Abusing Your Rulers: Performance and Protest in a Constantinopolitan Circus Dialogue

Abstract

This article reinterprets the Akta dia Kalopodion, a circus dialogue preserved in the Chronicle of Theophanes, as a rare glimpse into the performative politics of sixth-century Constantinople. While prior scholarship has focused on its transmission and relation to the Nika Revolt, this study treats the Akta as an atypically preserved example of routine Hippodrome interaction between emperors and their subjects. Drawing on sociological theories of performance and protest, this article argues that the exchange constitutes a ‘contentious performance’ in which the Green faction collectively voices grievances and asserts its identity, while a mouthpiece for the imperial regime seeks to dismiss and delegitimize them, imposing the emperor’s dominance. The analysis examines the rhetorical strategies of each side, the multiple audiences implicated, and the expressive as well as instrumental goals of the participants. Read in this light, the Akta provides a template for how the Constantinopolitan Hippodrome functioned as a forum for displays of both imperatorial power and popular dissent amidst the continual public renegotiation of imperial legitimacy in Late Antiquity.