Facʹtion

The Romans divided the combatants in the circus into classes, called factions, each class being distinguished by its special colour, like the crews of a boat-race. The four original factions were the leek-green (prasʹina), the sea-blue (venʹeta), the white (alba), and the rose-red (rosʹea). Two other factions were added by Domitian, the colours being golden-yellow (auraʹta) and purple. As these combatants strove against each other, and entertained a strong esprit de corps, the word was easily applied to political partisans.