Antiquity
Riot of the Green faction
9 juillet 507·Antioche
The toll is reproduced exactly as the source states it — never rounded, never added to another. Tolls overlap from one event to the next.
Daphne synagogue set on fire, Jews massacred and bodies cast into flames (John Malalas)
Antioch, one of the largest cities of the Eastern Empire, was divided by circus factions — the Blues and the Greens — whose rivalries regularly turned to rioting and served as an outlet for religious tensions.
Under the reign of Anastasius, the Green faction attacked the suburb of Daphne, where the Jewish community had its synagogue. The building was set ablaze, the inhabitants massacred and their bodies thrown into the flames. The chronicler John Malalas, a native of Antioch, reports that the emperor had the ringleader of the rioters executed, without the city regaining calm: the same factions were still clashing there a generation later.
- Period :
- Antiquity
- Type :
- Pogrom
- Region :
- Near and Middle East
- Country :
- Turquie
Jean Malalas, *Chronographie*.