If you’re interested in the Blues and the Greens, check out Alan Cameron’s “Cirus Factions” (Oxford University Press), a reasonably thorough monograph. There were originally two teams in chariot racing (Reds and Whites), then four (adding Blues and Greens), then six (Domitian added Purples and Golds, which faded shortly after the end of his reign), and then the Reds and Whites kinds of merged into the Blues and Greens by the 3rd century AD and those remained important for a millenium as Byzantium endured. They were handy “parties” that were often grabbed by the issue of the day (e.g., monophysites took over the Greens for a while) and eventually institutionalized as citizen militias.
If you’re interested in the Blues and the Greens, check out Alan Cameron’s “Cirus Factions” (Oxford University Press), a reasonably thorough monograph. There were originally two teams in chariot racing (Reds and Whites), then four (adding Blues and Greens), then six (Domitian added Purples and Golds, which faded shortly after the end of his reign), and then the Reds and Whites kinds of merged into the Blues and Greens by the 3rd century AD and those remained important for a millenium as Byzantium endured. They were handy “parties” that were often grabbed by the issue of the day (e.g., monophysites took over the Greens for a while) and eventually institutionalized as citizen militias.