Hi Ben Wa; Re the Iranian soccer riots...
The ancients had nasty sports riots. The worst involved slaughters of thousands of people, with the two sides signifying nothing more than the colors "blue" and "green". Here's a paragraph from Gibbon:
...
Constantinople adopted the follies, though not the virtues, of ancient Rome; and the same factions which had agitated the circus, raged with redoubled fury in the hippodrome. Under the reign of Anastasius, this popular frenzy was inflamed by religious zeal; and the greens, who had treacherously concealed stones and daggers under baskets of fruit, massacred, at a solemn festival, three thousand of their blue adversaries.
...
ccel.org
From the point of view of analyzing human nature, the whole chapter is worth reading.
-- Carl |
