Doomed to Fail - Ep 12 - Part 2: Ancient Sport Rivalries - The Nika Riots

Episode Date: December 30, 2023

Hello! Casual re-relase of Episode 12 part 2 - the Nika Riots! Cue the robots!🎉 Dive into the chaos of history with our latest episode on the Nika Riots! 🏛 Join us on 'Doomed to Fail' as we unravel the gripping tale of rebellion and mayhem in ancient Constantinople. 🌐 Get ready for a rollercoaster ride through the past! 🕰 #DoomedToFailPodcast #NikaRiots #HistoryUnleashed #PodcastTime #HistoricalMayhem #ListenNow #MustListen #PodcastAlert #HistoryPodcast #AncientHistory #GrippingTales #TimeTravelWithUs Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

Hi, friends, Taylor from Doom to Fail. Today, we are re-releasing episode 12, part two. Just a reminder, we're be releasing our first 26 episodes in two parts, because each of those were two stories in one, and they got pretty long. So we're shortening them and bringing them back to you, but you can always go back and listen to the whole thing in the archive. But this is episode 12, part two on the Nika riots. It is a riot that happened in Constantinople.

Emperor Justin was rooting for one sports team in the hippodrome, and everybody else is bringing for another. It's a class warfare story, but a lot of people actually really died. So enjoy. Let us know if you have any thoughts. Our doom to philpot at gmail.com. Thanks.

In a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortenthall James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. I'm short. No way.

Okay. Yeah, it's great. Just watch it. So, okay. So let's transfer over to our history story. And I, this week, I don't know if it came out this week or if it's because of you talking about Nirvana. But on Netflix, I found a three-part document. about Woodstock 99 and I was like this is bananas this is crazy I was like you

know it's if you don't know watch that documentary it's you know trying to recreate Woodstock in 99 which did not work because like the people who tended just like were a bunch of assholes there was tons of rioting tons of sexual assault a lot of crimes they like burnt the whole thing down and I also was wondering like what is the Venn diagram of dudes who are at Woodstock 99 and dudes who are at the instruction on January 6th and I feel like that might be in June to order circle it's like that kind of dude you know there so it's it's definitely the same gene type like if you go backwards like a couple

generations they definitely shared and uncle I think yeah I put definitely more than five people were at both places yes I'm sure I'm sure there were so it's super interesting and I was like can I do what's like 99 and I'm like Taylor go back go back further so I was like what are deadly riots and insurrections of history And it's obviously a ton, but I found one that revolves around a couple. So there is a relationship in this one. And so I want to talk about the Nika riots of 532. So all the way back.

Way back. Going way back. I listened to one YouTube video called Deadly Moments in History of the Nika riots, a stuff you missed in history, a Smithsonian article, just information about this story. So it involved a couple, Emperor Justinian and his wife. Theodora. So they're like big players in this story. And we're in the Byzantine Empire, which is the Eastern Roman Empire around the year of 500. And they're actually based in Constantinople. I'll talk about that in a second. Emperor Justinian, the first, was born in Turusium in northern

Macedonia. And if you're Dan Carlin, you say Macedonia. I might go back and forth, but I wanted to the Dan Carlin one. I'm going to say, I'm like really proud of you for picking something where the names all sound incredibly hard to pronounce. Thank you. Goodos. Thank you. I'm going to go Macedonia because that's what Dan Carlin says. But Justine was born in 482, 80.

He was a, like a poor, humble person. He grew up speaking Latin instead of Greek. Greek was a language of the court. So this is like the Eastern Roman Empire is like more Greek. And then the Western one is more Roman, Italian Roman. They speak Latin. So in the end, he does one. to speak Greek in his court.

And I would have to, like, really study the, you know, the way that they do, like, the lineage for becoming emperor. But even though he's humble and, like, doesn't come from super wealth, his uncle is the emperor. And his uncle is Emperor Justin, which I, like, laughed out, like, for an hour. Justin, like, I know there's, like, Justin Trudeau is a world leader, but, like, Emperor Justin, I just can't. Makes me laugh.

So, King Bill or something. Right? I just can't. So Justin is his uncle. And when Justin dies, Justinian becomes a successor. So I don't know if it's like just kind of like next best who's like kind of related to you. Because I can't imagine that these emperors had zero sons, but it definitely is like seems to be handing off to nephews. So it's probably just like who around my circle.

My family has like the most potential. I think probably that. Makes sense. So yeah. So Justin died in 1527 and Justinian became emperor. Justinian married a woman named Ciodora. She was born also into humble origins, but like actually humble. Her dad was a bearkeeper in the hippodrome.

So that's humble. That's not like a humble upbringing. That sounds like an awesome upbringing. I mean, yes, awesome. But I can't, I don't think he like made a lot of money being a bearkeeper, but also it is awesome and like maybe you had to hug bears, which is cool. That's very cool. So we'll talk about the hippodrome in a second.

But, you know, I'm thinking like, imagine, you know, being a bearkeeper, obviously terrible things happen to the bears and also those bears probably killed a lot of people so there's a lot going on in like with being a bearkeeper you know what it's not like a zoo i was romanticizing this a lot more than you just laid it out i thought you'd like right they would start treating you like you're one of them and like you could like go forwards with them and like you're a family together but i guess there's probably a lot of abuse in that yeah yes yes and you probably get a bonus every time your bear eats some one you know i don't know but it's definitely you're not like it's not a sanctuary for bears okay okay thank you that's the way i was thinking sanctuary for bears it's not a sanctuary for

bears okay awful situation for the animals i bet every the bears are having a bad time everyone's having a bad time okay yes yes i don't approve so so theodora became an actress and a dancer which is like we talked about this before like in like ancient roman times like an actress basically was like the same level as a sex worker in society. She may have actually been a sex worker that's unclear. Some people say that she was and that, you know, before she met just sitting, but they did fall in love and they got married and she became kind of a co-ruler with him and she had a big influence in the government.

So they're married. They're in charge. There was a little bit of conflict that has to do with religion. Obviously, it's a Christian society at this point. Theodora was part of the sect that believed that Jesus was many things. like also a ghost in a person again i don't know and then most people thought he was one thing like one entity so that's like a big deal and just like another like reason to fight within christianity this one guy started so much shit started so much shit so yeah so there people are

kind of mad about that but it's not all religion and politics and all those things there's also sports so this is a sport story mostly so the biggest sport in in the time is chariot racing let's talk about that in a second so I love a sport riot like I don't want to be in one but I appreciate it when Philadelphia tries to burn itself down whether they win or lose you know like that's hilarious the people just like going absolutely nuts like that sounds really like it's fun in as long as someone dies it sounds fun also did I mention that we're in Istanbul which was Constantinople and you know that song why did they change it i can't say maybe they liked it better that way

you know that no who is that i've no idea it's like it's from like the 80s or 70s i'll sure if it's not nirvana i'm not going to recognize anything for the next like month it's not it's not so i do have a list of like what constantinople was called but it's gone through a lot of changes but at this point it's probably called new rome at the moment oh yes okay so it's called igo spazantium augusta antonia new rome Rome, Constantinople, Constantinni, Istanbul. So now it's Istanbul, but at this point, it was probably called New Rome. Okay.

So we're in Turkey, like modern New Turkey. Yeah, yeah, which would have been back then part of the, like a much larger swath of like the Ottoman Empire, which I think was one of the biggest empires ever. Okay. Right. That goes over there too. Yeah. So that's where we are.

In the middle of Istanbul right now, you can visit the hippodrome. so the hippodrome is like such a cool word I don't even know what to do like hippodrome so the hippodrome is a place where you can watch races and other games that still exist you can still visit it it's huge it can hold like 50 to 100,000 people it's a big stadium you could go in and like rent cushions to sit on the on the steps like the Hollywood Bowl

you can like rent a cushion and like sit on the steps and watch the races it's a really really long oval like a really thin long oval. In the middle, there's like a wall with statues that even had, I think still have an Egyptian obelisk in the middle of it. So like beautiful statues in the middle, all stone is a huge stadium. It's obviously not, there's no like safety measures, you know, because it's in the year of 500. What you do is you race around the oval in your chariot. And it's very dangerous.

So chariot racing is one of the oldest forms of sports. It involves pulling a two-wheeled chariot driven by four horses, in this case, in the hippodrome at this time. So you're kind of standing on your chariot and you're racing as other people. So, like, you can remember this from like a gladiator, right? Didn't they do that in gladiator? They did. This looks like a place you were meant to die in. Yeah, absolutely.

It's very, like, spectator. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I mean, even like the location of where they put the things to draw your eyes, like, it's meant to be like, you're all in the center of this thing. and God help you if you don't do the right thing in that moment. And we know that bears work there. So, like, obviously some other stuff happens, too, involving theirs and, like, eating people, for sure, for sure. But chariot racing can be traced back to ancient Egypt where they were used in warfare and hunting.

It became a very popular form of entertainment and, like, a religious ceremony. It was considered a good profession if you could, like, buy your way out of slavery doing it. If you, like, a lot of them were, people, chariotsers were slaves because a lot of people died. like right away i mean imagine like you're you fall off your chariot you get crushed by by horses but people who didn't die and who continued to do it would be able to eventually buy their way out of slavery because they would start to like make money that's like the main thing there in the hippodrome there is a spot for the emperor to sit and that is connected to the palace by like an underground tunnel that's how he gets there and he's always like there around so i think this is hilarious for

some reason but in this time there's four main factions of teams and their names are the blues greens reds and whites like that's it there's a major color it's like the harry potter house is except lamer a little bit yeah i guess i'd say more i was going to be like more death but there's so much death than harry potter so yes they weren't just sports teams they're also social groups so you kind of like choose yours and like you know be a hooligan like this is my i'm i'm the greens like you're the blues like fuck the blues all the things like lots of fighting which again it's fun sports fighting is fun as long as no one gets hurt but people are about to get hurt i feel like this it wouldn't be fun in this era because there's no rules or laws and like people right absolutely like now you get prosecuted but

like yeah yeah i mean again to bring up philly like that's where you get punched in the face if like your team beats philly and you're like in philly but for the most part it's fun that's also partially why i have deliberately never been to an eagle's game because yeah because it just feels like a really bad place to be a sports fan of a rival team absolutely absolutely in this time the blues are associated with the aristocracy because like the emperor supports them they were more traditional more like wealthy fans and the greens were associated with the lower classes intended to be more populist they were like more progressive more people who like lived in the suburbs like more common people like to the greens so at this time by the time we're in this story it's really

just the greens and the blues those are like the biggest the biggest two two sides the greens don't like the queen and the king or the emperor and empress because they like the blues. So it's like a whole thing like Justinian and Theodora, they support the blues. And so all the regular people who are greens are also like mad at the emperor. So it's like a whole thing. There's also a lot happening with like the emperors taxing people for wars and taxing people to like build stuff for himself and people are hungry and all like political unrest things actually happening while this is happening.

But it's going to kind of culminate at this sports event. On January 10th, 532, there's a mini riot. And there's lots of riots, like, kind of all the time. But there's a mini riot between the greens and the blues, and seven men get sentenced to death. So two of the men, yeah. So, like, the emperor is like, stop fighting, the leader is sentenced to death. So obviously like that's the thing too. No, it was half blues, half, seven, like, it was mixed blues and greens.

And when they do that execution, they do it by hanging. And two of the men survive because the scaffolding breaks. And it's one blue and one green. so now they're kind of together and saying like maybe god is on our side like the side of the people because the emperor wanted the blues and greens to get like the leaders this list like mini riot to get killed but maybe now god's on our side because he saved them i mean that tracks yeah i mean but i think about as the emperor i'd say like now y'all just have to each fight to the death and whoever wins this is why shouldn't be a leader actually yeah no they didn't they let them go

now tensions are like super high because people are like wondering what the hell's going on because of the way that they those the green and a blue were saved jacinian instead of like canceling upcoming chariot races he continued to have them and another thing about the hippodrome is like like i said before like that's how they got in the emperor and empress and like the court would get in through a secret tunnel from the palace and then like be in the hippodrome on their like up box again like think of gladiator like they're up higher than everybody else i have the picture up right now like there's a obvious like I'm assuming that the hippodrome all has like one kind of like from the top level down looks the same except there's one section of it that's like this white obelisk looking thing that looks like it's connected to like a court area like a royal court area so I would assume that's where it is yeah like when you're watching a game and you're like they show you someone like up in a box and you're like okay fine that's not relatable yeah but um this is the only space where the common people ever really see the emperor so it's also a time for like political things that they like yell up to him like we want less taxes and like a lot of yelling and like chanting and things that they want the emperor to hear because he doesn't really see the common people ever so that that happens these things as well so on january 15th 532 so 10 days after this first mini riot there's another race planned for the day and it starts to break out into another riot there's 24 races planned they don't get to that many people start to fight there's

some fighting within the people watching, it starts to get bigger and bigger, and the fight spills over into the city. The crowd starts shouting Nika, Nika, which means victory, conquer. So that's what it's called the Nika riots, because they are trying to overthrow the government because now it's an insurrection. They're trying to overthrow the emperor. So all these people, all these tensions from the sports and all these things are rampaging the city. They're setting the city on fire. Constantinople is burning. They're looting shops. The palace was besieged. So they took over the palace it was about to completely collapse and justinian was considering just leaving at this point and everybody here's just shithouse hammered on wine right oh yeah absolutely you got

in like be yeah no that's a belly full of wine wouldn't make you want to like be active i think it's like beer is a good riot beer and whiskey are good rioting drinks yeah i think beer's a good riot drink yeah but all they really had was wine so i imagine like everyone's kind of stained with red wine and blood you know like it's a whole thing could you could you imagine like if you were just like drunk on cosmopolitans and like trying to flip over like a car like it's what i don't know it doesn't have the same tone to it no no but i'm sure straight vodka inspired a lot of riots in Russia. So it's different.

The city is about to burn down. The Ayas Sophia is burned. So do you know what that is, that building? Never heard of it. It is a religious building in the middle of Constantinople, Istanbul. It was built before this time. It started off as a church. It's like a beautiful dome with turrets.

It kind of looks like, it has a Taj Mahal look with like the dome and the four turrets. It's really beautiful on the inside. I definitely did a paper about it when I was studying our history. So, like, it's like a beautiful building. It was burned down and they built a new one after this. And it started off as a church. Then it's called Haggita Sophia? Yeah.

Yeah. H-A-I-G-A, but I think it's Aya Sophia. And so it was built during the Byzantine Empire, during this time, we kind of refurbished after this fire as a Christian cathedral. It was converted into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest that it talked about in 1453. So much later, it became a mosque. And then the Turkish Republic took it over at 1935 and turned it into a museum. But in 2020, the Turkish government took it back and now it is a mosque.

It's beautiful. I mean, I'm looking at the view of the inside, the dome interior on Wikipedia, and it's amazing looking. Yeah, it's really, really beautiful. So now it's a mosque. And it's one of those things I think we actually talked about with the Taj Mahal too, where Christians are like, it was originally ours. And they're like, no, it's ours. And people are kind of trying to fight over who gets to worship there.

People never change. People never change. Yeah. Never, never, never change. So, Pia Sophia's burning, the city's burning on January 19th, so four days after the start of the riot, the people choose another nephew of Justin to be emperor. His name is Hepatius, and they put Hepatius on the throne in the hippodrome, and they're like, we have a new emperor.

So things look really, really bad for Justinian and Theodora, and they're thinking of leaving, and she says to him, this is a quote, and it's going to be hard, if you my lord wish to save your skin you will have no difficulty in doing so we are rich there is the sea their two are our ships but consider first whether when you reach safety will you regret that you did not choose death and preference as for me i stand by the ancient saying the purple is the noblest winding sheet so she is like you have to stay like you can't we could run away but like let's stay and fight for our empire what's the purple thing mean purple is the color of emperors it was a hard color to come by so like they would wear like purple capes and purple trouts so like caesar wore purple like purple was the color that you would wear when you were in charge

yeah she's saying like be a leader yeah exactly so he says i'm going to stay and i'm going to stand tall on this and he had his army led by general bellisarius suppress the riots and so here's and stuff that happens. So like I said before, there was a mini riot that started this. There's tons of riots during this time. We'd know a lot about this one because it was like heavily documented, but there probably were worse ones that we just like don't know a ton about. But this is the one we know the most about. So Belisarius takes his, finally the Justinian says go. He takes the troops. They go out and they just start like killing the people who are rioting. They end up going to the hippodrome. So the hippodrome had become kind of a sanctuary. People are talking there. The new emperor. they made hepatius is there a lot of families people are just like kind of hiding and trying to stay in this spot while the rest of the city is like on fire and crazy things are happening but belsarius and his troops come in and they kill everybody it's estimated they kill 30 000 people inside the hippodrome that day so taylor sorry i'm confusing some people here is this the current emperor who slaughtered his people or the newly crowned emper okay the current emperor that i have they have to

There has such a disconnect there because it's like, I'm going to be a lead. You know what I pictured? I picture this like proud moment of like just like a gladiator movie of like the empress, like stealing the nerve of the emperor. Like you can do this. You are you are the godsend, you know, king or whatever. And then just like just goes and kills everyone. I didn't see it going that way.

Well, that's what happens. And that, you know, later, you know, one of the outcomes of this Nika riot is It weakened to the power of the factions, so like the blues and the greens of political factions, and it served as a warning that the emperor would not hesitate to use force to stop a rebellion. So before, maybe you were like, maybe he won't kill and isn't people to stop us from doing this. It's like, no. If you do this and get out of order, like, we will come in with the army and you will get killed. I still don't think that's leadership or good leadership. I mean, it's not great.

Okay. Yeah. No, definitely real scary. Yeah. Yeah. The Belisarius and his troops go in and they kill 30,000 people in the Hippodrome. So, like, think of the logistics and how gross this is. In the, I read a Smithsonian article, and they quoted an author John Julius Norwich on his history of Byzantium.

And he says, quote, within a few minutes, the angry shouts of the great amphitheater had given place to cries and groans of wounded and dying men. Soon those two grew quiet until the silence spread over the entire arena. it's sand now sawed in with the blood of its victims. So like, shit to the people that killed there. Yeah. The outcome is that, you know, the people kind of were like, they stopped rioting and Justinian became powerful again. Like you said, it was a controversial decision, you know,

and it's been criticized by history because a lot of the people were, you know, unarmed civilians, but it also has been like seen as necessary as history to prevent future uprisings. So it's kind of like, in a smaller scale, like dropping the nuclear bomb, you know, like, do you do it to like stop further war? Is that justified? I'm trying to put this in context that I would understand. And because you brought up January 6th already, I'm like, how would I feel if like the National Guard or whoever just like mowed people down as they like entered the Capitol building then? I was like, I really feel, I don't know.

I know. No, I would feel terrible. You know, like, those people are dumb, but you can't do that. And, but if they did do that, then you definitely have like a whole new feeling about the government where you'd be like legitimately very, very, very, very scared. Yeah, it's like a two-pronged thing. One is like the moral implications, just doing that to another human. And then there's the like democracy ramifications. Like, what does that actually mean for the country as a whole? So. Yeah, generally, probably not a good move. No, but, you know, it was for Justinian. He got, he was still emperor. He was emperor for another 33 years after this. So he definitely, like, held on to his spot. He wrote a Justinian code, which is like something that's a basis for law for a lot of Europe still. He rebuilt I.O. Sophia did a bunch of, like, stuff for, like, education with Theodora.

She died in 1548. He lived longer. He died in that 15. 48 she died in 548 he died in 565 at the age of 83 so he you know got to live a long life as emperor he was succeeded by his nephew just in the second and he had been co-emperor for for a little bit and it just kind of continues like you know nephews and sons and eventually you know there's more more tragedy and you know a thousand years later the ottoman empire takes over all kinds of stuff happens in this part of the world would probably come back to it but that's the story of justinian and

how he ordered 30,000 people at least to be murdered to maintain power? I don't know. Was that good or bad? I don't know. Was Theodora the one who kind of convinced him to do it? What was what would their life have been like if they weren't together? Was it always a powder keg? So I don't know.

Let's think about it. Very bloody. I'm going to see what the largest rebellion death is in the world. Okay. 20 to 70 million. Whoa. Well, that's like over a long time. a day uh i don't know i don't know what this rebellion is typing what is that okay so yeah that would

have been over the course of 16 years or 14 years that would have been a long rebellion okay that sounds like a war that does not sound like a one-day rebellion thing yeah no this was like it was like five days so five days from the first mini rebellion five days later or 10 days so five days later is um the two men survive the attempted hanging they have another race on the 15th. That's when the riots start. And by like the 19th, he has everybody killed.

So it happens real fast. It's a rough January for the folks of Constantinople. Yeah. I'm kidding. Interesting. I wonder if those two guys made out alive completely. That's a good question. Maybe they had already left and been like,

get out of here while the iron is cool. Yeah. Yeah. I like it. um can i make a special request since you're the history buff yeah okay i should probably know more about my ancestry than i actually do so can you do can you like do one on persia like ancient yeah lots of happen in persia yeah i've heard i think we've been there a little bit well we were kind of there well ancient persia was kind of like coming down

during the um into india for like the tajma hall there's like persian and stuff in there but let's definitely do more. So I see, yeah, it's so much of the same place. Like, Macedonia. Yeah, that whole part of the world just seems like there's like a million ancient stories of things going on. Yeah, it's so cool. Yeah, I'll find some. I mean, there's so much cool stuff that happened down there. So for sure. Do you have any special request for me, Taylor? Um, no, I haven't thought about it, but I will think about it. This is a new segment called Special Request Corner. Special Request Corner.

We also are accepting special requests from you. Oh, like, I'm going to do the one. My cousin sent me one to look at. And so, yeah, any story of, like, you know, something crazy that happened, let us know. It's going to be a relationship involved. It doesn't have to be. Whatever. We got a long way to go.

We will shift the premise in whichever direction results in our imminent fame. We're going to do this for us. until there are no more stories. So buckle up. Well, that is a scary. We got a screenshot you there. Better Cups. Buckle up. You do it. Keep doing it.

There we go. I got it. Perfect. Cool. Yeah, find us on Dube to Fail pod on YouTube now. And like our stuff. Subscribe. Like, even if you listen to this, please share it. We want to, our numbers are definitely going up slowly, but they're going up.

up and we're doing it that's fun they are going up they are going up the it's interesting because like the analytics depends on what analytics you pay attention to the one I pay attention to is how many downloads we get based on when the episode is released and that has gone up the most which is really really exciting nice so please subscribe tell your friends rate review again you can turn the volume off and just like let it run on the playlist and just look at the algorithm those don't know Computers don't know. Put it on your phone. Yeah.

This is like probably the last chance we're going to have to outsmart the computers until chatGBT takes over the world. I mean, I say we're going forever and that could be like two more weeks. So who knows? Someone's going to invent a chat bot that can create like just amazing content. I'm sure they can. And also be as charming as us. So it's over.

That I don't think is possible, but we'll see. Hopefully that's the one thing we can hang on to. Hopefully. Cool. Well, thanks, everyone. Thanks, Taylor. And I'm going to go ahead and stop recording.