In my last article I talked about indoor games such as shantranj, a precursor to modern chess. While the Byzantines were famous for court intrigue and naturally such a game would have immediate appeal, they also enjoyed more physical games. They too had their place, continuing the legacy of the Western Roman Empire. The gladiatorial games had long since ceased when the Eastern Roman Empire turned to Christianity. The races however, did not die so easily. In the early centuries there were originally four factions backed by various political entities – the Blues, Greens, Whites and Reds, that eventually were condensed down to the Blues and Greens. In any case, the races in the Hippodrome at the beginning of the Empire were very much a political function as much or more so than true entertainment. By the medieval period, much of the political function of the factions had disappeared, yet the races at the Hippodrome in Constantinople were still a venue for the workings of political and religious rivalries within the city. Constantinople was far from the only city to host such a monstrosity, though it is surely the more famous. The Circus of Antioch was a fairly well known one. The famous chariot race in Ben Hur was supposed to have taken place here. We can assume it remained in use to at least the Muslim conquest of Antioch in the seventh century. It is a prominent feature of the Antiochene archaeology and seems a safe guess that its use resumed after the Byzantine reconquest in 969 CE.
The horses race around the track counterclockwise a length of perhaps two to three miles. Such events were used to entertain visiting dignitaries. In The Plague Casket I created a fictional visit to Antioch by the historic Kartovelian prince and Kouropalates, Davit of Tao who came from what is now the republic of Georgia.
Sophia was escorted through passages reserved for the Doux and his family beneath the Murus Tiberii from the paláti to the Doux’s kathisma, a spectator’s box with the best view, overlooking the oval Circus of Antioch. From here, she received a view of Antioch she often did not get to see. Antioch rose around the hippodrome like a decaying, crumbling giant. It had been reduced to dust and rubble by earthquakes and war, only to rise again, indefatigable and unflagging.
The kathisma is a term that carried over to the Eastern Catholic and Eastern Orthodox religious terminology to indicate a division of the Psalter. It translates to “seat”, but in the case of the Byzantine racing tracks, it literally was a seat, or a spectator box reserved for the aristocracy, whether that was the Emperor and his family or the ruling governor of Doux of a city. It was a place to entertain state visitors in the manner to which they were accustomed and sometimes very lavish proceedings took place here. Between events, spectators could view acrobats, wild animals, dancers and musicians, as Sophia witnesses in The Plague Casket:
She turned her attention back to the acrobats to hide her anger. They twirled and leaped. The female acrobat, lithe and slim and clad only in a scanty chiton leaped on the back of her male companion, wrapping her bare legs around his middle as he balanced on a small block of wood and juggled some leather balls filled with barley. She climbed up his back and soon was standing on his shoulders. Another acrobat produced a wooden hoop as tall as he was and began to spin it rapidly. Leaping to the floor, the girl stepped through the hoop and then, grasping the top with both hands and curling her bare toes over the bottom, began to spin with it. She was poor, no doubt earning only a few copper coins for her performances, perhaps earning more by spreading her legs in the streets. But she had a wide smile on her face and her skin, dusted with mica, shone in the light from the low winter sun. She radiated life and Sophia could not take her eyes off her. For a moment she forgot all about the Kuropalates, about Constantine and the far off windy Caucus mountains. There was only the graceful movements as the girl acrobat moved like water in and out of the hoop. The tune the musicians played on the reedy syrinx was not one familiar to her, but it seemed ethereal, like the dance of the girl herself.
The Hippodrome was also used as a place to punish prisoners and humiliate political rivals, a carryover from Pagan Rome as was the Circus of Antioch and any other major city in the bounds of the Empire.
Andros Kouranos was seated on the donkey, facing the animal’s tail his hands bound before him. His head and beard had been shaved, so she scarcely recognized him. There was something buzzing with flies on his head and it took Sophia a moment to realize that his head was crowned in mockery with coiled animal entrails. The crowd jeered and threw rubbish and excrement. He bowed his head against their missiles. His clothes were coated with filth.
By the twelfth century, races were primarily held at religious occasions such as Easter. The race called chryson hippodromion took place the week after Easter. The races came under heavy criticism from the Church, yet continued to be hugely popular with the public as they had been for centuries. To further infuriate the leaders of the Church, often warring teams would inflicted curses upon one another with lead curse tablets. The charioteers were credited with sorcery and and condemned for the popularity of various athletes with the public who could be unruly in their support of their favored charioteer, fights sometimes breaking out in the stands. The spectators would often indulge in riotous and even lewd and drunken behavior, However, efforts to shut down the races were met with resistance. They were ingrained as it were, in the soul of the people It seems that not much changes with time.
A more genteel sport that to this day continues to be a sport of the elite was tzykanion, a form of polo played by the Byzantine emperors and their nobles. It was played in a stadium called the Tzykanisterion. The sport came to the Byzantines from Sassanid Persia. Anna Komene, Byzantine, princess and historian, daughter of Emperor Alexios I Komnenos mentions an injury due to this sport, in her history, The Alexiad:
One day for the sake of exercise, he [her father, the Emperor] was playing polo with Tatcius, of whom I have often spoken. Tatcius was caused to swerve by his horse and fell against the king, whose kneecap was injured by the wight of the impact and the pain extended right down the leg.
It was played by two mounted teams, using a small leather ball, perhaps the size of a modern baseball. They pursued the ball with netted sticks. The exact rules of the game have not come down to us, but it can be assumed that it was similar to modern polo. The Emperor had his own private Tzykanisterion where he might entertain nobles and visiting dignitaries. The sport became popular in the twelfth century with mercenaries from western Europe. It can be assumed that it was in this way the game was transported to western Europe. It may have also originiated from Persia where it was known as Chovgan.
It could be argued that sport serves a wider function to society as a whole. Perhaps it no longer has a religious function as it has had in many societies in times past as in the Easter celebrations of the Byzantines races in the Hippodrome or the pagan functions of the gladiatorial games of the western Roman Empire. Yet also, the Roman emperors knew that to keep the games going was to keep the empire functioning even when there was not enough bread. Games are, with their rules and systems of play, perhaps a mirror on a smaller scale of how societies work. We work within rules and perhaps games are a way of keeping a handle on those rules. In the end, then as now, most people agree that a good competition is just plain fun.
Let me know your thoughts below!