FACTION, a term commonly employed, especially in the 18th century, to denote a group of partisans who set the aims of themselves and their party before the public welfare. It bears a more technical sense in Roman and Byzantine history, there denoting the factions of the circus and hippodrome which played a prominent part in politics both at Rome and Constantinople. The factiones were properly the four companies into which the charioteers were divided, and were distinguished by the colours they wore. Originally at Rome there were only two, white (albata) and red (russata) , when each race was open to two chariots only; on the increase to four, the green (prasina) and blue (veneta) were added. At Constantinople the last two absorbed the red and white factions.
See Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch. xl.; and J. B. Bury's Appendix 10 in vol. iv. of his edition (1898), for a discussion of the relationship between the factiones and the demes of Constantinople.