ifferent character and a greater importance in
the new capital. The two factions divided between them the entire urban
population, and had their regularly appointed leaders, who enjoyed a
recognized place in the administrative organization of the city. These
parties may be regarded as the last survival of the Hellenic popular
assembly of the city-state, and owing to the extreme centralization of the
administration at Constantinople, they were able to exercise considerable
pressure upon the government.

The emperor and the court regularly supported one or other of the parties.
Anastasius had favored the Greens, but Justinian was a partizan of the
Blues. The rivalry of the factions was intense, and culminated, in the
early years of Justinian's reign, in open warfare, which gave the lower
elements the opportunity for the perpetration of crimes of all sorts. The
punishment of notorious criminals of both factions in 532 led to their
uniting in a revolt which nearly cost the emperor his throne. At first the
mob demanded the release of their partizans, and the dismissal of John,
the praetorian prefect, whose financial policy was extremely oppressive,
of Trebonian, the able but unscrupulous quaestor, and of the prefect of
the city. Later, emboldened by their success, they crowned as emperor
Hypatius, a nephew of Anastasius. The situation became extremely critical,
for, with the exception of the palace, the whole city fell into the hands
of the rebels, whose battle cry was "Nika" or "Conquer." Justinian and his
councillors had already resolved upon flight, when Theodora, by a spirited
speech in which she declared that she would die before abandoning the
capital, reanimated their hearts and induced them to alter their decision.
By a judicious use of bribes they induced the Blues to desert the Greens,
and the imperial troops exacted a bloody vengeance from the rebellious
populace. For the future the population of the capital was politically a
negligible quantity.

*The codification of the Roman law.* One of the greatest monuments to the
reign of Justinian is the _corpus iuris civilis_, a codification of the
Roman law by a commission of expert jurists, headed by Trebonian. The
object of this codification was the collection in a convenient form of all
the sources of law then in force, and the settlement of controversies in
the interpretative juristic literature. The compilation was divided into
three parts; the _Code of Justinian_,