Anthony Kaldellis: uncertainty

Transcript context

…… in our conception of what that means, because what do we mean by democracy in the modern day is that the people somehow have a connection to who leads and how they lead, and this is—the Hippodrome was that connection between the people and the leaders. Yes. Now, we can talk about modern democracy if you want. That’s a, I have my own views about- … modern democracy and, you know, how it works and how it doesn’t and, anyway, whether it is democracy, in fact, ’cause there are other models of democracy, like- … ancient Athenian democracy, which is a whole other thing. But you’re right. So it’s not just in the Hippodrome. It’s wherever people assemble in large numbers. So this could be military mustering grounds, right? So the army. The army is also the Roman people in a way, and in some cases, the most decisive part of it, right? So if an army gathers together and they decide they want a different emperor, that’s serious, and that can happen out in the provinces too. That doesn’t necessarily have to happen in Constantinople. There’s also Hagia Sophia, so the people gather in the church, or they gather in public spaces like the Forum of Constantine. So this can happen anywhere where a large number of people can gather, and it’s, I don’t know if you wanna call it a democracy as such, but it is definitely a form of popular, let’s say, consultation and a testing of consensus. I’ll give you another example. So in the 1190s, the emperor—and it’s Alexius III—he’s being threatened by the German emperor. German emperor’s basically, “You, you, you pay me a bunch of money or I’ll invade.” Just straight up extortion. And Alexius decides, “Okay, I’m gonna, I’m gonna gather this money. I’m gonna impose these taxes.” And he gathers the people in the Hippodrome, and he says, “You know, we’re gonna have the German tax.” He called it the German tax. And there’s such an uproar in the Hippodrome against this that he was like, “Uh, that wasn’t my idea. I don’t know where that came from. No, never mind. We’re not gonna have the German tax.” Fortunately, the German emperor died and, and nothing ever happened, but it gives you a sense of how emperors, like, literally can backtrack when they see that the people are against something in a matter of policy, right— … like tax policy. So yeah, there was this give and take. So institutionally, the emperor might look absolute, as you called him earlier. In practice, no. No. The ones that did that didn’t end well. And we should say, going to Perplexity here, the Hippodrome of Constantinople was the main stadium and social center of the Byzantine capital, used primarily for chariot racing and imperial ceremony, and today survives in Istanbul’s Sultanahmet district. And the reason I looked this up, I wanted to see how many people. Shaped as a long U-shaped race course with a central barrier and tiered seating, it may have held from roughly thirty thousand up to a hundred thousand spectators, though exact capacity’s debated because archeological remains are limited. That’s a lot of people.…

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