the confrontations between partisans of the Blues and Greens during and after the races, but the same could be said of the Christian sectarian conflicts of the age. As Carlos Galvão-Sobrinho proposed in a study of the origins of the Arian controversy, the disposition of lay Christians to commit violence in the name of faith should be attributed less to the inability of their leaders to establish consensual doctrinal definitions than to the dynamics of identity and difference that were engendered by the dispute itself. Conflicts that set rival groups of Christians against one another derived ultimately from the demands for recognition that emerged when the Christian identity of one group was denied by another.126 Over time, this self-definition could be consolidated by constant evocation of a past of persecution and violence that had split the rival groups apart.127 It is within this context that we should understand, for instance, the symbolic importance of the seizure and occupation of church buildings in the disputes between Christian factions, which could never be reduced to the strategies and interests of leaders. At the outbreak of a religious controversy or in a time of sudden uncertainty provoked by a contested episcopal election, as in Rome in 358, 366, 418–19 and 501–2, control of the principal urban churches became a way of affirming the legitimacy of one’s position, not only for church leaders, but also for their followers, who claimed to be the true ‘Christian people’.128 When the boundaries between rival communities became more clearly defined, ordinary Christians could also be mobilized by fear of the profanation of their churches, or by the need to purify the basilicas occupied by their opponents. It is for this reason that followers of both Bishop Ambrose in Milan and Bishop Gaudentius in Thamugadi (Timgad, on the slopes of the Aurès mountains in Algeria) were willing to be killed if the forces of authority launched an assault on the churches where they had gathered, rather than surrender them to their hated enemies. It is also for this reason that both the Donatist dissidents in North Africa and the Nicene Christians in the East systematically accompanied the reoccupation of churches taken from their rivals by the ritual smashing of altars and other cleansing operations.129 Political opportunities and threats What these collective understandings reveal to us is the themes and emotions that most often inspired collective actions in this period. Yet, to understand the specific circumstances that triggered mobilization, we should also consider the political opportunities and constraints that offered the occasion for collective action. The concept of ‘political opportunities’ can be broadly defined, in the words of Sidney Tarrow, as those ‘consistent — but not necessarily formal or permanent — dimensions of the political environment or of change in that environment that provide incentives for collective action by affecting expectations for success or failure’. The perception and attribution of political opportunities may result from political realignments, from emerging splits within the elite, from the availability of potential allies, from the relaxation of restrictions on manifestation, but also from threats to the interests, values or the very survival of a group.130 Changes in the political environment can explain, for instance, why episodes of contention often occur in waves. Much of the violence that revolved around the seizure and occupation of Christian basilicas, for example, found their occasion at times of change in imperial religious policy. This could provide the moment when a banished bishop might return from exile and, with the support of the imperial army or of a crowd of partisans, try to repossess his church buildings, forcing the other side to mobilize resistance.131 The same could be said of the temporal distribution of the circus faction riots. Given the support that emperors normally offered for one of the colours, and the role that Blues and Greens played in the making of the emperor, it is not surprising to find that the more serious waves of riots involving the Blues and Greens coincided with periods of uncertainty about the position of the emperor.132 It was in these successive conjunctures that coalitions were formed and that opportunities were created for the elites themselves. The concept of ‘political opportunities’, however, should not be seen as primarily objective conditions, regardless of the perception of individuals. After all, as William Gamson and David Meyer have put it, ‘an opportunity not recognized is no opportunity at all’.133 In this sense, the concept should not be dissociated from the wider processes of communication and interpretation underlying mobilization, of which rumours, for instance, are an integral part. This brings us to the heart of the question of popular agency: of how ordinary people channelled collective power by perceiving opportunities to achieve their own specific goals. Two examples can be used to illustrate the points made above. The lynching of Theophilus, the governor of Syria, in Antioch in 354 is a good example of how splits within the elite, together with the emperor’s recommendations to the provincials to monitor the activities of his official representatives, provided opportunities for popular action. Antioch was then the residence of the Caesar Gallus. According to Ammianus, at the first signs of a food crisis Gallus ordered the imprisonment and execution of leading members of the city council, who had openly opposed his determination to force a general lowering of prices. They were spared, however, by the intervention of the governor of the diocese of Oriens, Honoratus. Later, while Gallus was preparing to leave for Hierapolis to take part in an expedition against the Persians, the populace of Antioch appealed to him to save them from imminent famine. However, Gallus did not bring in supplies from the surrounding provinces. Instead, To the multitude, which was in fear of the direst necessity, he delivered up Theophilus, consular governor of Syria, who was standing nearby, constantly repeating the statement that no one could lack food if the governor did not wish it. These words increased the audacity of the most vile populace, and when the lack of provisions became more acute, driven by hunger and rage, they set fire to the pretentious house of a certain Eubulus, a man of distinction among his own people; then, as if the governor had been delivered into their hands by an imperial edict, they assailed him with kicks and blows, and trampling him under foot when he was half-dead, with awful mutilation tore him to pieces.134 As a strong supporter of the landowning councillors, Ammianus could not approve of Gallus’ methods, and he had nothing but contempt for the crowd. His account therefore deliberately plays down the responsibility of the landowners in manipulating food prices. It is true that the presence of the army in the region might have aggravated the crisis, but the attitude of Gallus was not, as Ammianus suggests, the idiosyncrasy of a cynical tyrant. On the contrary, by dissociating himself from his governor, Gallus was simply following the policy adopted by all emperors since Constantine, who had invited the provincials to forward complaints about their governors, or at least to keep them under observation.135 Nor was the upper class in Antioch solidly united behind Theophilus. A later passage from Ammianus shows that, following the fall of Gallus, Constantius ordered an inquiry into Theophilus’ death; whereupon some ‘rich men’ (diuites) escaped the consequences of their involvement, while certain poor men were executed.136 What role these diuites had played is not clear, but the lack of unanimous support for Theophilus among the elite certainly contributed to the ‘audacity of the most vile populace’, quite as much as Gallus’ words. If this interpretation is correct, they had helped to awaken a force they could not control, which, as Ammianus observed, would linger in the consciousness of every leader in Antioch as ‘the image of his own peril’.137 Many years later, Libanius still remembered in his autobiography how, on this day, his cousin had come ‘puffing and panting up the stairs’, reporting ‘that the governor was murdered, [and] his body was being dragged along as sport for the murderers’.138 In another discourse, he recalled that Theophilus had been attacked by five young metalworkers at the hippodrome, during a horse race.139 If these workers were, as they may have been, employees of state arms factories, one might think with John Matthews that they had combined ‘the interests of imperial establishment and populace against the alliance of consularis and the leading member of the city council whose mansion was burned down’.140 Yet if all the members of the crowd felt it was legitimate to kill the governor, drag his body through the streets and attack the ‘pretentious house’ of Eubulus, it was not only because Gallus had virtually handed Theophilus over to them; it was also because they perceived the governor’s apparent inaction, when the shortages reached their peak, as arising out of complicity with the leading councillors who had been accused of hoarding grain. In the end, the imperial incentives and the splits between the power-holders of Antioch might have encouraged urban plebeians to choose more confrontational methods to redress their grievances, but it was the outrage to their ‘moral economy’ that animated and unified their action. The wave of destruction of pagan statues by Christians that followed the imperial campaign to close the temples at the end of the fourth century is another example of how ordinary people came to conceive of their role in local communities and perceive opportunities to pursue their own goals, even when they were not strictly authorized.141 Two sermons preached by Augustine in Carthage show the dangers of this situation for the church leaders themselves.142 In June 401, in the city, a statue of Hercules that had recently been restored by the municipal authorities had its golden beard ‘shaved’ by (or at least under pressure from) a Christian mob. Then, on Sunday 16 June, when a council of African bishops were assembled in Carthage, the Christian plebs occupied their church, not only to protest against the pagans and their idols, but also to demand the active engagement of the bishops in their struggle against idolatry. Among other slogans, they chanted: ‘As in Rome, so in Carthage!’143 This suggests that news of a supposed tightening of anti-pagan measures in Rome was encouraging ordinary Christians in Carthage to demand similar stricter implementation of the laws in Africa. Augustine’s chief concern now was to prevent the congregation of his colleague Aurelius from taking more violent action against the (pagan) municipal authorities, who had petitioned the new governor for the statue to be restored. To calm them down, he tried to persuade his listeners that the pagans and their gods had already been sufficiently humiliated: ‘Brothers, I think it was more shameful for Hercules to have his beard shaved off than to have his head cut off. So what was set up by their fault, was removed for their dishonour’.144 The following week, a prominent pagan, the banker Faustinus, converted to Christianity: he had heard that Christians were chanting in church that they no longer wanted to be dominated by pagans. He was running for the office of curator rei publicae (‘mayor’ of the city) or for that of exactor (a fiscal official); both posts were appointed by the governor but could be vetted by a form of popular acclamation. Urban plebeians had good reason to resent the many extortions and abuses of power by the rich in positions of authority; hence their definition of the holding of office as a kind of dominatio, a power exercised through physical coercion.145 However, Augustine was again invited by Aurelius to placate the many ordinary Christians who refused to accept the apparently sham conversion: You know the cry that was raised here, you know it: ‘Pagans should not be our superiors! Pagans should not dominate over Christians!’ This is what was said, and because the name of this man [Faustinus] was hated, he was blamed for many things by the Christians because of the zeal of the house of God, though the only objective was that a pagan did not dominate the Christians. But, that the one whom all the shouting was about was going to become a Christian, no one could have imagined: and yet, Christ had determined it.146 These two sermons from Augustine show how quickly ordinary Christians ‘came to sense the power of acclamation in the city at large’.147 They knew well that demands chanted in Christian basilicas had a right to be transmitted to the emperor. They believed, therefore, that they could intervene directly as pressure groups in local politics to influence the decisions of the governor. But these events also show that, in the new conditions of the period, not only could ordinary people act independently of their (church) leaders: they could now openly challenge even the supposed natural right of local notables to their positions of power. IV CONCLUSION The unprecedented centralization of imperial power at the beginning of the fourth century triggered a process that gave ever greater prominence to the actions and acclamations of crowds in the political life of the cities. While the emperors encouraged provincials to monitor the activities of imperial officials and bypass local seats of authority, the emerging splits within the elites also offered new opportunities for popular participation. The growing integration into city life of various sectors of the urban populace as either professional groups, sporting fans or religious militants further increased their leverage in their relations with those in power. All this encouraged the urban lower classes to take upon themselves the roles that had been devised for them by their superiors. Ultimately, this is what explains the anxieties of urban elites so often echoed in our sources. The urban violence that characterized the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries was not, therefore, a symptom of urban decline. As Michael Whitby has pointed out, cities such as Rome, Constantinople, Antioch and Alexandria, which our sources still mention as troubled by revolts up to the end of the sixth century, were precisely those centres that continued to maintain both a public openness and the ability to recover and attract populations, even after numerous disasters. In fact, as Anthony Kaldellis has shown, urban rebellions would remain a feature of the mega-city of Constantinople up to 1200.148 But neither was this violence a mere index of the ability of the powerful to control the populace. From the fourth to the sixth centuries, the majority of urban populations of the central and eastern Mediterranean maintained a culture of discussion and horizontal ties of sociability that eventually enabled them to articulate collective action. What changed in those centuries was the increasing powerlessness of imperial, civic and ecclesiastical authorities to ignore popular grievances or to keep them within the bounds of the past. The fact that in Rome, in 509, two aristocrats who sponsored the Greens had to resort to the use of armed bands of slaves to break the audacity of the plebeians, who refused to accept the individual their patrons had tried to impose as the faction’s chief pantomime (actor), shows how far the old forms of discipline had already been bypassed.149 The extent of the confrontations during the Nika Riot of 532 through much of Constantinople over an entire week, and the brutal repression of the uprising in a bloodbath in which more than thirty thousand people perished, is only the most spectacular indicator of this change.150 It may seem comforting to imagine the monuments of ancient cities as an expression of a community of thought and values, and to lament the passing of this ideal world.151 But this is to ignore the plurality of forms and conceptions of living in the public space, as well as the resources that towns and cities offered, not only for the reassertion of domination, but also for the organization of protests. If ancient elites often ignored and despised the activities of other townspeople, we must not share their error. Referring to the recent uprisings of the so-called Arab Spring, Pascal Menoret has observed the consequences of this blindness in our own time. The unprecedented wave of anti-government protests and uprisings that began in Tunisia in December 2010 and spread across much of the Arab world in 2011 came as a surprise to local dictators and foreign observers only because, having long been obsessed by al-Qaida, no one even dreamed of following closely what the new generation was doing. From the sidewalks of Tunis to the squares of Cairo and the roundabouts and avenues of the Gulf, young people have transformed the Arab cities into protest machines. In doing so, they remind us of an important truth: that the most effective social network, the one that most favours exchanges, communication and revolt, is not Facebook. It is the city.152 The Arab Spring also offers other parallels with the situation I have described for Late Antiquity. There too, as Sarah Chayes has argued, what pushed people to protest was not the irrationality of ‘the Arab street’, but a sense of acute injustice: ‘the visible, daily contrast between ordinary people’s privations and the ostentatious display of lavish wealth corruptly siphoned off by ruling cliques from what was broadly understood to be public resources’. And, as Lisa Wedeen has rightly observed, if the popular uprisings ultimately opened up opportunities for the elites or ended in the shocking atrocities of a civil war, we should not allow these outcomes ‘to blind us to those initial heady days of revolt, to the youthful hopes that powered them, the important refutations of tyranny, and the revelatory pleasures of self-discovery that produced a world-affirming, albeit short-lived, sense of the political’.153 Crowds are, indeed, much more than symptoms of grand phenomena or mere pawns in the power games of the elites, and the hopes, motivations and actions of protesters should be understood in their own terms, in the study of Late Antiquity as in our own time. APPENDIX FORMS OF COLLECTIVE ACTION (c.300–c.600 ce): A CATALOGUE Year . City . Action or target . Sources . I. rescues 374 Antioch Imperial official sentenced for conspiracy saved by the crowd John Chrysostom, De incomprehensibili Dei natura, iii. 7 (PG 48, 726) 491 Antioch Bath attendant arrested for throwing stones rescued by the Greens Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De insidiis, 35 (ed. de Boor, 166–7 = Malalas, xv. 15; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 218 subtext) 563 Constantinople Crowd break into prison and fight with the guards Theophanes, Chronographia, a.m. 6055 (ed. de Boor, 239 = Malalas, xviii. 146; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 304) Constantinople Blues rescue a Green Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De insidiis, 50 (ed. de Boor, 175 = Malalas, xviii. 150; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 305) 565 Constantinople Inhabitants of the quarter of Mazentiolos riot to prevent arrest Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De insidiis, 51 (ed. de Boor, 175–6 = Malalas, xviii. 151; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 305) 578 Constantinople Crowd break into prison and release Christian prisoners John of Ephesus, HEiii. 31 (ed. Brooks, CSCO 105, 159–60 (Syriac text); 106, 118–19 (Latin trans.)) II. arson Rome Frequent incendiary actions Ambrose, Epistulae, 40. 13 (PL 16, 1105–6) 354 Antioch House of a leading notable set on fire by the crowd Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xiv. 7. 6 (ed. Rolfe, i, 54) 365 Rome Attempts to set fire to house of urban prefect Lampadius Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xxvii. 3. 8–10 (ed. Rolfe, iii, 16–18) 375 Rome House of Symmachus, former urban prefect, set on fire Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xxvii. 3. 4 (ed. Rolfe, iii, 14) 387 Antioch House of ‘one of the prominent men’ set on fire by the crowd Libanius, Orationes, xix. 32–6; xxii. 9 (ed. Foerster, ii, 400–2, 475–6) 388 Constantinople Arian insurgents set fire to the house of Nectarius, the Nicene bishop Socrates, HEv. 13. 6 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 505, 188–90); Sozomen, HEvii. 14. 5 (ed. Festugière, SC 516, 130) 408 Calama Christian church set on fire by a crowd Augustine, Epistulae, 91. 8 (ed. Goldbacher, CSEL 34/2, 433) 409 Constantinople Praetorium of Monaxios, city prefect, destroyed by fire by the crowd Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, a. 409, vii (ed. Mommsen, Chron. min. ii, 70); Chronicon Paschale, a. 412 (ed. Dindorf, CSHB 11, 571) 491 Antioch Greens set fire to a Jewish synagogue Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De insidiis, 35 (ed. de Boor, 166–7 = Malalas, xv. 15; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 218 subtext) 507 Daphne Antiochenes under leadership of a Green charioteer set fire to a Jewish synagogue Malalas, xvi. 6 (ed. Dindorf, 396; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 222–3) Antioch So-called basilicas of Rufinus and Zenodotus burnt down by Green partisans (‘all these were destroyed by the fire and collapsed’) Malalas, xvi. 6 (ed. Dindorf, 397; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 223) 512 Constantinople House of former urban prefect Marinus set on fire and plundered by the crowd Malalas, xvi. 19 (ed. Dindorf, 407; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 228); Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, a. 512, v. 6 (ed. Mommsen, Chron. min. ii, 98) 532 Constantinople Crowd set fire to city prefect’s praetorium during the Nika Riot; as a consequence of this fire, the Chalke Gate of the palace, the Great Church and the public colonnade were destroyed Malalas, xviii. 71 (ed. Dindorf, 474; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 276) 561 Constantinople Many fires, including houses of Andreas and urban prefect Barsymias Malalas, xviii. 135 (ed. Dindorf, 491; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 300) 578 Constantinople Attempts to set fire to the house of the urban prefect John of Ephesus, HEiii. 31 (ed. Brooks, CSCO 105, 159–60 (Syriac text); 106, 118–19 (Latin trans.)) 602 Constantinople House of Constantine Lardys, a tax official, burnt down by the crowd Theophylact Simocatta, Historiae, viii. 9. 5 (ed. de Boor, 300) III. stone-throwing 419 Rome Urban prefect Symmachus and the vicar attacked with stones and expelled from the Forum while attempting to contain a fight between rival crowds Collectio Avellana, 29. 4–5 (ed. Günther, CSEL 35, 75) 431 Constantinople Crowd throw stones at the emperor Theodosius because of shortage of bread Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, a. 431, xiv. 3 (ed. Mommsen, Chron. min. ii, 78) 451 Alexandria Soldiers and officials attempting to contain a riot attacked with stones and burnt alive by the crowd Evagrius, HEii. 5 (ed. Festugière, Grillet and Sabbah, SC 542, 256–8) 522–5 Several eastern cities Blue partisans arrested for throwing stones at imperial officials Malalas, xvi. 12 (ed. Dindorf, 416; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 235–6) 530 Antioch Crowd burst into the bishop’s residence throwing stones Malalas, xviii. 64 (ed. Dindorf, 468; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 273) 563 Constantinople City prefect Andreas attacked with stones by Green partisans Theophanes, Chronographia, a.m. 6055 (ed. de Boor, 239 = Malalas, xviii. 146; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 304) 601 Constantinople Crowd throw stones at the emperor Maurice because of shortage of bread Theophylact Simocatta, Historiae, viii. 4. 12 (ed. de Boor, 291) IV. destructionofstatues 387 Antioch Riot of Statues: statues of the emperor and empress stoned, toppled and dragged through the streets John Chrysostom, Homiliae XXI de Statuis (PG 49, 15–222); Libanius, Orationes, xix–xxiii (ed. Foerster, ii, 385–507); Sozomen, HEvii. 23 (ed. Festugière, SC 516, 188–92); Theodoret, HEv. 20. 1 (ed. Canivet, SC 530, 416–18) 391 Alexandria Portion of Serapis’ great statue dragged through the streets and burnt on the theatre by a Christian crowd Theodoret, HEv. 23. 5–6 (ed. Canivet, SC 530, 434–6); Rufinus, HEix. 23 (ed. Mommsen, GCS 9/2, 1028–9) 399 Sufes (Byzacena) Statue of Hercules smashed Augustine, Epistulae, 50 (ed. Goldbacher, CSEL 34/2, 143) 401 Carthage Statue of Hercules mutilated Augustine, Sermones, 24 (ed. Lambot, CCL 41, 326–33) 493 Constantinople Imperial statues dragged through the streets Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, a. 493, i. 2 (ed. Mommsen, Chron. min. ii, 94) 512 Constantinople Imperial images and statues toppled Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, a. 512, v. 5 (ed. Mommsen, Chron. min. ii, 98) V. targetsoflynching 342 Constantinople Hermogenes, master of horse Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xiv. 10. 2 (ed. Rolfe, i, 80); Socrates, HEii. 13 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 493, 52–4) 354 Antioch Theophilus, governor of Syria Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xiv. 7. 5–6 (ed. Rolfe, i, 54–6); Libanius, Orationes, xix. 46 (ed. Foerster, ii, 405–6) 361 Alexandria George, Arian bishop; Dracontius, master of mint; Diodorus, comes Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xxii. 11. 3–11 (ed. Rolfe, ii, 258–60); Sozomen, HEv. 7 (ed. Festugière, SC 495, 122–6); Socrates, HEiii. 2–3 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 493, 262–70); Julian, Epistulae, 60 (ed. Bidez, 69–72) 390 Thessalonica Butheric, Gothic master of soldiers Sozomen, HEvii. 25. 3 (ed. Festugière, SC 516, 198) 405 Bagai (Numidia) Attempted murder of Maximianus, Catholic bishop Augustine, Epistulae, 185. 7. 26–7 (ed. Goldbacher, CSEL 57, 25–6) 409 Rome Pompeianus, urban prefect Gerontios, Vita Melaniae graeca, 19 (ed. Gorce, SC 90, 166) 409? Carthage John, comes Africae Chronica Gallica, a. 452, 59 (ed. Mommsen, Chron. min. i, 652) 412? Hippo Regius Unnamed imperial official Augustine, Sermones, 302 (SPM 100–11) Mar. 415 Alexandria Hypatia, female philosopher Socrates, HEvii. 15 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 506, 58–60); John of Nikiu, Chronicle, lxxxiv. 100–2 (ed. Zotenberg, 346); Malalas, xiv. 12 (ed. Dindorf, 359; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 196) 434 Aquae Sirensis (Mauretania Caesariensis) Robba, holy woman and sister of the Donatist bishop Honoratus Inscriptiones latinae christianae ueteres, no. 2052 455 Rome Petronius Maximus, emperor Chronica Gallica, a. 511, 623 (ed. Mommsen, Chron. min. i, 663) 457 Alexandria Proterius, Chalcedonian bishop Evagrius, HEii. 8 (ed. Festugière, Grillet and Sabbah, SC 542, 274–84); Pseudo-Zacharias of Mytilene, HEiv. 2 (ed. Brooks, CSCO 83, 172 (Syriac text); 87, 119–20 (Latin trans.)) 494/5 Antioch Attempt by Green partisans to murder Kalepios, comes Orientis Malalas, xvi. 2 (ed. Dindorf, 392–3; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 220) 507 Antioch Menas, commander of the Vigiles Malalas, xvi. 6 (ed. Dindorf, 397–8; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 223) 512 Constantinople One Syrian monk, or possibly two, killed during a major doctrinal riot against the emperor Anastasius Malalas, xvi. 19 (ed. Dindorf, 407; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 228) 515/16 Alexandria Theodosius, prefect of Egypt Malalas, xvi. 15 (ed. Dindorf, 401; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 225) 555/6 Caesarea in Palestine Stephanos, governor Malalas, xviii. 119 (ed. Dindorf, 487; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 294) 578 Constantinople Murder of two pagans, a man and a woman, during anti-pagan riot John of Ephesus, HEiii. 31 (ed. Brooks, CSCO 105, 159–60 (Syriac text); 106, 118–19 (Latin trans.)) VI. fightingbetweenrivalreligiousgroups 328 Alexandria Clashes between Melitians and Athanasius’ supporters in the Mareotis district when a Melitian assembly is interrupted by the Athanasians Epiphanius, Panarion, 68. 7 (ed. Dummer, GCS 3, 147–8) 342 Constantinople Crowds of Christians supporting the rival bishops Paul and Macedonius fight in the streets; many deaths Socrates, HEii. 12. 6; ii. 13. 6 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 493, 52–4); Sozomen, HEiii. 7. 5 (ed. Festugière, SC 418, 84) 346 Alexandria Clashes between Nicene and anti-Nicene Christians on the return of Athanasius; many deaths Socrates, HEii. 15. 6 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 493, 58) 358 Rome Crowds of Christians supporting the rival bishops Liberius and Felix come to blows in the streets on the return of Liberius Sozomen, HEiv. 15. 5 (ed. Festugière, SC 418, 254–6) Constantinople Clashes between Nicene and anti-Nicene Christians in the Church of the Holy Apostles and in the adjoining square provoked by the removal of the coffin of Constantine; many murders on both sides Sozomen, HEiv. 21. 3–6 (ed. Festugière, SC 418, 298) 404 Constantinople Nicene and anti-Nicene Christians come to blows in the streets after a sequence of processions and counter-processions; many murders on both sides Socrates, HEvi. 8. 1–9 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 505, 294–6); Sozomen, HEviii. 8. 1–5 (ed. Festugière, SC 516, 270–2) 412 Alexandria Crowds of Christians supporting the rival candidates for the episcopal see, Cyril and Timothy, fight in the streets for three days Socrates, HEvii. 7 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 506, 34–6) 419 Rome Crowds of Christians supporting the rival bishops Eulalius and Boniface fight in the forum Collectio Avellana, 29 (ed. Günther, CSEL 35, 74–6) 451 Alexandria A crowd of partisans of the deposed bishop Dioscorus fight in the streets with supporters of the newly elected bishop Proterius Evagrius, HEii. 5 (ed. Festugière, Grillet and Sabbah, SC 542, 256–8) 501/2 Rome Partisans of Bishop Lawrence attack the followers of his rival Symmachus ‘with clubs and sword’ in the streets; many killed, both clerical and lay Liber Pontificalis, 53. 5 (ed. Duchesne, 261) 529 Scythopolis Samaritans fight with Christians in the streets in retaliation for a ritual attack on their synagogues; many Christians killed Malalas, xviii. 35 (ed. Dindorf, 445; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 260 text and subtext) 555/6 Caesarea in Palestine Jews and Samaritans attack Christians in the streets ‘like faction members’; many Christians killed Malalas, xviii. 119 (ed. Dindorf, 487; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 294) 560 Antioch Clashes between Chalcedonians and Monophysites; many murders on both sides Theophanes, Chronographia, a.m. 6053 (ed. de Boor, 234–5 = Malalas, xviii. 131; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 299) VII. battlesforchurches 330 Constantina (Numidia) Donatists seize and occupy a church constructed by the emperor for their rivals Constantine, Epistula ad episcopos (ed. Ziwsa, CSEL 26, 213–16) 337 Alexandria Nicene supporters of Bishop Athanasius assault churches to expel the Arians; many deaths Epistula Sinodi Sardicensis Orientalium, 8 (ed. Feder, CSEL 65, 55); Socrates, HEii. 8. 6–7 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 493, 36–8) 339 Alexandria Athanasius’ followers set their own church on fire rather than surrender it to their rivals Socrates, HEii. 11. 3–6 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 493, 48–50) 347 Bagai (Numidia) Bishop Donatus barricades himself in his basilica with a crowd of country folk to bar the way to two imperial commissioners escorted by armed soldiers; a massacre ensues Optatus, iii. 4. 7–11 (ed. Labrousse, SC 413, 42–5) 358 Alexandria Athanasius’ supporters take possession of Arian churches for two months, until the imperial troops expel the Athanasians and restore the churches to George’s followers Sozomen, HEiv. 10. 8–11 (ed. Festugière, SC 418, 228–30) Mantinium (Paphlagonia) Crowd of Novatians successfully resist an attempt by the imperial troops to take possession of their church; nearly all soldiers killed Sozomen, HEiv. 21. 1–2 (ed. Festugière, SC 418, 296) Rome Followers of Bishop Felix seize and occupy the Basilica of Julius in Trastevere, after which they are again thrown out of the city by the supporters of Bishop Liberius Collectio Avellana, 1. 3 (ed. Günther, CSEL 35, 2) 361 Alexandria Athanasius’ supporters once again assault churches and expel the Arians Sozomen, HEv. 7. 1 (ed. Festugière, SC 495, 122) 363 Lemellef (Mauretania Sitifiensis) Donatist crowd under the leadership of bishops returning from exile assault a basilica and expel the Catholics; two clerics killed Optatus, ii. 18. 1–2 (ed. Labrousse, SC 412, 274) 366 Rome Damasus’ supporters assault churches to expel Ursinus’ followers; dozens of deaths Collectio Avellana, 1. 5–7 (ed. Günther, CSEL 35, 2–3); Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xxvii. 3. 13 (ed. Rolfe, iii, 18–20) 385–6 Milan Catholic supporters of Bishop Ambrose barricade themselves in the basilica, refusing to surrender it to the military Ambrose, Epistulae, 75, 75A (= Sermo contra Auxentium), 76 (ed. Faller and Zelzer, CSEL 82/3, 74–125) 393 Carthage Bishop Primian bars the doors of the basilicas with his mob and with state officials to prevent the partisans of his rival Maximian from getting access to the churches Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos, 36. 2. 20 (ed. Dekkers and Fraipont, CCL 38, 361–6) 394 Carthage Basilica of Maximian demolished by a crowd of Primian’s followers Augustine, Contra Cresconium, iii. 59. 65 (ed. Petschenig, CSEL 52, 471); Augustine, Epistulae, 44. 4. 7 (ed. Goldbacher, CSEL 34/2, 115) Before 411 Vegesela (Numidia) Catholics seize possession of the basilica of Marculus to prevent Donatists from getting access to their martyr shrine Gesta conlationis Carthaginiensis, a. 411, i. 133 (ed. Lancel, SC 195, 756) Gratianopolis (Mauretania Caesariensis) Catholics expel Donatists from all their places of assembly Gesta conl. Carthag., a. 411, i. 135 (ed. Lancel, SC 195, 774–6) Constantina (Numidia) Donatists seize Catholic basilicas and destroy all their altars Gesta conl. Carthag., a. 411, i. 139 (ed. Lancel, SC 195, 786) Rotaria (Numidia) Donatists invade the Catholic basilica and kill the bishop Gesta conl. Carthag., a. 411, i. 187 (ed. Lancel, SC 195, 838) Pudentiana (Numidia) Donatists seize and occupy four Catholic basilicas Gesta conl. Carthag., a. 411, i. 201 (ed. Lancel, SC 195, 864) 418–19 Rome Eulalius’ supporters seize and occupy the Lateran basilica, while his rival Boniface advances with his followers upon St Peter’s; after Boniface is confirmed as the rightful bishop of Rome by a synod, Eulalius’ followers reoccupy the Lateran by force but are expelled by the urban prefect Liber Pontificalis, 44. 1–4 (ed. Duchesne, 227); Collectio Avellana, 14–37 (ed. Günther, CSEL 35, 59–84) 419 Thamugadi Bishop Gaudentius and his Donatist partisans barricade themselves in the basilica, refusing to surrender it to the military Augustine, Contra Gaudentium, i. 1. 1, 6. 7 (ed. Petschenig, CSEL 53, 201 and 204); Augustine, Retractationes, ii. 59. 86 (ed. Mutzenbecher, CCL 57, 137) 428 Constantinople Arians set fire to their own chapel and adjacent buildings rather than let it be demolished under the orders of Bishop Nestorius Socrates, HEvii. 29. 8–9 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 506, 108) 431 Ephesus During the Council of Ephesus, Bishop Memnon blocks the churches with a crowd of country folk to prevent Nestorius and his followers from getting access to them; a few days later, inhabitants of the city occupy the churches to prevent the replacement of their bishop Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum, i. 1. 3. 101; i. 1. 5. 151 (ed. Schwartz, 46, 121) 501/2 Rome Bishop Symmachus barricades himself with his followers in St Peter’s to prevent his deposition, while the supporters of his rival Lawrence seize and occupy several titular churches Lawrentian fragment no. 52 (= Liber Pontificalis, ed. Duchesne, 44–6) VIII. fightingbetweenrivalfans 491 Antioch Greens fight the Blues in the hippodrome by throwing stones at them; six months later, Greens killed many Blues, including Jews Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De insidiis, 35 (ed. de Boor, 166–7 = Malalas, xv. 15; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 218 subtext) 501 Constantinople Fighting between supporters of Blues and Greens in the theatre; many deaths Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De insidiis, 38 (ed. de Boor, 168 = Malalas, xvi. 4; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 222 subtext) May 547 Constantinople Fighting between partisans of Blues and Greens in the hippodrome while City’s Birthday chariot-racing is taking place Malalas, xviii. 99 (ed. Dindorf, 483; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 288) July 547 Constantinople Fighting between partisans of Blues and Greens in the streets; many deaths Malalas, xviii. 105 (ed. Dindorf, 484; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 289) 550 Constantinople Fighting between supporters of both factions in the hippodrome while no races are being held; many deaths Malalas, xviii. 108 (ed. Dindorf, 484; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 290) 561 Constantinople Fighting between partisans of Blues and Greens in the hippodrome and streets during and after the races Malalas, xviii. 132 (ed. Dindorf, 490; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 299) May 562 Constantinople Fighting between partisans of Blues and Greens in various places after City’s Birthday chariot-racing Malalas, xviii. 135 (ed. Dindorf, 490–1; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 300) IX. foodriots 354 Antioch Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xiv. 7. 5–6 (ed. Rolfe, i, 54–6); Libanius, Orationes, i. 103; xix. 47; xlvi. 30 (ed. Foerster, i, 133; ii, 406; iii, 394) 355–6 Rome Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xv. 7. 1–5 (ed. Rolfe, i, 158–62) 359–60 Rome Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xix. 10. 1–4 (ed. Rolfe, i, 520–2) 375 Rome Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xxvii. 3. 4 (ed. Rolfe, iii, 14) 382–3 Antioch Libanius, Orationes, i. 205–6 (ed. Foerster, i, 175) 409 Constantinople Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, a. 409, vii (ed. Mommsen, Chron. min. ii, 70); Chronicon Paschale, a. 412 (ed. Dindorf, CSHB 11, 571) Rome Gerontios, Vita Melaniae graeca, 19 (ed. Gorce, SC 90, 166) 410 Rome Zosimus, vi. 11. 1–2 (ed. Paschoud, 14) 431 Constantinople Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, a. 431, xiv. 3 (ed. Mommsen, Chron. min. ii, 78) 515/16 Alexandria Malalas, xvi. 19 (ed. Dindorf, 401–2; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 225) 555 Constantinople Malalas, xviii. 121 (ed. Dindorf, 488; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 295); Theophanes, Chronographia, a.m. 6048 (ed. de Boor, 230) 601 Constantinople Theophylact Simocatta, Historiae, viii. 4. 12 (ed. de Boor, 291) Year . City . Action or target . Sources . I. rescues 374 Antioch Imperial official sentenced for conspiracy saved by the crowd John Chrysostom, De incomprehensibili Dei natura, iii. 7 (PG 48, 726) 491 Antioch Bath attendant arrested for throwing stones rescued by the Greens Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De insidiis, 35 (ed. de Boor, 166–7 = Malalas, xv. 15; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 218 subtext) 563 Constantinople Crowd break into prison and fight with the guards Theophanes, Chronographia, a.m. 6055 (ed. de Boor, 239 = Malalas, xviii. 146; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 304) Constantinople Blues rescue a Green Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De insidiis, 50 (ed. de Boor, 175 = Malalas, xviii. 150; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 305) 565 Constantinople Inhabitants of the quarter of Mazentiolos riot to prevent arrest Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De insidiis, 51 (ed. de Boor, 175–6 = Malalas, xviii. 151; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 305) 578 Constantinople Crowd break into prison and release Christian prisoners John of Ephesus, HEiii. 31 (ed. Brooks, CSCO 105, 159–60 (Syriac text); 106, 118–19 (Latin trans.)) II. arson Rome Frequent incendiary actions Ambrose, Epistulae, 40. 13 (PL 16, 1105–6) 354 Antioch House of a leading notable set on fire by the crowd Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xiv. 7. 6 (ed. Rolfe, i, 54) 365 Rome Attempts to set fire to house of urban prefect Lampadius Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xxvii. 3. 8–10 (ed. Rolfe, iii, 16–18) 375 Rome House of Symmachus, former urban prefect, set on fire Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xxvii. 3. 4 (ed. Rolfe, iii, 14) 387 Antioch House of ‘one of the prominent men’ set on fire by the crowd Libanius, Orationes, xix. 32–6; xxii. 9 (ed. Foerster, ii, 400–2, 475–6) 388 Constantinople Arian insurgents set fire to the house of Nectarius, the Nicene bishop Socrates, HEv. 13. 6 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 505, 188–90); Sozomen, HEvii. 14. 5 (ed. Festugière, SC 516, 130) 408 Calama Christian church set on fire by a crowd Augustine, Epistulae, 91. 8 (ed. Goldbacher, CSEL 34/2, 433) 409 Constantinople Praetorium of Monaxios, city prefect, destroyed by fire by the crowd Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, a. 409, vii (ed. Mommsen, Chron. min. ii, 70); Chronicon Paschale, a. 412 (ed. Dindorf, CSHB 11, 571) 491 Antioch Greens set fire to a Jewish synagogue Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De insidiis, 35 (ed. de Boor, 166–7 = Malalas, xv. 15; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 218 subtext) 507 Daphne Antiochenes under leadership of a Green charioteer set fire to a Jewish synagogue Malalas, xvi. 6 (ed. Dindorf, 396; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 222–3) Antioch So-called basilicas of Rufinus and Zenodotus burnt down by Green partisans (‘all these were destroyed by the fire and collapsed’) Malalas, xvi. 6 (ed. Dindorf, 397; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 223) 512 Constantinople House of former urban prefect Marinus set on fire and plundered by the crowd Malalas, xvi. 19 (ed. Dindorf, 407; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 228); Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, a. 512, v. 6 (ed. Mommsen, Chron. min. ii, 98) 532 Constantinople Crowd set fire to city prefect’s praetorium during the Nika Riot; as a consequence of this fire, the Chalke Gate of the palace, the Great Church and the public colonnade were destroyed Malalas, xviii. 71 (ed. Dindorf, 474; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 276) 561 Constantinople Many fires, including houses of Andreas and urban prefect Barsymias Malalas, xviii. 135 (ed. Dindorf, 491; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 300) 578 Constantinople Attempts to set fire to the house of the urban prefect John of Ephesus, HEiii. 31 (ed. Brooks, CSCO 105, 159–60 (Syriac text); 106, 118–19 (Latin trans.)) 602 Constantinople House of Constantine Lardys, a tax official, burnt down by the crowd Theophylact Simocatta, Historiae, viii. 9. 5 (ed. de Boor, 300) III. stone-throwing 419 Rome Urban prefect Symmachus and the vicar attacked with stones and expelled from the Forum while attempting to contain a fight between rival crowds Collectio Avellana, 29. 4–5 (ed. Günther, CSEL 35, 75) 431 Constantinople Crowd throw stones at the emperor Theodosius because of shortage of bread Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, a. 431, xiv. 3 (ed. Mommsen, Chron. min. ii, 78) 451 Alexandria Soldiers and officials attempting to contain a riot attacked with stones and burnt alive by the crowd Evagrius, HEii. 5 (ed. Festugière, Grillet and Sabbah, SC 542, 256–8) 522–5 Several eastern cities Blue partisans arrested for throwing stones at imperial officials Malalas, xvi. 12 (ed. Dindorf, 416; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 235–6) 530 Antioch Crowd burst into the bishop’s residence throwing stones Malalas, xviii. 64 (ed. Dindorf, 468; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 273) 563 Constantinople City prefect Andreas attacked with stones by Green partisans Theophanes, Chronographia, a.m. 6055 (ed. de Boor, 239 = Malalas, xviii. 146; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 304) 601 Constantinople Crowd throw stones at the emperor Maurice because of shortage of bread Theophylact Simocatta, Historiae, viii. 4. 12 (ed. de Boor, 291) IV. destructionofstatues 387 Antioch Riot of Statues: statues of the emperor and empress stoned, toppled and dragged through the streets John Chrysostom, Homiliae XXI de Statuis (PG 49, 15–222); Libanius, Orationes, xix–xxiii (ed. Foerster, ii, 385–507); Sozomen, HEvii. 23 (ed. Festugière, SC 516, 188–92); Theodoret, HEv. 20. 1 (ed. Canivet, SC 530, 416–18) 391 Alexandria Portion of Serapis’ great statue dragged through the streets and burnt on the theatre by a Christian crowd Theodoret, HEv. 23. 5–6 (ed. Canivet, SC 530, 434–6); Rufinus, HEix. 23 (ed. Mommsen, GCS 9/2, 1028–9) 399 Sufes (Byzacena) Statue of Hercules smashed Augustine, Epistulae, 50 (ed. Goldbacher, CSEL 34/2, 143) 401 Carthage Statue of Hercules mutilated Augustine, Sermones, 24 (ed. Lambot, CCL 41, 326–33) 493 Constantinople Imperial statues dragged through the streets Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, a. 493, i. 2 (ed. Mommsen, Chron. min. ii, 94) 512 Constantinople Imperial images and statues toppled Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, a. 512, v. 5 (ed. Mommsen, Chron. min. ii, 98) V. targetsoflynching 342 Constantinople Hermogenes, master of horse Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xiv. 10. 2 (ed. Rolfe, i, 80); Socrates, HEii. 13 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 493, 52–4) 354 Antioch Theophilus, governor of Syria Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xiv. 7. 5–6 (ed. Rolfe, i, 54–6); Libanius, Orationes, xix. 46 (ed. Foerster, ii, 405–6) 361 Alexandria George, Arian bishop; Dracontius, master of mint; Diodorus, comes Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xxii. 11. 3–11 (ed. Rolfe, ii, 258–60); Sozomen, HEv. 7 (ed. Festugière, SC 495, 122–6); Socrates, HEiii. 2–3 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 493, 262–70); Julian, Epistulae, 60 (ed. Bidez, 69–72) 390 Thessalonica Butheric, Gothic master of soldiers Sozomen, HEvii. 25. 3 (ed. Festugière, SC 516, 198) 405 Bagai (Numidia) Attempted murder of Maximianus, Catholic bishop Augustine, Epistulae, 185. 7. 26–7 (ed. Goldbacher, CSEL 57, 25–6) 409 Rome Pompeianus, urban prefect Gerontios, Vita Melaniae graeca, 19 (ed. Gorce, SC 90, 166) 409? Carthage John, comes Africae Chronica Gallica, a. 452, 59 (ed. Mommsen, Chron. min. i, 652) 412? Hippo Regius Unnamed imperial official Augustine, Sermones, 302 (SPM 100–11) Mar. 415 Alexandria Hypatia, female philosopher Socrates, HEvii. 15 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 506, 58–60); John of Nikiu, Chronicle, lxxxiv. 100–2 (ed. Zotenberg, 346); Malalas, xiv. 12 (ed. Dindorf, 359; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 196) 434 Aquae Sirensis (Mauretania Caesariensis) Robba, holy woman and sister of the Donatist bishop Honoratus Inscriptiones latinae christianae ueteres, no. 2052 455 Rome Petronius Maximus, emperor Chronica Gallica, a. 511, 623 (ed. Mommsen, Chron. min. i, 663) 457 Alexandria Proterius, Chalcedonian bishop Evagrius, HEii. 8 (ed. Festugière, Grillet and Sabbah, SC 542, 274–84); Pseudo-Zacharias of Mytilene, HEiv. 2 (ed. Brooks, CSCO 83, 172 (Syriac text); 87, 119–20 (Latin trans.)) 494/5 Antioch Attempt by Green partisans to murder Kalepios, comes Orientis Malalas, xvi. 2 (ed. Dindorf, 392–3; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 220) 507 Antioch Menas, commander of the Vigiles Malalas, xvi. 6 (ed. Dindorf, 397–8; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 223) 512 Constantinople One Syrian monk, or possibly two, killed during a major doctrinal riot against the emperor Anastasius Malalas, xvi. 19 (ed. Dindorf, 407; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 228) 515/16 Alexandria Theodosius, prefect of Egypt Malalas, xvi. 15 (ed. Dindorf, 401; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 225) 555/6 Caesarea in Palestine Stephanos, governor Malalas, xviii. 119 (ed. Dindorf, 487; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 294) 578 Constantinople Murder of two pagans, a man and a woman, during anti-pagan riot John of Ephesus, HEiii. 31 (ed. Brooks, CSCO 105, 159–60 (Syriac text); 106, 118–19 (Latin trans.)) VI. fightingbetweenrivalreligiousgroups 328 Alexandria Clashes between Melitians and Athanasius’ supporters in the Mareotis district when a Melitian assembly is interrupted by the Athanasians Epiphanius, Panarion, 68. 7 (ed. Dummer, GCS 3, 147–8) 342 Constantinople Crowds of Christians supporting the rival bishops Paul and Macedonius fight in the streets; many deaths Socrates, HEii. 12. 6; ii. 13. 6 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 493, 52–4); Sozomen, HEiii. 7. 5 (ed. Festugière, SC 418, 84) 346 Alexandria Clashes between Nicene and anti-Nicene Christians on the return of Athanasius; many deaths Socrates, HEii. 15. 6 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 493, 58) 358 Rome Crowds of Christians supporting the rival bishops Liberius and Felix come to blows in the streets on the return of Liberius Sozomen, HEiv. 15. 5 (ed. Festugière, SC 418, 254–6) Constantinople Clashes between Nicene and anti-Nicene Christians in the Church of the Holy Apostles and in the adjoining square provoked by the removal of the coffin of Constantine; many murders on both sides Sozomen, HEiv. 21. 3–6 (ed. Festugière, SC 418, 298) 404 Constantinople Nicene and anti-Nicene Christians come to blows in the streets after a sequence of processions and counter-processions; many murders on both sides Socrates, HEvi. 8. 1–9 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 505, 294–6); Sozomen, HEviii. 8. 1–5 (ed. Festugière, SC 516, 270–2) 412 Alexandria Crowds of Christians supporting the rival candidates for the episcopal see, Cyril and Timothy, fight in the streets for three days Socrates, HEvii. 7 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 506, 34–6) 419 Rome Crowds of Christians supporting the rival bishops Eulalius and Boniface fight in the forum Collectio Avellana, 29 (ed. Günther, CSEL 35, 74–6) 451 Alexandria A crowd of partisans of the deposed bishop Dioscorus fight in the streets with supporters of the newly elected bishop Proterius Evagrius, HEii. 5 (ed. Festugière, Grillet and Sabbah, SC 542, 256–8) 501/2 Rome Partisans of Bishop Lawrence attack the followers of his rival Symmachus ‘with clubs and sword’ in the streets; many killed, both clerical and lay Liber Pontificalis, 53. 5 (ed. Duchesne, 261) 529 Scythopolis Samaritans fight with Christians in the streets in retaliation for a ritual attack on their synagogues; many Christians killed Malalas, xviii. 35 (ed. Dindorf, 445; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 260 text and subtext) 555/6 Caesarea in Palestine Jews and Samaritans attack Christians in the streets ‘like faction members’; many Christians killed Malalas, xviii. 119 (ed. Dindorf, 487; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 294) 560 Antioch Clashes between Chalcedonians and Monophysites; many murders on both sides Theophanes, Chronographia, a.m. 6053 (ed. de Boor, 234–5 = Malalas, xviii. 131; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 299) VII. battlesforchurches 330 Constantina (Numidia) Donatists seize and occupy a church constructed by the emperor for their rivals Constantine, Epistula ad episcopos (ed. Ziwsa, CSEL 26, 213–16) 337 Alexandria Nicene supporters of Bishop Athanasius assault churches to expel the Arians; many deaths Epistula Sinodi Sardicensis Orientalium, 8 (ed. Feder, CSEL 65, 55); Socrates, HEii. 8. 6–7 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 493, 36–8) 339 Alexandria Athanasius’ followers set their own church on fire rather than surrender it to their rivals Socrates, HEii. 11. 3–6 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 493, 48–50) 347 Bagai (Numidia) Bishop Donatus barricades himself in his basilica with a crowd of country folk to bar the way to two imperial commissioners escorted by armed soldiers; a massacre ensues Optatus, iii. 4. 7–11 (ed. Labrousse, SC 413, 42–5) 358 Alexandria Athanasius’ supporters take possession of Arian churches for two months, until the imperial troops expel the Athanasians and restore the churches to George’s followers Sozomen, HEiv. 10. 8–11 (ed. Festugière, SC 418, 228–30) Mantinium (Paphlagonia) Crowd of Novatians successfully resist an attempt by the imperial troops to take possession of their church; nearly all soldiers killed Sozomen, HEiv. 21. 1–2 (ed. Festugière, SC 418, 296) Rome Followers of Bishop Felix seize and occupy the Basilica of Julius in Trastevere, after which they are again thrown out of the city by the supporters of Bishop Liberius Collectio Avellana, 1. 3 (ed. Günther, CSEL 35, 2) 361 Alexandria Athanasius’ supporters once again assault churches and expel the Arians Sozomen, HEv. 7. 1 (ed. Festugière, SC 495, 122) 363 Lemellef (Mauretania Sitifiensis) Donatist crowd under the leadership of bishops returning from exile assault a basilica and expel the Catholics; two clerics killed Optatus, ii. 18. 1–2 (ed. Labrousse, SC 412, 274) 366 Rome Damasus’ supporters assault churches to expel Ursinus’ followers; dozens of deaths Collectio Avellana, 1. 5–7 (ed. Günther, CSEL 35, 2–3); Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xxvii. 3. 13 (ed. Rolfe, iii, 18–20) 385–6 Milan Catholic supporters of Bishop Ambrose barricade themselves in the basilica, refusing to surrender it to the military Ambrose, Epistulae, 75, 75A (= Sermo contra Auxentium), 76 (ed. Faller and Zelzer, CSEL 82/3, 74–125) 393 Carthage Bishop Primian bars the doors of the basilicas with his mob and with state officials to prevent the partisans of his rival Maximian from getting access to the churches Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos, 36. 2. 20 (ed. Dekkers and Fraipont, CCL 38, 361–6) 394 Carthage Basilica of Maximian demolished by a crowd of Primian’s followers Augustine, Contra Cresconium, iii. 59. 65 (ed. Petschenig, CSEL 52, 471); Augustine, Epistulae, 44. 4. 7 (ed. Goldbacher, CSEL 34/2, 115) Before 411 Vegesela (Numidia) Catholics seize possession of the basilica of Marculus to prevent Donatists from getting access to their martyr shrine Gesta conlationis Carthaginiensis, a. 411, i. 133 (ed. Lancel, SC 195, 756) Gratianopolis (Mauretania Caesariensis) Catholics expel Donatists from all their places of assembly Gesta conl. Carthag., a. 411, i. 135 (ed. Lancel, SC 195, 774–6) Constantina (Numidia) Donatists seize Catholic basilicas and destroy all their altars Gesta conl. Carthag., a. 411, i. 139 (ed. Lancel, SC 195, 786) Rotaria (Numidia) Donatists invade the Catholic basilica and kill the bishop Gesta conl. Carthag., a. 411, i. 187 (ed. Lancel, SC 195, 838) Pudentiana (Numidia) Donatists seize and occupy four Catholic basilicas Gesta conl. Carthag., a. 411, i. 201 (ed. Lancel, SC 195, 864) 418–19 Rome Eulalius’ supporters seize and occupy the Lateran basilica, while his rival Boniface advances with his followers upon St Peter’s; after Boniface is confirmed as the rightful bishop of Rome by a synod, Eulalius’ followers reoccupy the Lateran by force but are expelled by the urban prefect Liber Pontificalis, 44. 1–4 (ed. Duchesne, 227); Collectio Avellana, 14–37 (ed. Günther, CSEL 35, 59–84) 419 Thamugadi Bishop Gaudentius and his Donatist partisans barricade themselves in the basilica, refusing to surrender it to the military Augustine, Contra Gaudentium, i. 1. 1, 6. 7 (ed. Petschenig, CSEL 53, 201 and 204); Augustine, Retractationes, ii. 59. 86 (ed. Mutzenbecher, CCL 57, 137) 428 Constantinople Arians set fire to their own chapel and adjacent buildings rather than let it be demolished under the orders of Bishop Nestorius Socrates, HEvii. 29. 8–9 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 506, 108) 431 Ephesus During the Council of Ephesus, Bishop Memnon blocks the churches with a crowd of country folk to prevent Nestorius and his followers from getting access to them; a few days later, inhabitants of the city occupy the churches to prevent the replacement of their bishop Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum, i. 1. 3. 101; i. 1. 5. 151 (ed. Schwartz, 46, 121) 501/2 Rome Bishop Symmachus barricades himself with his followers in St Peter’s to prevent his deposition, while the supporters of his rival Lawrence seize and occupy several titular churches Lawrentian fragment no. 52 (= Liber Pontificalis, ed. Duchesne, 44–6) VIII. fightingbetweenrivalfans 491 Antioch Greens fight the Blues in the hippodrome by throwing stones at them; six months later, Greens killed many Blues, including Jews Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De insidiis, 35 (ed. de Boor, 166–7 = Malalas, xv. 15; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 218 subtext) 501 Constantinople Fighting between supporters of Blues and Greens in the theatre; many deaths Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De insidiis, 38 (ed. de Boor, 168 = Malalas, xvi. 4; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 222 subtext) May 547 Constantinople Fighting between partisans of Blues and Greens in the hippodrome while City’s Birthday chariot-racing is taking place Malalas, xviii. 99 (ed. Dindorf, 483; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 288) July 547 Constantinople Fighting between partisans of Blues and Greens in the streets; many deaths Malalas, xviii. 105 (ed. Dindorf, 484; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 289) 550 Constantinople Fighting between supporters of both factions in the hippodrome while no races are being held; many deaths Malalas, xviii. 108 (ed. Dindorf, 484; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 290) 561 Constantinople Fighting between partisans of Blues and Greens in the hippodrome and streets during and after the races Malalas, xviii. 132 (ed. Dindorf, 490; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 299) May 562 Constantinople Fighting between partisans of Blues and Greens in various places after City’s Birthday chariot-racing Malalas, xviii. 135 (ed. Dindorf, 490–1; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 300) IX. foodriots 354 Antioch Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xiv. 7. 5–6 (ed. Rolfe, i, 54–6); Libanius, Orationes, i. 103; xix. 47; xlvi. 30 (ed. Foerster, i, 133; ii, 406; iii, 394) 355–6 Rome Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xv. 7. 1–5 (ed. Rolfe, i, 158–62) 359–60 Rome Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xix. 10. 1–4 (ed. Rolfe, i, 520–2) 375 Rome Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xxvii. 3. 4 (ed. Rolfe, iii, 14) 382–3 Antioch Libanius, Orationes, i. 205–6 (ed. Foerster, i, 175) 409 Constantinople Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, a. 409, vii (ed. Mommsen, Chron. min. ii, 70); Chronicon Paschale, a. 412 (ed. Dindorf, CSHB 11, 571) Rome Gerontios, Vita Melaniae graeca, 19 (ed. Gorce, SC 90, 166) 410 Rome Zosimus, vi. 11. 1–2 (ed. Paschoud, 14) 431 Constantinople Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, a. 431, xiv. 3 (ed. Mommsen, Chron. min. ii, 78) 515/16 Alexandria Malalas, xvi. 19 (ed. Dindorf, 401–2; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 225) 555 Constantinople Malalas, xviii. 121 (ed. Dindorf, 488; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 295); Theophanes, Chronographia, a.m. 6048 (ed. de Boor, 230) 601 Constantinople Theophylact Simocatta, Historiae, viii. 4. 12 (ed. de Boor, 291) Open in new tab Year . City . Action or target . Sources . I. rescues 374 Antioch Imperial official sentenced for conspiracy saved by the crowd John Chrysostom, De incomprehensibili Dei natura, iii. 7 (PG 48, 726) 491 Antioch Bath attendant arrested for throwing stones rescued by the Greens Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De insidiis, 35 (ed. de Boor, 166–7 = Malalas, xv. 15; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 218 subtext) 563 Constantinople Crowd break into prison and fight with the guards Theophanes, Chronographia, a.m. 6055 (ed. de Boor, 239 = Malalas, xviii. 146; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 304) Constantinople Blues rescue a Green Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De insidiis, 50 (ed. de Boor, 175 = Malalas, xviii. 150; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 305) 565 Constantinople Inhabitants of the quarter of Mazentiolos riot to prevent arrest Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De insidiis, 51 (ed. de Boor, 175–6 = Malalas, xviii. 151; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 305) 578 Constantinople Crowd break into prison and release Christian prisoners John of Ephesus, HEiii. 31 (ed. Brooks, CSCO 105, 159–60 (Syriac text); 106, 118–19 (Latin trans.)) II. arson Rome Frequent incendiary actions Ambrose, Epistulae, 40. 13 (PL 16, 1105–6) 354 Antioch House of a leading notable set on fire by the crowd Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xiv. 7. 6 (ed. Rolfe, i, 54) 365 Rome Attempts to set fire to house of urban prefect Lampadius Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xxvii. 3. 8–10 (ed. Rolfe, iii, 16–18) 375 Rome House of Symmachus, former urban prefect, set on fire Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xxvii. 3. 4 (ed. Rolfe, iii, 14) 387 Antioch House of ‘one of the prominent men’ set on fire by the crowd Libanius, Orationes, xix. 32–6; xxii. 9 (ed. Foerster, ii, 400–2, 475–6) 388 Constantinople Arian insurgents set fire to the house of Nectarius, the Nicene bishop Socrates, HEv. 13. 6 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 505, 188–90); Sozomen, HEvii. 14. 5 (ed. Festugière, SC 516, 130) 408 Calama Christian church set on fire by a crowd Augustine, Epistulae, 91. 8 (ed. Goldbacher, CSEL 34/2, 433) 409 Constantinople Praetorium of Monaxios, city prefect, destroyed by fire by the crowd Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, a. 409, vii (ed. Mommsen, Chron. min. ii, 70); Chronicon Paschale, a. 412 (ed. Dindorf, CSHB 11, 571) 491 Antioch Greens set fire to a Jewish synagogue Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De insidiis, 35 (ed. de Boor, 166–7 = Malalas, xv. 15; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 218 subtext) 507 Daphne Antiochenes under leadership of a Green charioteer set fire to a Jewish synagogue Malalas, xvi. 6 (ed. Dindorf, 396; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 222–3) Antioch So-called basilicas of Rufinus and Zenodotus burnt down by Green partisans (‘all these were destroyed by the fire and collapsed’) Malalas, xvi. 6 (ed. Dindorf, 397; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 223) 512 Constantinople House of former urban prefect Marinus set on fire and plundered by the crowd Malalas, xvi. 19 (ed. Dindorf, 407; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 228); Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, a. 512, v. 6 (ed. Mommsen, Chron. min. ii, 98) 532 Constantinople Crowd set fire to city prefect’s praetorium during the Nika Riot; as a consequence of this fire, the Chalke Gate of the palace, the Great Church and the public colonnade were destroyed Malalas, xviii. 71 (ed. Dindorf, 474; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 276) 561 Constantinople Many fires, including houses of Andreas and urban prefect Barsymias Malalas, xviii. 135 (ed. Dindorf, 491; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 300) 578 Constantinople Attempts to set fire to the house of the urban prefect John of Ephesus, HEiii. 31 (ed. Brooks, CSCO 105, 159–60 (Syriac text); 106, 118–19 (Latin trans.)) 602 Constantinople House of Constantine Lardys, a tax official, burnt down by the crowd Theophylact Simocatta, Historiae, viii. 9. 5 (ed. de Boor, 300) III. stone-throwing 419 Rome Urban prefect Symmachus and the vicar attacked with stones and expelled from the Forum while attempting to contain a fight between rival crowds Collectio Avellana, 29. 4–5 (ed. Günther, CSEL 35, 75) 431 Constantinople Crowd throw stones at the emperor Theodosius because of shortage of bread Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, a. 431, xiv. 3 (ed. Mommsen, Chron. min. ii, 78) 451 Alexandria Soldiers and officials attempting to contain a riot attacked with stones and burnt alive by the crowd Evagrius, HEii. 5 (ed. Festugière, Grillet and Sabbah, SC 542, 256–8) 522–5 Several eastern cities Blue partisans arrested for throwing stones at imperial officials Malalas, xvi. 12 (ed. Dindorf, 416; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 235–6) 530 Antioch Crowd burst into the bishop’s residence throwing stones Malalas, xviii. 64 (ed. Dindorf, 468; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 273) 563 Constantinople City prefect Andreas attacked with stones by Green partisans Theophanes, Chronographia, a.m. 6055 (ed. de Boor, 239 = Malalas, xviii. 146; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 304) 601 Constantinople Crowd throw stones at the emperor Maurice because of shortage of bread Theophylact Simocatta, Historiae, viii. 4. 12 (ed. de Boor, 291) IV. destructionofstatues 387 Antioch Riot of Statues: statues of the emperor and empress stoned, toppled and dragged through the streets John Chrysostom, Homiliae XXI de Statuis (PG 49, 15–222); Libanius, Orationes, xix–xxiii (ed. Foerster, ii, 385–507); Sozomen, HEvii. 23 (ed. Festugière, SC 516, 188–92); Theodoret, HEv. 20. 1 (ed. Canivet, SC 530, 416–18) 391 Alexandria Portion of Serapis’ great statue dragged through the streets and burnt on the theatre by a Christian crowd Theodoret, HEv. 23. 5–6 (ed. Canivet, SC 530, 434–6); Rufinus, HEix. 23 (ed. Mommsen, GCS 9/2, 1028–9) 399 Sufes (Byzacena) Statue of Hercules smashed Augustine, Epistulae, 50 (ed. Goldbacher, CSEL 34/2, 143) 401 Carthage Statue of Hercules mutilated Augustine, Sermones, 24 (ed. Lambot, CCL 41, 326–33) 493 Constantinople Imperial statues dragged through the streets Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, a. 493, i. 2 (ed. Mommsen, Chron. min. ii, 94) 512 Constantinople Imperial images and statues toppled Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, a. 512, v. 5 (ed. Mommsen, Chron. min. ii, 98) V. targetsoflynching 342 Constantinople Hermogenes, master of horse Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xiv. 10. 2 (ed. Rolfe, i, 80); Socrates, HEii. 13 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 493, 52–4) 354 Antioch Theophilus, governor of Syria Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xiv. 7. 5–6 (ed. Rolfe, i, 54–6); Libanius, Orationes, xix. 46 (ed. Foerster, ii, 405–6) 361 Alexandria George, Arian bishop; Dracontius, master of mint; Diodorus, comes Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xxii. 11. 3–11 (ed. Rolfe, ii, 258–60); Sozomen, HEv. 7 (ed. Festugière, SC 495, 122–6); Socrates, HEiii. 2–3 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 493, 262–70); Julian, Epistulae, 60 (ed. Bidez, 69–72) 390 Thessalonica Butheric, Gothic master of soldiers Sozomen, HEvii. 25. 3 (ed. Festugière, SC 516, 198) 405 Bagai (Numidia) Attempted murder of Maximianus, Catholic bishop Augustine, Epistulae, 185. 7. 26–7 (ed. Goldbacher, CSEL 57, 25–6) 409 Rome Pompeianus, urban prefect Gerontios, Vita Melaniae graeca, 19 (ed. Gorce, SC 90, 166) 409? Carthage John, comes Africae Chronica Gallica, a. 452, 59 (ed. Mommsen, Chron. min. i, 652) 412? Hippo Regius Unnamed imperial official Augustine, Sermones, 302 (SPM 100–11) Mar. 415 Alexandria Hypatia, female philosopher Socrates, HEvii. 15 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 506, 58–60); John of Nikiu, Chronicle, lxxxiv. 100–2 (ed. Zotenberg, 346); Malalas, xiv. 12 (ed. Dindorf, 359; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 196) 434 Aquae Sirensis (Mauretania Caesariensis) Robba, holy woman and sister of the Donatist bishop Honoratus Inscriptiones latinae christianae ueteres, no. 2052 455 Rome Petronius Maximus, emperor Chronica Gallica, a. 511, 623 (ed. Mommsen, Chron. min. i, 663) 457 Alexandria Proterius, Chalcedonian bishop Evagrius, HEii. 8 (ed. Festugière, Grillet and Sabbah, SC 542, 274–84); Pseudo-Zacharias of Mytilene, HEiv. 2 (ed. Brooks, CSCO 83, 172 (Syriac text); 87, 119–20 (Latin trans.)) 494/5 Antioch Attempt by Green partisans to murder Kalepios, comes Orientis Malalas, xvi. 2 (ed. Dindorf, 392–3; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 220) 507 Antioch Menas, commander of the Vigiles Malalas, xvi. 6 (ed. Dindorf, 397–8; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 223) 512 Constantinople One Syrian monk, or possibly two, killed during a major doctrinal riot against the emperor Anastasius Malalas, xvi. 19 (ed. Dindorf, 407; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 228) 515/16 Alexandria Theodosius, prefect of Egypt Malalas, xvi. 15 (ed. Dindorf, 401; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 225) 555/6 Caesarea in Palestine Stephanos, governor Malalas, xviii. 119 (ed. Dindorf, 487; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 294) 578 Constantinople Murder of two pagans, a man and a woman, during anti-pagan riot John of Ephesus, HEiii. 31 (ed. Brooks, CSCO 105, 159–60 (Syriac text); 106, 118–19 (Latin trans.)) VI. fightingbetweenrivalreligiousgroups 328 Alexandria Clashes between Melitians and Athanasius’ supporters in the Mareotis district when a Melitian assembly is interrupted by the Athanasians Epiphanius, Panarion, 68. 7 (ed. Dummer, GCS 3, 147–8) 342 Constantinople Crowds of Christians supporting the rival bishops Paul and Macedonius fight in the streets; many deaths Socrates, HEii. 12. 6; ii. 13. 6 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 493, 52–4); Sozomen, HEiii. 7. 5 (ed. Festugière, SC 418, 84) 346 Alexandria Clashes between Nicene and anti-Nicene Christians on the return of Athanasius; many deaths Socrates, HEii. 15. 6 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 493, 58) 358 Rome Crowds of Christians supporting the rival bishops Liberius and Felix come to blows in the streets on the return of Liberius Sozomen, HEiv. 15. 5 (ed. Festugière, SC 418, 254–6) Constantinople Clashes between Nicene and anti-Nicene Christians in the Church of the Holy Apostles and in the adjoining square provoked by the removal of the coffin of Constantine; many murders on both sides Sozomen, HEiv. 21. 3–6 (ed. Festugière, SC 418, 298) 404 Constantinople Nicene and anti-Nicene Christians come to blows in the streets after a sequence of processions and counter-processions; many murders on both sides Socrates, HEvi. 8. 1–9 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 505, 294–6); Sozomen, HEviii. 8. 1–5 (ed. Festugière, SC 516, 270–2) 412 Alexandria Crowds of Christians supporting the rival candidates for the episcopal see, Cyril and Timothy, fight in the streets for three days Socrates, HEvii. 7 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 506, 34–6) 419 Rome Crowds of Christians supporting the rival bishops Eulalius and Boniface fight in the forum Collectio Avellana, 29 (ed. Günther, CSEL 35, 74–6) 451 Alexandria A crowd of partisans of the deposed bishop Dioscorus fight in the streets with supporters of the newly elected bishop Proterius Evagrius, HEii. 5 (ed. Festugière, Grillet and Sabbah, SC 542, 256–8) 501/2 Rome Partisans of Bishop Lawrence attack the followers of his rival Symmachus ‘with clubs and sword’ in the streets; many killed, both clerical and lay Liber Pontificalis, 53. 5 (ed. Duchesne, 261) 529 Scythopolis Samaritans fight with Christians in the streets in retaliation for a ritual attack on their synagogues; many Christians killed Malalas, xviii. 35 (ed. Dindorf, 445; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 260 text and subtext) 555/6 Caesarea in Palestine Jews and Samaritans attack Christians in the streets ‘like faction members’; many Christians killed Malalas, xviii. 119 (ed. Dindorf, 487; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 294) 560 Antioch Clashes between Chalcedonians and Monophysites; many murders on both sides Theophanes, Chronographia, a.m. 6053 (ed. de Boor, 234–5 = Malalas, xviii. 131; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 299) VII. battlesforchurches 330 Constantina (Numidia) Donatists seize and occupy a church constructed by the emperor for their rivals Constantine, Epistula ad episcopos (ed. Ziwsa, CSEL 26, 213–16) 337 Alexandria Nicene supporters of Bishop Athanasius assault churches to expel the Arians; many deaths Epistula Sinodi Sardicensis Orientalium, 8 (ed. Feder, CSEL 65, 55); Socrates, HEii. 8. 6–7 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 493, 36–8) 339 Alexandria Athanasius’ followers set their own church on fire rather than surrender it to their rivals Socrates, HEii. 11. 3–6 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 493, 48–50) 347 Bagai (Numidia) Bishop Donatus barricades himself in his basilica with a crowd of country folk to bar the way to two imperial commissioners escorted by armed soldiers; a massacre ensues Optatus, iii. 4. 7–11 (ed. Labrousse, SC 413, 42–5) 358 Alexandria Athanasius’ supporters take possession of Arian churches for two months, until the imperial troops expel the Athanasians and restore the churches to George’s followers Sozomen, HEiv. 10. 8–11 (ed. Festugière, SC 418, 228–30) Mantinium (Paphlagonia) Crowd of Novatians successfully resist an attempt by the imperial troops to take possession of their church; nearly all soldiers killed Sozomen, HEiv. 21. 1–2 (ed. Festugière, SC 418, 296) Rome Followers of Bishop Felix seize and occupy the Basilica of Julius in Trastevere, after which they are again thrown out of the city by the supporters of Bishop Liberius Collectio Avellana, 1. 3 (ed. Günther, CSEL 35, 2) 361 Alexandria Athanasius’ supporters once again assault churches and expel the Arians Sozomen, HEv. 7. 1 (ed. Festugière, SC 495, 122) 363 Lemellef (Mauretania Sitifiensis) Donatist crowd under the leadership of bishops returning from exile assault a basilica and expel the Catholics; two clerics killed Optatus, ii. 18. 1–2 (ed. Labrousse, SC 412, 274) 366 Rome Damasus’ supporters assault churches to expel Ursinus’ followers; dozens of deaths Collectio Avellana, 1. 5–7 (ed. Günther, CSEL 35, 2–3); Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xxvii. 3. 13 (ed. Rolfe, iii, 18–20) 385–6 Milan Catholic supporters of Bishop Ambrose barricade themselves in the basilica, refusing to surrender it to the military Ambrose, Epistulae, 75, 75A (= Sermo contra Auxentium), 76 (ed. Faller and Zelzer, CSEL 82/3, 74–125) 393 Carthage Bishop Primian bars the doors of the basilicas with his mob and with state officials to prevent the partisans of his rival Maximian from getting access to the churches Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos, 36. 2. 20 (ed. Dekkers and Fraipont, CCL 38, 361–6) 394 Carthage Basilica of Maximian demolished by a crowd of Primian’s followers Augustine, Contra Cresconium, iii. 59. 65 (ed. Petschenig, CSEL 52, 471); Augustine, Epistulae, 44. 4. 7 (ed. Goldbacher, CSEL 34/2, 115) Before 411 Vegesela (Numidia) Catholics seize possession of the basilica of Marculus to prevent Donatists from getting access to their martyr shrine Gesta conlationis Carthaginiensis, a. 411, i. 133 (ed. Lancel, SC 195, 756) Gratianopolis (Mauretania Caesariensis) Catholics expel Donatists from all their places of assembly Gesta conl. Carthag., a. 411, i. 135 (ed. Lancel, SC 195, 774–6) Constantina (Numidia) Donatists seize Catholic basilicas and destroy all their altars Gesta conl. Carthag., a. 411, i. 139 (ed. Lancel, SC 195, 786) Rotaria (Numidia) Donatists invade the Catholic basilica and kill the bishop Gesta conl. Carthag., a. 411, i. 187 (ed. Lancel, SC 195, 838) Pudentiana (Numidia) Donatists seize and occupy four Catholic basilicas Gesta conl. Carthag., a. 411, i. 201 (ed. Lancel, SC 195, 864) 418–19 Rome Eulalius’ supporters seize and occupy the Lateran basilica, while his rival Boniface advances with his followers upon St Peter’s; after Boniface is confirmed as the rightful bishop of Rome by a synod, Eulalius’ followers reoccupy the Lateran by force but are expelled by the urban prefect Liber Pontificalis, 44. 1–4 (ed. Duchesne, 227); Collectio Avellana, 14–37 (ed. Günther, CSEL 35, 59–84) 419 Thamugadi Bishop Gaudentius and his Donatist partisans barricade themselves in the basilica, refusing to surrender it to the military Augustine, Contra Gaudentium, i. 1. 1, 6. 7 (ed. Petschenig, CSEL 53, 201 and 204); Augustine, Retractationes, ii. 59. 86 (ed. Mutzenbecher, CCL 57, 137) 428 Constantinople Arians set fire to their own chapel and adjacent buildings rather than let it be demolished under the orders of Bishop Nestorius Socrates, HEvii. 29. 8–9 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 506, 108) 431 Ephesus During the Council of Ephesus, Bishop Memnon blocks the churches with a crowd of country folk to prevent Nestorius and his followers from getting access to them; a few days later, inhabitants of the city occupy the churches to prevent the replacement of their bishop Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum, i. 1. 3. 101; i. 1. 5. 151 (ed. Schwartz, 46, 121) 501/2 Rome Bishop Symmachus barricades himself with his followers in St Peter’s to prevent his deposition, while the supporters of his rival Lawrence seize and occupy several titular churches Lawrentian fragment no. 52 (= Liber Pontificalis, ed. Duchesne, 44–6) VIII. fightingbetweenrivalfans 491 Antioch Greens fight the Blues in the hippodrome by throwing stones at them; six months later, Greens killed many Blues, including Jews Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De insidiis, 35 (ed. de Boor, 166–7 = Malalas, xv. 15; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 218 subtext) 501 Constantinople Fighting between supporters of Blues and Greens in the theatre; many deaths Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De insidiis, 38 (ed. de Boor, 168 = Malalas, xvi. 4; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 222 subtext) May 547 Constantinople Fighting between partisans of Blues and Greens in the hippodrome while City’s Birthday chariot-racing is taking place Malalas, xviii. 99 (ed. Dindorf, 483; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 288) July 547 Constantinople Fighting between partisans of Blues and Greens in the streets; many deaths Malalas, xviii. 105 (ed. Dindorf, 484; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 289) 550 Constantinople Fighting between supporters of both factions in the hippodrome while no races are being held; many deaths Malalas, xviii. 108 (ed. Dindorf, 484; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 290) 561 Constantinople Fighting between partisans of Blues and Greens in the hippodrome and streets during and after the races Malalas, xviii. 132 (ed. Dindorf, 490; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 299) May 562 Constantinople Fighting between partisans of Blues and Greens in various places after City’s Birthday chariot-racing Malalas, xviii. 135 (ed. Dindorf, 490–1; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 300) IX. foodriots 354 Antioch Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xiv. 7. 5–6 (ed. Rolfe, i, 54–6); Libanius, Orationes, i. 103; xix. 47; xlvi. 30 (ed. Foerster, i, 133; ii, 406; iii, 394) 355–6 Rome Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xv. 7. 1–5 (ed. Rolfe, i, 158–62) 359–60 Rome Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xix. 10. 1–4 (ed. Rolfe, i, 520–2) 375 Rome Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xxvii. 3. 4 (ed. Rolfe, iii, 14) 382–3 Antioch Libanius, Orationes, i. 205–6 (ed. Foerster, i, 175) 409 Constantinople Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, a. 409, vii (ed. Mommsen, Chron. min. ii, 70); Chronicon Paschale, a. 412 (ed. Dindorf, CSHB 11, 571) Rome Gerontios, Vita Melaniae graeca, 19 (ed. Gorce, SC 90, 166) 410 Rome Zosimus, vi. 11. 1–2 (ed. Paschoud, 14) 431 Constantinople Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, a. 431, xiv. 3 (ed. Mommsen, Chron. min. ii, 78) 515/16 Alexandria Malalas, xvi. 19 (ed. Dindorf, 401–2; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 225) 555 Constantinople Malalas, xviii. 121 (ed. Dindorf, 488; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 295); Theophanes, Chronographia, a.m. 6048 (ed. de Boor, 230) 601 Constantinople Theophylact Simocatta, Historiae, viii. 4. 12 (ed. de Boor, 291) Year . City . Action or target . Sources . I. rescues 374 Antioch Imperial official sentenced for conspiracy saved by the crowd John Chrysostom, De incomprehensibili Dei natura, iii. 7 (PG 48, 726) 491 Antioch Bath attendant arrested for throwing stones rescued by the Greens Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De insidiis, 35 (ed. de Boor, 166–7 = Malalas, xv. 15; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 218 subtext) 563 Constantinople Crowd break into prison and fight with the guards Theophanes, Chronographia, a.m. 6055 (ed. de Boor, 239 = Malalas, xviii. 146; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 304) Constantinople Blues rescue a Green Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De insidiis, 50 (ed. de Boor, 175 = Malalas, xviii. 150; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 305) 565 Constantinople Inhabitants of the quarter of Mazentiolos riot to prevent arrest Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De insidiis, 51 (ed. de Boor, 175–6 = Malalas, xviii. 151; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 305) 578 Constantinople Crowd break into prison and release Christian prisoners John of Ephesus, HEiii. 31 (ed. Brooks, CSCO 105, 159–60 (Syriac text); 106, 118–19 (Latin trans.)) II. arson Rome Frequent incendiary actions Ambrose, Epistulae, 40. 13 (PL 16, 1105–6) 354 Antioch House of a leading notable set on fire by the crowd Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xiv. 7. 6 (ed. Rolfe, i, 54) 365 Rome Attempts to set fire to house of urban prefect Lampadius Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xxvii. 3. 8–10 (ed. Rolfe, iii, 16–18) 375 Rome House of Symmachus, former urban prefect, set on fire Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xxvii. 3. 4 (ed. Rolfe, iii, 14) 387 Antioch House of ‘one of the prominent men’ set on fire by the crowd Libanius, Orationes, xix. 32–6; xxii. 9 (ed. Foerster, ii, 400–2, 475–6) 388 Constantinople Arian insurgents set fire to the house of Nectarius, the Nicene bishop Socrates, HEv. 13. 6 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 505, 188–90); Sozomen, HEvii. 14. 5 (ed. Festugière, SC 516, 130) 408 Calama Christian church set on fire by a crowd Augustine, Epistulae, 91. 8 (ed. Goldbacher, CSEL 34/2, 433) 409 Constantinople Praetorium of Monaxios, city prefect, destroyed by fire by the crowd Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, a. 409, vii (ed. Mommsen, Chron. min. ii, 70); Chronicon Paschale, a. 412 (ed. Dindorf, CSHB 11, 571) 491 Antioch Greens set fire to a Jewish synagogue Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De insidiis, 35 (ed. de Boor, 166–7 = Malalas, xv. 15; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 218 subtext) 507 Daphne Antiochenes under leadership of a Green charioteer set fire to a Jewish synagogue Malalas, xvi. 6 (ed. Dindorf, 396; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 222–3) Antioch So-called basilicas of Rufinus and Zenodotus burnt down by Green partisans (‘all these were destroyed by the fire and collapsed’) Malalas, xvi. 6 (ed. Dindorf, 397; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 223) 512 Constantinople House of former urban prefect Marinus set on fire and plundered by the crowd Malalas, xvi. 19 (ed. Dindorf, 407; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 228); Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, a. 512, v. 6 (ed. Mommsen, Chron. min. ii, 98) 532 Constantinople Crowd set fire to city prefect’s praetorium during the Nika Riot; as a consequence of this fire, the Chalke Gate of the palace, the Great Church and the public colonnade were destroyed Malalas, xviii. 71 (ed. Dindorf, 474; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 276) 561 Constantinople Many fires, including houses of Andreas and urban prefect Barsymias Malalas, xviii. 135 (ed. Dindorf, 491; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 300) 578 Constantinople Attempts to set fire to the house of the urban prefect John of Ephesus, HEiii. 31 (ed. Brooks, CSCO 105, 159–60 (Syriac text); 106, 118–19 (Latin trans.)) 602 Constantinople House of Constantine Lardys, a tax official, burnt down by the crowd Theophylact Simocatta, Historiae, viii. 9. 5 (ed. de Boor, 300) III. stone-throwing 419 Rome Urban prefect Symmachus and the vicar attacked with stones and expelled from the Forum while attempting to contain a fight between rival crowds Collectio Avellana, 29. 4–5 (ed. Günther, CSEL 35, 75) 431 Constantinople Crowd throw stones at the emperor Theodosius because of shortage of bread Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, a. 431, xiv. 3 (ed. Mommsen, Chron. min. ii, 78) 451 Alexandria Soldiers and officials attempting to contain a riot attacked with stones and burnt alive by the crowd Evagrius, HEii. 5 (ed. Festugière, Grillet and Sabbah, SC 542, 256–8) 522–5 Several eastern cities Blue partisans arrested for throwing stones at imperial officials Malalas, xvi. 12 (ed. Dindorf, 416; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 235–6) 530 Antioch Crowd burst into the bishop’s residence throwing stones Malalas, xviii. 64 (ed. Dindorf, 468; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 273) 563 Constantinople City prefect Andreas attacked with stones by Green partisans Theophanes, Chronographia, a.m. 6055 (ed. de Boor, 239 = Malalas, xviii. 146; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 304) 601 Constantinople Crowd throw stones at the emperor Maurice because of shortage of bread Theophylact Simocatta, Historiae, viii. 4. 12 (ed. de Boor, 291) IV. destructionofstatues 387 Antioch Riot of Statues: statues of the emperor and empress stoned, toppled and dragged through the streets John Chrysostom, Homiliae XXI de Statuis (PG 49, 15–222); Libanius, Orationes, xix–xxiii (ed. Foerster, ii, 385–507); Sozomen, HEvii. 23 (ed. Festugière, SC 516, 188–92); Theodoret, HEv. 20. 1 (ed. Canivet, SC 530, 416–18) 391 Alexandria Portion of Serapis’ great statue dragged through the streets and burnt on the theatre by a Christian crowd Theodoret, HEv. 23. 5–6 (ed. Canivet, SC 530, 434–6); Rufinus, HEix. 23 (ed. Mommsen, GCS 9/2, 1028–9) 399 Sufes (Byzacena) Statue of Hercules smashed Augustine, Epistulae, 50 (ed. Goldbacher, CSEL 34/2, 143) 401 Carthage Statue of Hercules mutilated Augustine, Sermones, 24 (ed. Lambot, CCL 41, 326–33) 493 Constantinople Imperial statues dragged through the streets Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, a. 493, i. 2 (ed. Mommsen, Chron. min. ii, 94) 512 Constantinople Imperial images and statues toppled Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, a. 512, v. 5 (ed. Mommsen, Chron. min. ii, 98) V. targetsoflynching 342 Constantinople Hermogenes, master of horse Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xiv. 10. 2 (ed. Rolfe, i, 80); Socrates, HEii. 13 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 493, 52–4) 354 Antioch Theophilus, governor of Syria Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xiv. 7. 5–6 (ed. Rolfe, i, 54–6); Libanius, Orationes, xix. 46 (ed. Foerster, ii, 405–6) 361 Alexandria George, Arian bishop; Dracontius, master of mint; Diodorus, comes Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xxii. 11. 3–11 (ed. Rolfe, ii, 258–60); Sozomen, HEv. 7 (ed. Festugière, SC 495, 122–6); Socrates, HEiii. 2–3 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 493, 262–70); Julian, Epistulae, 60 (ed. Bidez, 69–72) 390 Thessalonica Butheric, Gothic master of soldiers Sozomen, HEvii. 25. 3 (ed. Festugière, SC 516, 198) 405 Bagai (Numidia) Attempted murder of Maximianus, Catholic bishop Augustine, Epistulae, 185. 7. 26–7 (ed. Goldbacher, CSEL 57, 25–6) 409 Rome Pompeianus, urban prefect Gerontios, Vita Melaniae graeca, 19 (ed. Gorce, SC 90, 166) 409? Carthage John, comes Africae Chronica Gallica, a. 452, 59 (ed. Mommsen, Chron. min. i, 652) 412? Hippo Regius Unnamed imperial official Augustine, Sermones, 302 (SPM 100–11) Mar. 415 Alexandria Hypatia, female philosopher Socrates, HEvii. 15 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 506, 58–60); John of Nikiu, Chronicle, lxxxiv. 100–2 (ed. Zotenberg, 346); Malalas, xiv. 12 (ed. Dindorf, 359; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 196) 434 Aquae Sirensis (Mauretania Caesariensis) Robba, holy woman and sister of the Donatist bishop Honoratus Inscriptiones latinae christianae ueteres, no. 2052 455 Rome Petronius Maximus, emperor Chronica Gallica, a. 511, 623 (ed. Mommsen, Chron. min. i, 663) 457 Alexandria Proterius, Chalcedonian bishop Evagrius, HEii. 8 (ed. Festugière, Grillet and Sabbah, SC 542, 274–84); Pseudo-Zacharias of Mytilene, HEiv. 2 (ed. Brooks, CSCO 83, 172 (Syriac text); 87, 119–20 (Latin trans.)) 494/5 Antioch Attempt by Green partisans to murder Kalepios, comes Orientis Malalas, xvi. 2 (ed. Dindorf, 392–3; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 220) 507 Antioch Menas, commander of the Vigiles Malalas, xvi. 6 (ed. Dindorf, 397–8; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 223) 512 Constantinople One Syrian monk, or possibly two, killed during a major doctrinal riot against the emperor Anastasius Malalas, xvi. 19 (ed. Dindorf, 407; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 228) 515/16 Alexandria Theodosius, prefect of Egypt Malalas, xvi. 15 (ed. Dindorf, 401; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 225) 555/6 Caesarea in Palestine Stephanos, governor Malalas, xviii. 119 (ed. Dindorf, 487; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 294) 578 Constantinople Murder of two pagans, a man and a woman, during anti-pagan riot John of Ephesus, HEiii. 31 (ed. Brooks, CSCO 105, 159–60 (Syriac text); 106, 118–19 (Latin trans.)) VI. fightingbetweenrivalreligiousgroups 328 Alexandria Clashes between Melitians and Athanasius’ supporters in the Mareotis district when a Melitian assembly is interrupted by the Athanasians Epiphanius, Panarion, 68. 7 (ed. Dummer, GCS 3, 147–8) 342 Constantinople Crowds of Christians supporting the rival bishops Paul and Macedonius fight in the streets; many deaths Socrates, HEii. 12. 6; ii. 13. 6 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 493, 52–4); Sozomen, HEiii. 7. 5 (ed. Festugière, SC 418, 84) 346 Alexandria Clashes between Nicene and anti-Nicene Christians on the return of Athanasius; many deaths Socrates, HEii. 15. 6 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 493, 58) 358 Rome Crowds of Christians supporting the rival bishops Liberius and Felix come to blows in the streets on the return of Liberius Sozomen, HEiv. 15. 5 (ed. Festugière, SC 418, 254–6) Constantinople Clashes between Nicene and anti-Nicene Christians in the Church of the Holy Apostles and in the adjoining square provoked by the removal of the coffin of Constantine; many murders on both sides Sozomen, HEiv. 21. 3–6 (ed. Festugière, SC 418, 298) 404 Constantinople Nicene and anti-Nicene Christians come to blows in the streets after a sequence of processions and counter-processions; many murders on both sides Socrates, HEvi. 8. 1–9 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 505, 294–6); Sozomen, HEviii. 8. 1–5 (ed. Festugière, SC 516, 270–2) 412 Alexandria Crowds of Christians supporting the rival candidates for the episcopal see, Cyril and Timothy, fight in the streets for three days Socrates, HEvii. 7 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 506, 34–6) 419 Rome Crowds of Christians supporting the rival bishops Eulalius and Boniface fight in the forum Collectio Avellana, 29 (ed. Günther, CSEL 35, 74–6) 451 Alexandria A crowd of partisans of the deposed bishop Dioscorus fight in the streets with supporters of the newly elected bishop Proterius Evagrius, HEii. 5 (ed. Festugière, Grillet and Sabbah, SC 542, 256–8) 501/2 Rome Partisans of Bishop Lawrence attack the followers of his rival Symmachus ‘with clubs and sword’ in the streets; many killed, both clerical and lay Liber Pontificalis, 53. 5 (ed. Duchesne, 261) 529 Scythopolis Samaritans fight with Christians in the streets in retaliation for a ritual attack on their synagogues; many Christians killed Malalas, xviii. 35 (ed. Dindorf, 445; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 260 text and subtext) 555/6 Caesarea in Palestine Jews and Samaritans attack Christians in the streets ‘like faction members’; many Christians killed Malalas, xviii. 119 (ed. Dindorf, 487; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 294) 560 Antioch Clashes between Chalcedonians and Monophysites; many murders on both sides Theophanes, Chronographia, a.m. 6053 (ed. de Boor, 234–5 = Malalas, xviii. 131; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 299) VII. battlesforchurches 330 Constantina (Numidia) Donatists seize and occupy a church constructed by the emperor for their rivals Constantine, Epistula ad episcopos (ed. Ziwsa, CSEL 26, 213–16) 337 Alexandria Nicene supporters of Bishop Athanasius assault churches to expel the Arians; many deaths Epistula Sinodi Sardicensis Orientalium, 8 (ed. Feder, CSEL 65, 55); Socrates, HEii. 8. 6–7 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 493, 36–8) 339 Alexandria Athanasius’ followers set their own church on fire rather than surrender it to their rivals Socrates, HEii. 11. 3–6 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 493, 48–50) 347 Bagai (Numidia) Bishop Donatus barricades himself in his basilica with a crowd of country folk to bar the way to two imperial commissioners escorted by armed soldiers; a massacre ensues Optatus, iii. 4. 7–11 (ed. Labrousse, SC 413, 42–5) 358 Alexandria Athanasius’ supporters take possession of Arian churches for two months, until the imperial troops expel the Athanasians and restore the churches to George’s followers Sozomen, HEiv. 10. 8–11 (ed. Festugière, SC 418, 228–30) Mantinium (Paphlagonia) Crowd of Novatians successfully resist an attempt by the imperial troops to take possession of their church; nearly all soldiers killed Sozomen, HEiv. 21. 1–2 (ed. Festugière, SC 418, 296) Rome Followers of Bishop Felix seize and occupy the Basilica of Julius in Trastevere, after which they are again thrown out of the city by the supporters of Bishop Liberius Collectio Avellana, 1. 3 (ed. Günther, CSEL 35, 2) 361 Alexandria Athanasius’ supporters once again assault churches and expel the Arians Sozomen, HEv. 7. 1 (ed. Festugière, SC 495, 122) 363 Lemellef (Mauretania Sitifiensis) Donatist crowd under the leadership of bishops returning from exile assault a basilica and expel the Catholics; two clerics killed Optatus, ii. 18. 1–2 (ed. Labrousse, SC 412, 274) 366 Rome Damasus’ supporters assault churches to expel Ursinus’ followers; dozens of deaths Collectio Avellana, 1. 5–7 (ed. Günther, CSEL 35, 2–3); Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xxvii. 3. 13 (ed. Rolfe, iii, 18–20) 385–6 Milan Catholic supporters of Bishop Ambrose barricade themselves in the basilica, refusing to surrender it to the military Ambrose, Epistulae, 75, 75A (= Sermo contra Auxentium), 76 (ed. Faller and Zelzer, CSEL 82/3, 74–125) 393 Carthage Bishop Primian bars the doors of the basilicas with his mob and with state officials to prevent the partisans of his rival Maximian from getting access to the churches Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos, 36. 2. 20 (ed. Dekkers and Fraipont, CCL 38, 361–6) 394 Carthage Basilica of Maximian demolished by a crowd of Primian’s followers Augustine, Contra Cresconium, iii. 59. 65 (ed. Petschenig, CSEL 52, 471); Augustine, Epistulae, 44. 4. 7 (ed. Goldbacher, CSEL 34/2, 115) Before 411 Vegesela (Numidia) Catholics seize possession of the basilica of Marculus to prevent Donatists from getting access to their martyr shrine Gesta conlationis Carthaginiensis, a. 411, i. 133 (ed. Lancel, SC 195, 756) Gratianopolis (Mauretania Caesariensis) Catholics expel Donatists from all their places of assembly Gesta conl. Carthag., a. 411, i. 135 (ed. Lancel, SC 195, 774–6) Constantina (Numidia) Donatists seize Catholic basilicas and destroy all their altars Gesta conl. Carthag., a. 411, i. 139 (ed. Lancel, SC 195, 786) Rotaria (Numidia) Donatists invade the Catholic basilica and kill the bishop Gesta conl. Carthag., a. 411, i. 187 (ed. Lancel, SC 195, 838) Pudentiana (Numidia) Donatists seize and occupy four Catholic basilicas Gesta conl. Carthag., a. 411, i. 201 (ed. Lancel, SC 195, 864) 418–19 Rome Eulalius’ supporters seize and occupy the Lateran basilica, while his rival Boniface advances with his followers upon St Peter’s; after Boniface is confirmed as the rightful bishop of Rome by a synod, Eulalius’ followers reoccupy the Lateran by force but are expelled by the urban prefect Liber Pontificalis, 44. 1–4 (ed. Duchesne, 227); Collectio Avellana, 14–37 (ed. Günther, CSEL 35, 59–84) 419 Thamugadi Bishop Gaudentius and his Donatist partisans barricade themselves in the basilica, refusing to surrender it to the military Augustine, Contra Gaudentium, i. 1. 1, 6. 7 (ed. Petschenig, CSEL 53, 201 and 204); Augustine, Retractationes, ii. 59. 86 (ed. Mutzenbecher, CCL 57, 137) 428 Constantinople Arians set fire to their own chapel and adjacent buildings rather than let it be demolished under the orders of Bishop Nestorius Socrates, HEvii. 29. 8–9 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 506, 108) 431 Ephesus During the Council of Ephesus, Bishop Memnon blocks the churches with a crowd of country folk to prevent Nestorius and his followers from getting access to them; a few days later, inhabitants of the city occupy the churches to prevent the replacement of their bishop Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum, i. 1. 3. 101; i. 1. 5. 151 (ed. Schwartz, 46, 121) 501/2 Rome Bishop Symmachus barricades himself with his followers in St Peter’s to prevent his deposition, while the supporters of his rival Lawrence seize and occupy several titular churches Lawrentian fragment no. 52 (= Liber Pontificalis, ed. Duchesne, 44–6) VIII. fightingbetweenrivalfans 491 Antioch Greens fight the Blues in the hippodrome by throwing stones at them; six months later, Greens killed many Blues, including Jews Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De insidiis, 35 (ed. de Boor, 166–7 = Malalas, xv. 15; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 218 subtext) 501 Constantinople Fighting between supporters of Blues and Greens in the theatre; many deaths Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De insidiis, 38 (ed. de Boor, 168 = Malalas, xvi. 4; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 222 subtext) May 547 Constantinople Fighting between partisans of Blues and Greens in the hippodrome while City’s Birthday chariot-racing is taking place Malalas, xviii. 99 (ed. Dindorf, 483; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 288) July 547 Constantinople Fighting between partisans of Blues and Greens in the streets; many deaths Malalas, xviii. 105 (ed. Dindorf, 484; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 289) 550 Constantinople Fighting between supporters of both factions in the hippodrome while no races are being held; many deaths Malalas, xviii. 108 (ed. Dindorf, 484; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 290) 561 Constantinople Fighting between partisans of Blues and Greens in the hippodrome and streets during and after the races Malalas, xviii. 132 (ed. Dindorf, 490; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 299) May 562 Constantinople Fighting between partisans of Blues and Greens in various places after City’s Birthday chariot-racing Malalas, xviii. 135 (ed. Dindorf, 490–1; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 300) IX. foodriots 354 Antioch Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xiv. 7. 5–6 (ed. Rolfe, i, 54–6); Libanius, Orationes, i. 103; xix. 47; xlvi. 30 (ed. Foerster, i, 133; ii, 406; iii, 394) 355–6 Rome Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xv. 7. 1–5 (ed. Rolfe, i, 158–62) 359–60 Rome Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xix. 10. 1–4 (ed. Rolfe, i, 520–2) 375 Rome Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xxvii. 3. 4 (ed. Rolfe, iii, 14) 382–3 Antioch Libanius, Orationes, i. 205–6 (ed. Foerster, i, 175) 409 Constantinople Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, a. 409, vii (ed. Mommsen, Chron. min. ii, 70); Chronicon Paschale, a. 412 (ed. Dindorf, CSHB 11, 571) Rome Gerontios, Vita Melaniae graeca, 19 (ed. Gorce, SC 90, 166) 410 Rome Zosimus, vi. 11. 1–2 (ed. Paschoud, 14) 431 Constantinople Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, a. 431, xiv. 3 (ed. Mommsen, Chron. min. ii, 78) 515/16 Alexandria Malalas, xvi. 19 (ed. Dindorf, 401–2; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 225) 555 Constantinople Malalas, xviii. 121 (ed. Dindorf, 488; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 295); Theophanes, Chronographia, a.m. 6048 (ed. de Boor, 230) 601 Constantinople Theophylact Simocatta, Historiae, viii. 4. 12 (ed. de Boor, 291) Open in new tab Footnotes * This article reports nine years of research. An earlier draft was presented at the international conference entitled ‘300–800: Between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages’ held in São Paulo in 2011 and organized by Carlos Machado and Marcelo Candido da Silva. I have benefited greatly from the questions offered by that stimulating audience, especially from Mário Jorge da Motta Bastos, Jean-Michel Carrié, Guido Clemente, Norberto L. Guarinello, Cristina La Rocca, Érica Cristhyane Morais da Silva, Bryan Ward-Perkins and Chris Wickham. I also very much appreciate the friendly advice and generous comments I have received since then from Pedro Paulo A. Funari, Carlos R. Galvão-Sobrinho and Lucy Grig, who have read more than one version of the text, as well as the lively discussions I have had with my students. Last but not least, I am immensely grateful to Juliana Garcia and Lucy Grig for their careful revision of my English text. I am, though, solely responsible for the faults and idiosyncrasies that persist. 1 Augustine, Sermones, 302 (SPM, 100–11). References to the source materials will use the following standard abbreviations: CCL = Corpus Christianorum, series Latina (Turnhout, 1953– ); Chron. min. = Chronica minora saec. IV, V, VI, VII, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: auctores antiquissimi, 9, 11, 13, ed. T. Mommsen, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1892–8); CSCO = Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium (Louvain, 1903– ); CSEL = Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (Vienna, 1866– ); CSHB = Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae, 50 vols. (Bonn, 1828–97); GCS = Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten Jahrhunderte (Berlin, 1897– ); PG = Patrologiae cursus completus, series Graeca, ed. J.-P. Migne, 166 vols. (Paris, 1857–1912); PL = Patrologiae cursus completus, series Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne, 221 vols. (Paris, 1844–64); PLS = Patrologiae Latinae Supplementum, ed. A.-G. Hamman, 5 vols. (Paris, 1958–74); SC = Sources chrétiennes (Paris, 1942– ); SPM = Stromata Patristica et Mediaevalia, 1, ed. C. Lambot (Utrecht, 1950). References to John Malalas, Chronographia (hereafter Malalas) are to Ioannis Malalae Chronographia, CSHB 15, ed. L. Dindorf (Bonn, 1831), but follow the numbered paragraphs of the English translation by Elizabeth Jeffreys, Michael Jeffreys and Roger Scott, The Chronicle of John Malalas (Melbourne, 1986). The various Church histories are abbreviated HE (Historia Ecclesiastica). 2 Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xiv. 7. 6 (ed. and trans. Rolfe, i, 54–7). 3 Ibid., xxvii. 3. 13 (ed. and trans. Rolfe, iii, 18–21). 4 For examples of the first tendency, which characterizes Late Antiquity by the high level of urban violence, see Ramsay MacMullen, Changes in the Roman Empire: Essays in the Ordinary (Princeton, 1990), ch. 24; Polymnia Athanassiadi, Vers la pensée unique: la montée de l’intolérance dans l’Antiquité tardive (Paris, 2010); J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, The Decline and Fall of the Roman City (Oxford, 2001), ch. 8. At the opposite extreme, for examples of authors who seek to minimize the magnitude and impact of the violence, attributing it more to the discourse of ancient authors than to reality, and seeing the episodes of violence as occasional breakdowns within a more orderly norm, see Neil McLynn, ‘Christian Controversy and Violence in the Fourth Century’, Kodai, iii (1992); Peter Brown, Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World (Cambridge, 1995), ch. 2. For a parallel approach, minimizing the importance of religious motivations for the outbreak of violence, but conceiving all popular collective actions as a veiled form of maintaining the traditional order, see Rita Lizzi, ‘Discordia in urbe: pagani e cristiani in rivolta’, in Franca Ela Consolino (ed.), Pagani e cristiani da Giuliano l’Apostata al sacco di Roma (Soveria Mannelli, 1995); Johannes Hahn, Gewalt und religiöser Konflikt: Studien zu den Auseinandersetzungen zwischen Christen, Heiden und Juden im Osten des Römischen Reiches (von Konstantin bis Theodosius II) (Berlin, 2004). 5 See, for instance, Brent D. Shaw, Sacred Violence: African Christians and Sectarian Hatred in the Age of Augustine (Cambridge, 2011); Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira, Potestas populi: participation populaire et action collective dans les villes de l’Afrique romaine tardive (vers 300-430 apr. J.-C.) (Turnhout, 2012); Carlos R. Galvão-Sobrinho, Doctrine and Power: Theological Controversy and Christian Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2013); Peter N. Bell, Social Conflict in the Age of Justinian: Its Nature, Management, and Mediation (Oxford, 2013). 6 I am particularly indebted to the following works: Georges Lefebvre, La Grande Peur de 1789 (Paris, 1932); Natalie Zemon Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford, 1975); E. P. Thompson, Customs in Common: Studies in Traditional Popular Culture (London, 1993); Nicholas Rogers, Crowds, Culture and Politics in Georgian Britain (Oxford, 1998); Charles Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence (Cambridge, 2003); Sidney G. Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics, revised 3rd edn (Cambridge, 2011). 7 Nicholas Purcell, ‘The Populace of Rome in Late Antiquity: Problems of Classification and Historical Description’, in W. V. Harris (ed.), The Transformations of Vrbs Roma in Late Antiquity, Journal of Roman Archaeology, suppl. ser., xxxiii (1999), 135. 8 Wolfgang Liebeschuetz, ‘The End of the Ancient City’, in John Rich (ed.), The City in Late Antiquity (London, 1992). 9 In general, see Peter Garnsey and C. R. Whittaker, ‘Trade, Industry and the Urban Economy’, in Averil Cameron and Peter Garnsey (ed.), The Cambridge Ancient History, xiii, The Late Empire, ad 337–425 (Cambridge, 1997). For the papyrological documentation, see Roger S. Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity (Princeton, 1993), 78–92. For the archaeological evidence, see Andrew Wilson, ‘Urban Production in the Roman World: The View from North Africa’, Papers of the British School at Rome, lxx (2002). 10 See, for example, Leontius, Life of John the Almsgiver, 21, on homeless and starving outsiders sleeping in the agora in early seventh-century Alexandria. 11 Peter Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (Hanover, NH, 2002), 11–16; Wendy Mayer, ‘Poverty and Society in the World of John Chrysostom’, in William Bowden, Adam Gutteridge and Carlos Machado (eds.), Social and Political Life in Late Antiquity (Leiden, 2006). 12 See Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira, ‘Le Peuple et le gouvernement des cités (IVe–VIe siècles)’, Antiquité tardive, xxvi (2018). 13 Perry Anderson, Arguments with English Marxism (London, 1980), 42. 14 Charles Tilly, ‘Collective Action’, in Peter N. Stearns (ed.), Encyclopedia of European Social History from 1350 to 2000, 6 vols. (New York, 2001), iii, 190. 15 George Rudé, The Crowd in History (New York, 1964), ch. 13. 16 On the limits of the evidence, see also Liebeschuetz, Decline and Fall of the Roman City, 249–52; Bell, Social Conflict in the Age of Justinian, 120–40. 17 For acclamations, see Charlotte Roueché, ‘Acclamations in the Later Roman Empire: New Evidence from Aphrodisias’, Journal of Roman Studies, lxxiv (1984); Hans-Ulrich Wiemer, ‘Akklamationen im spätrömischen Reich: zur Typologie und Funktion eines Kommunikationsrituals’, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, lxxxvi, 1 (2004). 18 Lucy Grig, ‘Popular Culture and Social Conflict in Late Antiquity’, paper presented at the XXIII Finnish Symposium on Late Antiquity, ‘Conflict in Late Antiquity’, Tvärminne, Finland, 17–18 Oct. 2014. See also Purcell, ‘Populace of Rome in Late Antiquity’, 158. 19 Roueché, ‘Acclamations in the Later Roman Empire’, 198. 20 Liebeschuetz, Decline and Fall of the Roman City, 248. 21 Pedro Paulo A. Funari, ‘Conflict and the Interpretation of Palmares, a Brazilian Runaway Polity’, Historical Archaeology, xxxvii, 3 (2003), 81–3. 22 Aristotle, Politics, i. 1252a7 (ed. and trans. Rackham, 2). For the Aristotelian definitions of the polis, see Kostas Vlassopoulos, Unthinking the Greek Polis: Ancient Greek History beyond Eurocentrism (Cambridge, 2007), ch. 2. 23 On the ideal of homonoia, see Aristotle, Politics, iv. 1295b (ed. and trans. Rackham, 330). For the modern understanding of stasis as a ‘political disease’, see Kostas Kalimtzis, Aristotle on Political Enmity and Disease: An Inquiry into Stasis (Albany, 2000); Ronald Weed, Aristotle on Stasis: A Moral Psychology of Political Conflict (Berlin, 2007). 24 Aristotle, Politics, v. 1301a39–40 (ed. and trans. Rackham, 18–19). 25 Steven C. Skultety, review of Weed, Aristotle on Stasis, Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 2008.08.18, <http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2008/2008-08-18.html> (accessed 7 Nov. 2019). 26 For the Greek cities, see Andrew Lintott, Violence, Civil Strife and Revolution in the Classical City, 750–330 bc (London, 1982); Hans-Joachim Gehrke, Stasis: Untersuchungen zu den inneren Kriegen in den griechischen Staaten des 5. und 4. Jahrhunderts v. Chr. (Munich, 1985). For Rome, see Kurt A. Raaflaub (ed.), Social Struggles in Archaic Rome: New Perspectives on the Conflict of the Orders, 2nd edn (Malden, Mass., 2005); P. A. Brunt, ‘The Roman Mob’, Past and Present, no. 35 (Dec. 1966); Andrew Lintott, Violence in Republican Rome (Oxford, 1968); Wilfried Nippel, Public Order in Ancient Rome (Cambridge, 1995), chs. 2–3; Cyril Courrier, La Plèbe de Rome et sa culture (fin du IIe siècle av. J.-C. – fin du 1er siècle ap. J.-C.) (Rome, 2014), chs. 6–7. 27 Contra M. I. Finley, Politics in the Ancient World (Cambridge, 1983), 27: ‘political stability rested on the acceptance in all classes of legitimacy of status and status-inequality in some measure, not only of the existence of boni but also of their right to greater wealth, greater social standing and political authority’. On the rise of notables and the ‘aristocratization’ of political life in the Late Hellenistic period, see Pierre Fröhlich, ‘Les Magistrats des cités grecques: image et réalité du pouvoir (IIe s. a.C. – Ier s. p.C.)’, in Hervé Inglebert (ed.), Idéologies et valeurs civiques dans le monde romain (Paris, 2002); Patrice Hamon, ‘Le Conseil et la participation des citoyens: les mutations de la basse époque hellénistique’, in Pierre Fröhlich and Christel Müller (eds.), Citoyenneté et participation à la basse époque hellénistique (Geneva, 2005); Hans-Ulrich Wiemer, ‘Hellenistic Cities: The End of the Greek Democracy?’, in Hans Beck (ed.), A Companion to Ancient Greek Government (Malden, Mass., 2013), 64–7. 28 For the aristocratic ideology of gift-giving, see Paul Veyne, Le Pain et le cirque: sociologie historique d’un pluralisme politique (Paris, 1976), 298–317, to be read in conjunction with the lucid review of Jean Andreau, Pauline Schmitt and Alain Schnapp, ‘Paul Veyne et l’évergétisme’, Annales ESC, xxxiii, 2 (1978). See also Arjan Zuiderhoek, The Politics of Munificence in the Roman Empire: Citizens, Elites and Benefactors in Asia Minor (Cambridge, 2009). 29 See Marc Kleijwegt, ‘Voluntarily, but under Pressure: Voluntarity and Constraint in Greek Municipal Politics’, Mnemosyne, xlvii, 1 (1994); Arjan Zuiderhoek, ‘The Ambiguity of Munificence’, Historia, lvi, 2 (2007). 30 Paul Erdkamp, ‘ “A Starving Mob Has No Respect”: Urban Markets and Food Riots in the Roman World, 100 bc – ad 400’, in Lukas de Blois and John Rich (eds.), The Transformation of Economic Life under the Roman Empire (Amsterdam, 2002). 31 Dio Chrysostom, Orationes, xlvi (ed. Crosby, iv, 228–40). 32 Suetonius, Tiberius, 37 (ed. and trans. Rolfe, i, 346–7). 33 For a similar approach to domination as a negotiating process, see James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, 1990). 34 Yann Rivière, ‘Les Batailles de Rome: présence militaire et guérilla urbaine à l’époque impériale’, Histoire urbaine, x (2004). On elite ambivalence towards the use of troops, see Benjamin Kelly, ‘Riot Control and Imperial Ideology in the Roman Empire’, Phoenix, lxi (2007). 35 Ariel Lewin, Assemblee popolari e lotta politica nelle città dell’impero romano (Florence, 1995). 36 Plutarch, Precepts of Statecraft, 815a–b (ed. and trans. Fowler, 244–5). 37 See, for example, the discursive strategies of Apuleius and the town councillors of Carthage discussed by Adolfo La Rocca, Il filosofo e la città: commento storico ai Florida di Apuleio (Rome, 2005), 61–4. 38 E. P. Thompson, ‘Patrician Society, Plebeian Culture’, Journal of Social History, vii, 4 (1974), 389. 39 On the (Gramscian) concept of cultural hegemony, see T. J. Jackson Lears, ‘The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities’, American Historical Review, xc, 3 (1985). 40 Mark Whittow, ‘Ruling the Late Roman and Early Byzantine City: A Continuous History’, Past and Present, no. 129 (Nov. 1990); Giovanni Alberto Cecconi, ‘Crisi e trasformazioni del governo municipale in Occidente fra IV e VI secolo’, in Jens-Uwe Krause and Christian Witschel (eds.), Die Stadt in der Spätantike: Niedergang oder Wandel? (Stuttgart, 2006). 41 Roueché, ‘Acclamations in the Later Roman Empire’, 198. 42 Jean-Michel Carrié, ‘Developments in Provincial and Local Administration’, in Alan K. Bowman, Averil Cameron and Peter Garnsey (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History, xii, The Crisis of Empire, ad 193–337, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 2005). 43 Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison, 1992), 19. 44 For the internal divisions of the curia in the fourth century, see Claude Lepelley, ‘Quot curiales, tot tyranni: l’image du décurion oppresseur au Bas-Empire’, in Edmond Frézouls (ed.), Crise et redressement dans les provinces européennes de l’empire (milieu du IIIe – milieu du IVe siècle ap. J.-C.) (Strasbourg, 1983). For the subsequent evolution, see Avshalom Laniado, Recherches sur les notables municipaux dans l’empire protobyzantin (Paris, 2002). 45 For the impact on local society of imperial privileges gained through imperial service, see Fergus Millar, ‘Empire and City, Augustus to Julian: Obligations, Excuses and Status’, Journal of Roman Studies, lxxiii (1983); Jairus Banaji, Agrarian Change in Late Antiquity: Gold, Labour, and Aristocratic Dominance (Oxford, 2007); and, most recently, Peter Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350–550 ad (Princeton, 2012), 21–30. Per contra, see Alexander Skinner, ‘Political Mobility in the Later Roman Empire’, Past and Present, no. 218 (Feb. 2013), who argues, instead, that recruitment to imperial service in the fourth century tended only to reflect previous aristocratic stratification and that late antique elites were no more fragmented than before. I am not convinced. 46 Brown, Power and Persuasion, chs. 3–4, remains the landmark study of this process. For the later phases of the ‘rise of the Christian bishop’, see Liebeschuetz, Decline and Fall of the Roman City, ch. 4. 47 See, for instance, Chris Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400–800 (Oxford, 2005), 591–674; S. T. Loseby, ‘Mediterranean Cities’, in Philip Rousseau (ed.), A Companion to Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2009); and, most recently, Fiona Haarer, ‘Developments in the Governance of Late Antique Cities’, in Umberto Roberto and Laura Mecella (eds.), Governare e riformare l’impero al momento della sua divisione: Oriente, Occidente, Illirico (Rome, 2015). 48 Cecconi, ‘Crisi e trasformazione del governo municipale in Occidente fra IV e VI secolo’, 311. 49 Richard Lim, ‘Christian Triumph and Controversy’, in G. W. Bowersock, Peter Brown and Oleg Grabar (eds.), Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World (Cambridge, Mass., 1999). 50 Galvão-Sobrinho, Doctrine and Power. 51 Richard Lim, ‘People as Power: Games, Munificence and Contested Topography’, in Harris (ed.), The Transformations of Vrbs Roma in Late Antiquity. 52 For the general importance of crowd approval in late antiquity, see Jill Harries, ‘Favor populi: Pagans, Christians, and Public Entertainment in Late Antique Italy’, in Kathryn Lomas and Tim Cornell (eds.), Bread and Circuses: Euergetism and Municipal Patronage in Roman Italy (London, 2003). 53 On the risks of indebtedness and impoverishment, see Purcell, ‘Populace of Rome in Late Antiquity’, 150–6. On the different levels of prosperity and production across the empire, see Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages, chs. 10–11; Bryan Ward-Perkins, ‘Specialized Production and Exchange’, in Averil Cameron, Bryan Ward-Perkins and Michael Whitby (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History, xiv, Late Antiquity: Empire and Successors, ad 425–600 (Cambridge, 2001). 54 Santo Mazzarino, Aspetti sociali del quarto secolo: ricerche di storia tardo-romana (Rome, 1951); Banaji, Agrarian Change in Late Antiquity, ch. 3; Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle, ch. 1. For the high degree of monetization and commodification of production on aristocratic estates in late antiquity, see Peter Sarris, ‘Rehabilitating the Great Estate: Aristocratic Property and Economic Growth in the Late Antique East’, in William Bowden, Luke Lavan and Carlos Machado (eds.), Recent Research on the Late Antique Countryside (Leiden, 2004). For the profits aristocrats derived from rents, loans and the sale of agricultural produce in urban markets, see Andrea Giardina, ‘Aristocrazie terriere e piccola mercatura: sui rapporti tra potere politico e formazione dei prezzi nel tardo impero romano’, Quaderni urbinati di cultura classica, vii (1981). 55 Leslie Dossey, Peasant and Empire in Christian North Africa (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2010), 5. 56 For instance, Peter Fibiger Bang, ‘Trade and Empire: In Search of Organizing Concepts for the Roman Economy’, Past and Present, no. 195 (May 2007), 22–3. 57 Jinyu Liu, Collegia centonariorum: The Guilds of Textile Dealers in the Roman West (Boston, 2009), 291–3. 58 Which, as Miko Flohr has noted, was already the case in the early empire: ‘Nec quicquam ingenuum habere potest officina? Spatial Contexts of Urban Production at Pompeii, ad 79’, BABesch, lxxxii (2007), 145. 59 For the organization of urban production, see Wilson, ‘Urban Production in the Roman World’. 60 For Meninx, see E. Fentress, A. Drine and R. Holod et al., An Island through Time: Jerba Studies, i: The Punic and Roman Periods, Journal of Roman Archaeology, suppl. ser., lxxii (2009), 167–73. For Leptiminus, see David J. Mattingly et al., ‘Leptiminus (Tunisia): A “Producer” City?’, in David J. Mattingly and John Salmon (eds.), Economies beyond Agriculture in the Classical World (London, 2001). For Sagalassos, see Elizabeth A. Murphy and Jeroen Poblome, ‘A Late Antique Ceramic Workshop Complex: Evidence for Workshop Organisation at Sagalassos (Southwest Turkey)’, Anatolian Studies, lxvi (2016); Jeroen Poblome, ‘The Potters of Ancient Sagalassos Revisited’, in Andrew Wilson and Miko Flohr (eds.), Urban Craftsmen and Traders in the Roman World (Oxford, 2016). For Dor, see A. Raban, ‘Dor-Yam: Maritime and Coastal Installations at Dor in their Geomorphological and Stratigraphic Context’, in Ephraim Stern (ed.), Excavations at Dor: Final Report, 1A, Areas A and C: Introduction and Stratigraphy (Jerusalem, 1995). For Carthage, see Friedrich Rakob (ed.), Karthago I: Die deutschen Ausgrabungen in Karthago (Mainz, 1991), 242–9; H. R. Hurst, Excavations at Carthage: The British Mission, ii/1, The Circular Harbour, North Side: The Site and Finds Other than Pottery (Oxford, 1994), chs. 5, 8–9. For Alexandria, see Mieczysław Rodziewicz and Kazimierz Michałowski, Alexandrie III: les habitations romaines tardives d’Alexandrie à la lumière des fouilles polonaises à Kôm el-Dikka (Warsaw, 1984), 241–2, 249–51, 331–8. 61 For Panopolis and Oxyrhynchos, see Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity, 51, quoting especially P. Oxy.xlvi. 3300 (eighteen properties found on three sides of a city block, including those of two fishermen, a builder, an embroiderer, a dyer, a vegetable seller, a linen weaver, a carpenter and a baker). 62 For a survey of the archaeological evidence, see Luke Lavan, ‘From polis to emporion? Retail and Regulation in the Late Antique City’, in Cécile Morrisson (ed.), Trade and Markets in Byzantium (Washington, DC, 2012). For Scythopolis, see also Elias Khamis, ‘The Shops of Scythopolis in Context’, in Luke Lavan, Ellen Swift and Toon Putzeys (eds.), Objects in Context, Objects in Use: Material Spatiality in Late Antiquity (Leiden, 2007). For Sardis, see J. Stephens Crawford, The Byzantine Shops at Sardis (Cambridge, Mass., 1990). 63 For silversmiths, see Augustine, De civitate Dei, vii. 4. For communal rent, see John Chrysostom, Homiliae ad populum Antiochenum, xvi. 6 (PG 49, 172). 64 Libanius, Orationes, viii. 4; xxxi. 25; xlviii. 13 (ed. Foerster, i, 386; iii, 136–7, 434); John Chrysostom, Homiliae XLIV in Epistolam I ad Corinthios, xxvi. 5–6 (PG 61, 313–14; my trans.). 65 Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xxviii. 4. 29 (ed. Rolfe, iii, 156; my trans.). 66 Augustine, De catechizandis rudibus, xvi. 25. 7–8 (ed. van den Hout et al., CCL 46, 149–50); with Shaw, Sacred Violence, 457; Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xiv. 1. 9 (ed. Rolfe, i, 10). 67 Jean-Michel Carrié, ‘Les Associations professionnelles à l’époque tardive: entre munus et convivialité’, in Jean-Michel Carrié and Rita Lizzi Testa (eds.), ‘Humana sapit’: études d’Antiquité tardive offertes à Lellia Cracco Ruggini (Turnhout, 2002). On the corpora, or guilds, responsible for the transportation and processing of supplies for civic distributions in Rome and Constantinople, see Boudewijn Sirks, Food for Rome: The Legal Structure of the Transportation and Processing of Supplies for the Imperial Distributions in Rome and Constantinople (Amsterdam, 1991). 68 Codex Theodosianus, vii. 21. 3 (396); x. 3. 5 (400); xii. 19. 3 (400); xiii. 5. 34 (400); xvi. 2. 39 (408); xii. 1. 179 (415) (ed. Mommsen, Meyer and Krüger, i, 355, 533, 734, 756, 848–9, 706–7). 69 Novellae Maioriani, vii (458) (ed. Mommsen, Meyer and Krüger, ii, 167–74), discussed by Carrié, ‘Associations professionnelles à l’époque tardive’, 320. 70 Andrea Giardina, ‘Lavoro e storia sociale: antagonismi e alleanze dall’ellenismo al tardoantico’, Opus, i (1982). See also Enrico Zanini, ‘Artisans and Traders in the Early Byzantine Cities: Exploring the Limits of Archaeological Evidence’, in William Bowden, Adam Gutteridge and Carlos Machado (eds.), Social and Political Life in Late Antiquity (Leiden, 2006). 71 Marco Di Branco, ‘Lavoro e conflittualità sociale in una città tardoantica: una rilettura dell’epigrafe di Sardi CIG 3467 (= Le Bas-Waddington 628 = Sardis VII, 1, n. 18)’, Antiquité tardive, viii (2000). 72 Gregory of Nazianzus, Orationes, xliii. 57, trans. C. G. Browne and J. E. Swallow, in Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd ser., vii, ed. Philip Schaff (Grand Rapids, 1974), 413. On the organization and privileges of the imperial arms workers, see S. James, ‘The fabricae: State Arms Factories of the Later Roman Empire’, in J. C. Coulston (ed.), Military Equipment and the Identity of Roman Soldiers (Oxford, 1988). 73 The classic work on the subject by Alan Cameron, Circus Factions: Blues and Greens at Rome and Byzantium (Oxford, 1976), remains fundamental, although ultimately limited by his preoccupation with undermining previous theories on the circus factions as political or religious parties in disguise. Charlotte Roueché offers a more convincing reassessment of the origins, development and growing importance of the factions: Performers and Partisans at Aphrodisias in the Roman and Late Roman Periods: A Study Based on Inscriptions from the Current Excavations at Aphrodisias in Caria (London, 1993), ch. 8. On the reorganization of the factions on an empire-wide basis, see also Liebeschuetz, Decline and Fall of the Roman City, ch. 6. 74 Procopius, Anekdota, xxix. 29–34 (ed. and trans. Dewing, 342–5). 75 See n. 72 above; Brown, Power and Persuasion, 89–103. 76 Ramsay MacMullen, ‘Cultural and Political Changes in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries’, Historia, lii, 4 (2003), 483. 77 For the strategies developed by churchmen to canvass support among the people, see Galvão-Sobrinho, Doctrine and Power, ch. 4 (for the Arian controversy); Shaw, Sacred Violence, chs. 9–10 (for the North African schism). For the popular involvement in the doctrinal controversies of the fifth century, see Timothy E. Gregory, Vox populi: Popular Opinion and Violence in the Religious Controversies of the Fifth Century (Columbus, 1979). For popular participation in ecclesiastical elections, see Luce Pietri, Yvette Duval and Charles Pietri, ‘Peuple chrétien ou plebs: le rôle des laïcs dans les élections ecclésiastiques en Occident’, in Michel Christol et al. (eds.), Institutions, société et vie politique dans l’Empire romain au IVe siècle ap. J.-C. (Rome, 1992); Peter Norton, Episcopal Elections, 250–600: Hierarchy and Popular Will in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2007), ch. 3. 78 Ramsay MacMullen, response to Henry Chadwick, in Henry Chadwick, Edward C. Hobbs and Wilhelm Wuellner (eds.), The Role of the Christian Bishop in Ancient Society: Protocol of the Thirty-Fifth Colloquy, 25 February 1979 (Berkeley, 1980), 25. See also Liebeschuetz, Decline and Fall of the Roman City, 214: ‘The notables of the fifth century and after were an oligarchy too, but an oligarchy whose members could not be clearly identified, and which did its business not in public … The only means to outsiders to bring their views to the attention of such a closed circle was through public demonstrations. The chance that a serious riot would result was evidently considerable’. 79 Richard Alston, The City in Roman and Byzantine Egypt (Abingdon, 2002), 232–5. See also n. 4 above. 80 For his denunciation of the ‘spasmodic view of popular history’, see E. P. Thompson, ‘The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century’, Past and Present, no. 50 (Feb. 1971), 76. For a critical account of ‘breakdown’ and resource mobilization theories of collective action, see Doug McAdam, The Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930–1970, 2nd edn (Chicago, 1999), chs. 2–3. For a summary of the more recent debates, see Tarrow, Power in Movement, ch. 1. For a historiography of the field of crowd studies, see Rogers, Crowds, Culture, and Politics in Georgian Britain, 1–17. 81 Tilly, Politics of Collective Violence, 32. 82 Charles Tilly, ‘Contentious Repertoires in Great Britain, 1758–1834’, in Mark Traugott (ed.), Repertoires and Cycles of Collective Action (Durham, NC, 1995), 26. 83 Ann Swidler, ‘Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies’, American Sociological Review, li, 2 (1986), 277. 84 Jaclyn L. Maxwell, Christianization and Communication in Late Antiquity: John Chrysostom and his Congregation in Antioch (Cambridge, 2006), ch. 2. On the opportunities for popular satire and criticism, see also Maud W. Gleason, ‘Festive Satire: Julian’s Misopogon and the New Year at Antioch’, Journal of Roman Studies, lxxvi (1986). 85 On this regional variability, see Lucy Grig, ‘Cities in the “Long” Late Antiquity, 2000–2012: A Survey Essay’, Urban History, xl, 3 (2013). On the spectacles and their settings in Late Antiquity, see the papers in Antiquité tardive, xv (2007). 86 Roueché, ‘Acclamations in the Later Roman Empire’, 184; Nicholas Horsfall, The Culture of the Roman Plebs (London, 2003), 41. 87 For acclamations forwarded to emperors, see Codex Theodosianus, i. 16. 6 (331); viii. 5. 32 (371) (ed. Mommsen, Meyer and Krüger, i, 56, 383). 88 Roueché, ‘Acclamations in the Later Roman Empire’; Wiemer, ‘Akklamationen im spätrömischen Reich’, 56–66. 89 Bell, Social Conflict in the Age of Justinian, 157. On the theatrical claque, see Libanius, Orationes, xix–xxiii (ed. Foerster, ii, 385–507); with Robert Browning, ‘The Riot of ad 387 in Antioch: The Role of the Theatrical Claques in the Later Empire’, Journal of Roman Studies, xlii (1952). 90 Roueché, ‘Acclamations in the Later Roman Empire’, 198. 91 On the Nika Riot and the violent chanting that accompanied it, see Procopius, Wars, i. 24 (ed. Dewing, i, 218–38); Malalas, xviii. 71 (ed. Dindorf, 473–6; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 275–80); Chronicon Paschale, a. 532 (ed. Dindorf, CSHB 11, 620–9); Theophanes, Chronographia, a.m. 6024 (ed. de Boor, 181–6); with Geoffrey Greatrex, ‘The Nika Riot: A Reappraisal’, Journal of Hellenic Studies, cxvii (1997). 92 For rescues, arson, stone-throwing, destruction of statues and targets of lynching, see Appendix, sections I–V. 93 Augustine, Sermones, 302. 20 (SPM, 110, my trans.). 94 Nippel, Public Order in Ancient Rome, 39–46. 95 Peter Stewart, ‘The Destruction of Statues in Late Antiquity’, in Richard Miles (ed.), Constructing Identities in Late Antiquity (Abingdon, 1999). 96 For targets of lynching, see Appendix, section V. For the rising number of laws authorizing capital punishment in the late empire, see Jean-Michel Carrié and Aline Rousselle, L’Empire romain en mutation, des Sévères à Constantin (192–337) (Paris, 1999), 345–6. 97 Christopher Haas, Alexandria in Late Antiquity: Topography and Social Conflict (Baltimore, 1997), 83. 98 See, for example, Augustine, Epistulae, 91. 8 (ed. Goldbacher, CSEL 34/2, 433), in which the traditional dancing procession of the Kalends of June pass in front of the Christian basilica; when the clergy try to stop the celebration, the crowd begin to hurl stones at the church. 99 Socrates, HEvi. 8. 1–9 (ed. Périchon and Maraval, SC 505, 294–6); Sozomen, HEviii. 8. 1–5 (ed. Festugière, SC 516, 270–2); with Nathanael Andrade, ‘The Processions of John Chrysostom and the Contested Spaces of Constantinople’, Journal of Early Christian Studies, xviii, 2 (2010). 100 For fighting between rival religious groups, see Appendix, section VI. 101 Jacob A. Latham, ‘From Literal to Spiritual Soldiers of Christ: Disputed Episcopal Elections and the Advent of Christian Processions in Late Antique Rome’, Church History, lxxxi, 2 (2012). For battles for churches, see Appendix, section VII. 102 As in other forms of violent rituals: see Tilly, Politics of Collective Violence, ch. 4. 103 For fighting between rival fans, see Appendix, section VIII. On the dynamics of factional conflict, see also Bell, Social Conflict in the Age of Justinian, 146–9. 104 McLynn, ‘Christian Controversy and Violence in the Fourth Century’; Lizzi, ‘Discordia in urbe’. 105 Collectio Avellana, 1. 5 (ed. Günther, CSEL 35, 2). Ammianus Marcellinus attributes the clashes to rival crowds of plebeians: Res gestae, xxvii. 3. 12–13 (ed. Rolfe, iii, 18–20). Contra McLynn, ‘Christian Controversy and Violence in the Fourth Century’, 36. 106 See Libanius, Orationes, xix–xxiii (ed. Foerster, ii, 385–507); with Browning, ‘Riot of ad 387 in Antioch’. 107 Bell, Social Conflict in the Age of Justinian, 40–6. 108 Lefebvre, La Grande Peur de 1789; Thompson, ‘Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century’; Natalie Zemon Davis, ‘The Rites of Violence: Religious Riot in Sixteenth-Century France’, Past and Present, no. 59 (May 1973); Alain Corbin, The Village of Cannibals: Rage and Murder in France, 1870, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, 1992). 109 Tilly, Politics of Collective Violence, 34–41. The notion of ‘entrepreneurs’ (including political or religious leaders) highlights their capacity to act as ‘brokers’ who are able to activate ‘boundaries, stories, and relations’, connect people, co-ordinate violent campaigns and represent their constituencies: ibid., 34. 110 As Pierre Bourdieu put it, ‘undertakings of collective mobilization cannot succeed without a minimum of concordance between the habitus of the mobilizing agents (e.g. prophet, party leader, etc.) and the dispositions of those whose aspirations and world-view they express’: Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, 1977), 81. 111 Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience (New York, 1974). 112 I follow here the wider understanding of the meaning-making work proposed by Tarrow rather than the original formulation of the concept of framing proposed by David Snow and Robert Benford, who stressed only the cognitive and strategic aspects of this process: Tarrow, Power in Movement, 25–6, 31–2, 140–6; David A. Snow and Robert D. Benford, ‘Master Frames and Cycles of Protest’, in Aldon D. Morris and Carol McClurg Mueller (eds.), Frontiers in Social Movement Theory (New Haven, 1992), 137. For the importance of emotions in creating solidarity among participants in a contentious collective action, see Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper and Francesca Polletta (eds.), Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements (Chicago, 2001). 113 For ‘hot cognitions’, see William S. Gamson, Talking Politics (Cambridge, 1992), 7. 114 In Rome, in 365, the house of the urban prefect Lampadius was attacked by the crowd because of his illegal seizure of iron, lead and bronze from artisans and shopkeepers: Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xxvii. 3. 8–10 (ed. Rolfe, iii, 16–18). In Hippo, in 412, an imperial official was lynched for having oppressed and reduced ‘numbers of people to begging and poverty’: Augustine, Sermones, 302 (SPM, 100–11). In Tarsus, in the late 540s, an imperial official was publicly insulted by the Blues in the marketplace for having ‘robbed citizens of their money’: Procopius, Anekdota, xxix. 29–31 (ed. Dewing, 342). The notorious riot of 387 in Antioch combined popular resentment for the previous years of scarcity with their indignation about a new levy in gold falling not only upon the town councils, but also upon craftsmen and traders; hence, as we have seen, their attacks on both the imperial statues and the notables’ houses: see n. 106 above. On indebtedness as ‘the chief cause of riot in every city’, see Jerome, In Isaiam, xvi. 58. 6 (PL 24, 656). For protests against the debasement of the coinage, see Malalas, xviii. 117 (ed. Dindorf, 486; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 293). On the food riots, see Appendix, section IX. 115 See, for example, P. Oxy. I, 41, discussed in Thomas Kruse, ‘The Magistrate and the Ocean: Acclamations and Ritualized Communication in Town Gatherings in Roman Egypt’, in Eftychia Stavrianopoulou (ed.), Ritual and Communication in the Graeco-Roman World, suppl. to Kernos, xvi (2006), 310–13 (proceedings of a meeting held at Oxyrhynchos, about 300, in which a crowd try to persuade the city council and high officials to confer an honorary position on the Prytanis Dioskoros, the president of the council, by chanting, among many slogans, ‘the magistrate for the less well off!’, probably because he has previously reduced the fiscal burden of the more modest citizens); Augustine, Epistulae, 22*, 23*, 23*A (ed. Divjak, CSEL 88, 113–25) (a crowd of Christians, ‘and especially the poor’ (et maxime pauperes), try to force the transfer of Bishop Honorius to the Episcopal See of Mauretanian Caesarea in 422 because he is known to have been effective in dealing with the authorities). 116 Erdkamp, ‘A Starving Mob Has No Respect’, 105. For Rome, see also Hans Peter Kohns, Versorgungskrisen und Hungerrevolten in spätantiken Rom (Bonn, 1961). On the concept of ‘moral economy’, see Thompson, ‘The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century’. 117 Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle, 65. 118 pretium impone carni humanae: Zosimus, vi. 11. 1–2 (ed. Paschoud, 14). See Purcell, ‘Populace of Rome in Late Antiquity’, 155. 119 Libanius, Orationes, i. 230 (ed. Foerster, i, 184; trans. Norman, i, 287–9). 120 Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xxvii. 3. 4 (ed. and trans. Rolfe, iii, 14–15); Lizzi, ‘Discordia in urbe’, 128–32. 121 Lizzi, ‘Discordia in urbe’, 140; Purcell, ‘Populace of Rome in Late Antiquity’, 153. 122 Laurent Bonelli, ‘Révolte des banlieues: les raisons d’une colère’, Le Monde diplomatique (Dec. 2005). 123 For the riot of Antioch, see Malalas, xvi. 6 (ed. Dindorf, 397–8; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 223). For the Nika Riot, see Procopius, Wars, i. 24. 7–8; Malalas, xviii. 71 (ed. Dindorf, 473; Eng. trans. Jeffreys et al., 275); with Greatrex, ‘Nika Riot’, 67–70. For the snowballing of the riot masses in the faction riots, see Liebeschuetz, Decline and Fall of the Roman City, 252–3. 124 Michael Gaddis, There Is No Crime for Those Who Have Christ: Religious Violence in the Christian Roman Empire (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2005), ch. 2. 125 For riot in Alexandria, see Evagrius, HEii. 5 (ed. Festugière, Grillet and Sabbah, SC 542, 256–8); with Gregory, Vox Populi, 182–3. 126 Carlos R. Galvão-Sobrinho, ‘Embodied Theologies: Christian Identity and Violence in Alexandria in the Early Arian Controversy’, in H. A. Drake (ed.), Violence in Late Antiquity Perceptions and Practices (Aldershot, 2006). 127 Shaw, Sacred Violence, ch. 4. 128 See Latham, ‘From Literal to Spiritual Soldiers of Christ’; Appendix, sections VI and VII. 129 For Ambrose’s followers, see Ambrose, Epistulae, 75, 75A (= Sermo contra Auxentium), 76 (ed. Faller and Zelzer, CSEL 82/3, 74–125). For Gaudentius’ followers, see Augustine, Contra Gaudentium, i. 1. 1, 6. 7 (ed. Petschenig, CSEL 53, 201 and 204); Augustine, Retractationes, ii. 59. 86 (ed. Mutzenbecher, CCL 57, 137); with Shaw, Sacred Violence, 735–40. For cleaning operations, see Epistula Sinodi Sardicensis Orientalium, 9 (ed. Feder, CSEL 65); Optatus, ii. 18. 1–2; vi. 1. 1–3 (ed. Labrousse, SC 412, 274; 413, 160–2); Gesta conlationis Carthaginiensis a. 411, i. 139 (ed. Lancel, SC 195, 786); with Shaw, Sacred Violence, 171–3, 187–94; Galvão-Sobrinho, Doctrine and Power, 129. 130 Tarrow, Power in Movement, 163 and ch. 8 passim. See also William A. Gamson and David S. Meyer, ‘Framing Political Opportunity’, in Doug McAdam, John D. McCarthy and Mayer N. Zald (eds.), Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings (Cambridge, 1996); Marco Giugni, ‘Political Opportunities: From Tilly to Tilly’, Swiss Political Science Review, xv, 2 (2009). 131 Shaw, Sacred Violence, 542. 132 Liebeschuetz, Decline and Fall of the Roman City, 253–7. 133 Gamson and Meyer, ‘Framing Political Opportunity’, 283. 134 Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xiv. 7. 5–6 (ed. and trans. Rolfe, i, 55–7, revised). 135 On the reasons of Ammianus’ distaste for Gallus and the biases of his account, see E. A. Thompson, The Historical Work of Ammianus Marcellinus (Cambridge, 1947), 60–71. On the deliberate policy of late Roman emperors to dissociate themselves from their governors, see Jean-Michel Carrié, ‘Le Gouverneur romain à l’époque tardive: les directions possible de l’enquête’, Antiquité tardive, vi (1998). 136 Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae, xv. 13. 2. 137 Ibid., xiv. 7. 6. 138 Libanius, Orationes, i. 103 (ed. Foerster, 133; trans. Norman, 169). 139 Ibid., xix. 47. 140 John Matthews, The Roman Empire of Ammianus (London, 1989), 408. 141 For attempts by the imperial authorities to contain the unauthorized activities of Christian groups in Gaul and Africa (fabricated copies of the laws should be taken out of the hands of unauthorized individuals, and temples should be closed only by the authorities, sine turba ac tumultu, ‘without mobs and riots’), see Codex Theodosianus, xvi. 10. 15, 16, 18 (399) (ed. Mommsen, Meyer and Krüger, i, 901–2). 142 Augustine, Sermones, 24. 279. For what follows, see Magalhães de Oliveira, Potestas populi, ch. 8. For a different interpretation of these events, see Éric Rebillard, Christians and their Many Identities in Late Antiquity, North Africa, 200–450 ce (Ithaca, NY, 2012), 88–91. 143 Quomodo Roma, sic et Carthago! Augustine, Sermones, 24. 6 (ed. Lambot, CCL 41, 331). 144 Ibid. (ed. Lambot, CCL 41, 331–2; my trans.). 145 See Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos, 9. 28: dominatio uero terrore apertissime insinuat. 146 Augustine, Sermones, 279. 12 (PLS 2, 659–60). 147 Brown, Power and Persuasion, 149–50. 148 Michael Whitby, ‘Factions, Bishops, Violence and Urban Decline’, in Krause and Witschel (eds.), Die Stadt in der Spätantike; Anthony Kaldellis, The Byzantine Republic: People and Power in New Rome (Cambridge, Mass., 2015). 149 Cassiodorus, Variae, i. 20, 27, 30–3 (ed. Fridh, CCL 96, 28–9, 34–40); with Richard Lim, ‘The Roman Pantomime Riot of ad 509’, in Carrié and Lizzi Testa (eds.), ‘Humana sapit’. 150 On the Nika Riot, see n. 91 above. 151 On the tendency of scholars ‘to identify themselves with the class running the (late) ancient city’ and to neglect the experiences of the lower classes, see Grig, ‘Cities in the “Long” Late Antiquity’, 564–5. 152 Pascal Menoret, ‘La Révolution arabe n’a pas encore eu lieu’, Le Monde, 2 Mar. 2011 (my trans.). 153 Sarah Chayes, Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security (New York, 2015), 70; Lisa Wedeen, Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria (Chicago, 2015), p. viii (new preface). I owe this reference to the generosity of Richard Payne. © The Past and Present Society, Oxford, 2020 This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)
TI - Late Antiquity: The Age of Crowds?
JF - Past & Present
DO - 10.1093/pastj/gtz063
DA - 2002-02-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/late-antiquity-the-age-of-crowds-jfowQGUvou
SP - 1
VL - Advance Article
IS - 
DP - DeepDyve
ER -