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Frightened by the storm Justinian had the weakness to yield; instead of sending out the imperial guard to clear the streets, he announced that he had determined to remove the obnoxious Quaestor and Prefect. This only made matters worse; after burning the official residence of the prefect of the city, the mob mustered in a most threatening attitude outside the palace. This constrained the emperor to use force, but he happened to be very short of soldiery at the moment. All the garrison of Constantinople save 3500 of the scholarii, or imperial guard, had been sent off to the Persian war. Only two regiments had as yet returned, a corps of 500 cuirassiers under Belisarius, and a body of Heruli of about the same number. Five thousand men were hardly enough to cope with an angry populace of half-a-million souls in the narrow streets of the capital.

When attacked by the troops the rioters set fire to the city, and an awful conflagration ensued. The great church of St. Sophia perished among the flames, together with all the houses and public buildings to the north and east of it. Blood having once flowed, the mob were set upon something more than a riot—a revolution was in the air, and the Greens, who took the lead in the struggle, sought about for their favourite the patrician Hypatius, the nephew of their old patron Anastasius I. |Hypatius proclaimed Emperor.| But Hypatius was a prudent and cautious person, with no ambition to risk his head; he had entered the palace and put himself in Justinian’s hands to keep out of harm’s way. It was not till the emperor, who feared traitors about him, ordered all senators to retire to their homes that Hypatius fell into the hands of his own partisans. The unhappy rebel in spite of himself was at once hurried off to the Hippodrome, placed on the imperial seat, and crowned with a diadem extemporised from his wife’s gold necklace.