authorities seemed to be amazed and enslaved by fear of one man; and the judges determined causes not according to law and justice, but as the parties in the suit were in good or bad odour with the parties in the state. For it was a capital offence that a judge should controvert the orders of the ruling party, the blues.”[68] Such was the state of Constantinople, the blues exulting in the royal favour, when, in January, 532, the citizens were assembled in the hippodrome, the Emperor himself presiding over the games. The green faction disturbed the peace of the assembly by complaints, until at length Justinian was induced to enter into a parley with them by the voice of an officer called Mandator, a sort of civil aide–de–camp, whose duty was to receive and transmit his sovereign’s orders. The dialogue which ensued is justly characterized by Gibbon, who has only given a short specimen of it, as the most singular that ever passed between a prince and his subjects. We may premise, to account for the strange and unintelligible turn of many of the sentences, that the original is written in the corrupt Greek popularly spoken at Constantinople in the sixth century, and is full of allusions to which we possess no key, and words which the lexicographers have not explained, and sentences in which it is not possible to make out any grammatical construction. These difficulties, however, make the passage the more curious; inasmuch as they give reason to suppose that the dialogue was taken down as it occurred, and has not been polished in passing through the hands of historians. _Green._ Long may you live, august Justinian. I am aggrieved, thou only good one, I cannot bear it. God knows, I dare not name him, lest it turn to his advantage and to my peril. _Mandator._ Who is he? I know not. _Green._ He who wrongs me will be found among the shoemakers,[69] thrice august. _Mand._ No one wrongs you. _Green._ One, and one only wrongs me. Mother of God, may he never lift his head again! _Mand._ What man is he? I know not. _Green._ You, and you only know, august Justinian, who wrongs me to–day. _Mand._ If in truth there be any, I know him not. _Green._ Calopodius, the armour–bearer, wrongs me, Master of all. _Mand._ Calopodius has no employment. _Green._ Be he who he may, he shall die the death of Judas! God repay him his injuries to me, and that quickly! _Mand._ You come, not to the games, but to insult your rulers. _Green._ If any wrong me, he shall die the death of Judas! _Mand._ Be quiet, ye Jews, Manichæans, and Samaritans. _Green._ Jews are we, and Samaritans? the mother of God is with all. _Mand._ How long will you heap curses on yourselves? _Green._ If any deny that our master believes rightly, let him be accursed like Judas! _Mand._ I tell you to be baptized in the name of one.