1. This paper was read at the annual conference of the Society for Patristic and Byzantine Studies.
2. Gibbon, E. Decline and fall… in the Everyman edition vol. iv, 160–167 with McClelland, J.S. The crowd and the mob from Plato to Canetti, London, 1989, esp 110–114. Gibbon was nevertheless not blind to the oppression that provoked discontent, and, with characteristic perversity, he emphasizes the culpability of the Blues in the history of the conflict between the Blues and the Greens.
3. Cameron, A. Circus factions… Oxford, 1976, esp. 270 sq. His account includes innuendos in the style of Tacitus: for example, ‘The Nika revolt caused… 30 000 dead’, (p. 278).