Factions for a Time
Today football (soccer) fans go wild in the street causing disruption, injury, and even death. Every era has its fanatics. In the time of Theoderic religious interpretations of the nature of Christ caused the same kind of eruptions. My favorite fictional description is from Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague deCamp, a time-travel fantasy about the time of Theoderic.
"That so? How do you like Rome?" The man had very large and very black eyebrows.
Argolicus has divided loyalties because his father is Roman (Italian) and his mother is of The People (Ostrogoths). Romans were Trinitarian (three natures) while the Ostrogoths had been converted under an Emperor several centuries before to Arianism (two natures). So, he finds himself on a tightrope between the two cultures.
King Theoderic established edicts to create a climate of religious tolerance as mentioned in the story. Nevertheless, feelings ran high. Riots happened in Ravenna, the capital, and Rome, the center of established Roman patricians, not to mention very wild riots in Constantinople, the new Rome, center of the Roman Empire. These undercurrents run through the Argolicus Mysteries and are a dominant theme in Felix Ravenna: A Mosaic (WIP). Conflict is essential to fiction and whether large street fights involving hundreds of people, circus factions of Greens and Blues assigned specific places along Theoderic's progressions through Ravenna to keep them from fighting, or Argolicus meeting a slave or a patrician, conflicting beliefs create tensions within scenes. There was also tension between the poor (rustico) and wealthy landowners and rich ecclesiastical centers. These tensions are a background for The Peach Widow coming this summer. Join the Argolicus Readers Group to receive a publication notice. Zara Altair
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Zara Altair, Author The puzzle of politics, the mystery of murder in ancient Italy. After Rome, before the Middoe Ages, Italy belonged to the Ostrogoths. |
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