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The Circus was the large, oval track where the chariot races took place. The chariots were open, two or four-wheeled vehicles pulled by horses and used for hunting, battles, racing, and processions. The two-wheeled chariot was very light and in racing one of the main jobs of the charioteer was to stand and balance the chariot, especially when rounding a corner. These vehicles usually had two, three, or four horses, but on special occasions might be seen with up to ten horses. Sometimes dogs, ostriches, or camels might be used in Rome to pull the chariots around the Circus Maximus. The Romans loved the races as they were very exciting with many spills and crashes. Often charioteers were killed. However, if they were good, they might become popular heroes.

It was at the first celebration of the Consualia in honor of Consus, an ancient god of agriculture, that the rape of the Sabine women was thought to have occurred. Romulus is said to have held chariot races then which were so distracting, says Livy, that "nobody had eyes or thoughts for anything else." While the men watched the races, their unmarried women were abducted by the Romans to be their wives.

The races took place on either side of a brook that ran between the Aventine and Palatine hills, and it was in the middle of this valley that the Circus Maximus traditionally was thought to have been founded in the sixth century BC by Tarquinius Priscus, the fifth king of Rome. By channeling and bridging the stream, an euripus was created that served as a barrier (spina) for the track. Livy records that in 329 BC permanent starting gates were constructed and, in 174 BC, that they were rebuilt and seven large wooden eggs set up between columns on the spina to indicate the completion of each lap. There was reconstruction by Julius Caesar, and, in 33 BC, Agrippa supplemented the eggs with seven bronze dolphins, and had another set of eggs placed near the starting gates to mark laps for the charioteers. After a fire in 31 BC, Augustus constructed the pulvinar, a shrine built into the seating below the Palatine Hill, which was used as an imperial box to watch the games and where images of the gods were installed after having been brought in procession (pompa) from the Capitol. In 10 BC, Augustus also erected an obelisk on the spina as a dedication to the Sun and monument of his conquest of Egypt.

This is the Circus that so impressed Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who described it in 7 BC as "one of the most beautiful and admirable structures in Rome." It measured approximately 2,035 feet in length and 460 feet in width and could seat 150,000. Outside, says Dionysius, "there are entrances and ascents for the spectators at every shop, so that the countless thousands of people may enter and depart without inconvenience." Inhabited by cooks, astrologers, and prostitutes, it was in this arcade of wooden shops (tabernae) that the disastrous fire of AD 64 broke out during the reign of Nero. Of the Circus then, Pliny the Elder considered it to be one of the great buildings in the world, able to seat 250,000 persons. (Seating capacity probably was closer to 170,000.)

By AD 103, after another fire (possibly the one of AD 80), Trajan restored the Circus to its greatest splendor, rivaling the beauty of temples says Pliny the Younger. Three stories high, with arches and engaged columns in the first story, the seating areas were divided into zones by walkways. The seats in the first tier were of marble and, aside from those in the front row, along a portion of the podium wall reserved for senators, and other seats for the equites who sat behind them, were not segregated as they were in the Colosseum and the theater. Men and women could sit together, an opportunity for flirtation and dalliance of which Ovid was not unaware.

Although the Circus Maximus was designed for chariot racing (ludi circenses), other events were held there, including gladiatorial combats (ludi gladiatorii) and wild animal hunts (venationes), athletic events, and processions. Caesar showed wild beasts in the Circus and had a water-filled channel ten feet wide and ten feet deep dug around the arena to serve as a protective moat. When, in AD 63, it was filled in by Nero to provide space for additional seating, it no longer was safe to have animal fights in the Circus and, eventually, they were transferred to the Colosseum.

By the time of Augustus, seventy-seven days were given over to public games during the year, and races were run on seventeen of them. There usually were ten or twelve races a day, until Caligula doubled that number and, from the time of Nero, twenty-four races became typical. Still, Domitian once had one hundred races a day but reduced the number of laps to five to fit them all in, and Commodus ran thirty races run in just two hours one afternoon in AD 192. These numbers are exceptional, of course, and not likely to have been repeated, if only because the horses had to be transported from the Campus Martius, where they were stabled, over a mile away.

The chariots started from twelve gates (carceres), six on either side of an entrance that led from the Forum Boarium. Above sat the presiding magistrate at whose signal the races began. Far at the other end, along the sweeping curve of the track, was another gate by which processions entered the Circus. In AD 80, it was rebuilt as a triumphal arch to commemorate the conquest of Judea by Titus. On the spina, itself, were various monuments and shrines, including one to Consus and another to Murcia, who may have been the divinity of the brook over which the Circus was built. At either end were the metae or turning posts, both comprised of three gilded bronze cones grouped on a high semicircular base. There were thirteen turns, run counter-clockwise, around the metae for a total of seven laps (spatia), a distance of approximately three or four miles (approximately twice that of a modern track), depending upon how close to the inside the driver could stay.

To ensure a fair start, the starting gates were built along a slight curve so that the distance to the break line, before which the chariots were not allowed to leave their lanes, was the same for each. Drivers were required to stay within a marked lane until that point was reached, after which they could jockey for position. Lots were drawn to determine which gate was selected. The presiding magistrate (either a consul or praetor) dropped a white starting flag (mappa), the gates to the stalls flew open, and the race began.

The quadrigae was pulled by four horses, two outside horses, which were not yoked but harnessed only by a trace, and a yoked pair in the center, the right horse of which was considered to be the more important. The inside trace horse also had to be the strong to set the pace and take the turns around the metae. The number of sharp turns and the hard surface of the track meant that the animals often suffered concussions and strains or even broken bones. There were other dangers, as well, which Pelagonius, a fourth-century practitioner, enumerates in his Ars Veterinaria. They included blows to the eyes from an opponent's whip or a cut tongue from a bit pulled too hard. The horse's tail also could tangle in the reins, and usually was bound.

Race horses were carefully bred and their conformation and pedigree a matter of importance. They did not begin racing until they were five years old (although Columella says that three-year olds could begin training) and often had long careers afterwards. The best horses came from stud farms in North Africa and Hispania, and were transported to Rome on special ships (hippago) designed for the purpose. Most often, those that competed in the Circus were stallions, which also were in demand for breeding. A popular horse often was recognized by sight, a fact about which Martial complains in not being so readily known, himself.

If the horses were well bred, the charioteers (aurigae) who drove them were not. Most were slaves or freedmen and, like the gladiator, were infamis and of low social status. Competitors often would turn in front of one another, hoping to force a collision and cause their opponent to wreck (naufragium). To gain leverage, the charioteer wrapped the reins around his waist, and, in the event of a crash, could extricate himself only by cutting them away with a knife. Since fouls often were deliberate, the risk of being dragged was very real. There were times, too, when, as Martial hints, it might be prudent to hold back and not disappoint the expectations of the emperor. Too egregious a situation, however, and there would be an outcry from the spectators, who, as Ovid indicates, would wave their togas and insist that the race be stopped and run again. Cassius Dio records that the number of races that had to be started again eventually became so excessive that Claudius severely limited their number.

Still, the best charioteers were lionized by the public, consulted and cursed as magicians (how else to explain their repeated victories), and fabulously wealthy, at least those who were freedmen, who always could threaten to drive for another faction. Prize money ranged from fifteen to thirty thousand sesterces to as much as sixty thousand for a single victory. Juvenal complains that a chariot driver could earn a hundred times the fee of a lawyer, and Martial writes of Scorpus winning fifteen bags of gold in an hour. Diocles, a charioteer from Lusitania who competed during the reign of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, won prize money totaling 35,863,120 sesterces before retiring at age forty-two. An inscription dedicated in his name records 1,462 wins in 4,257 races over twenty-four years, beginning with his first race in AD 122 at age eighteen (although he raced for two years before his first victory). One thousand sixty-four of these were in singles, in which he raced for himself rather than as a team. He rode nine horses to one hundred victories apiece and one to two hundred. Although there were others who won more victories, Diocles at least lived to enjoy his success. Scorpus, who had 2,048 victories, died in the arena at age twenty-six, his death eulogized by Martial and his gilded busts over all the city.

The Circus was the most popular of the diversions provided by the emperor, the diverting panem et circuses which Juvenal satirizes, and its fans fanatical in their devotion to the races. Originally, professional stables were contracted to provide the necessary horses, personnel, and equipment; in time, these factions (factiones) became increasingly powerful. When Nero increased the number of prizes and races lasted all day, the faction owners (domini factionum), most of whom belonged to the equites, refused to hire out their horses for any less time, terms which one magistrate refused, threatening to have the chariots drawn by dogs rather than meet such an exorbitant demand. This monopoly was potentially threatening and, by the fourth century AD, it had been assumed by the emperor, who alone was to receive the gratitude of the populus in the Circus. Direct management of the factions now passed to their senior charioteers and horses were provided from the imperial stables.

From the time of Augustus, it was in the Circus (as well as in the theater and Colosseum) that the populus could make its opinions known and petition for redress. Cassius Dio was at the Circus in AD 196, during the last chariot races before the Saturnalia, and relates the displeasure of the people at the continuing civil war between Septimius Severus and his rival Albinus. There, the plebs, safe in the anonymity of the hugh crowd, began to shout, "How long are we to suffer such things...How long are we to be waging war?" The emperor did well to heed such demonstrations of popular will and to indicate his civilitas (deference) at least by listening to them. For this reason, he was expected, not only to attend the games, but to appear to enjoy them (Julius Caesar and Marcus Aurelius both were reproached for attending to their correspondence), and it is not coincidental that the Circus was built next to the palace on the Palatine Hill.

Although petitions made at the games often were granted, or at least justification offered if refused, there were limits to political expression. Dio relates the deteriorating situation under Caligula, who

"no longer showed any favours even to the populace, but opposed absolutely everything they wished, and consequently the people on their part resisted all his desires. The talk and behaviour that might be expected at such a juncture, with an angry ruler on one side, and a hostile pople on the other, were plainly in evidence. The contest betwen them, however, was not an equal one; for the people could do nothing but talk and show something of their feelings by their gestures, whereas Gaius [Caligula] would destroy his opponents, dragging many away even while they were witnessing the games and arrsting many more after they had left the theatres."

Indeed, two years later, in AD 41, Josephus records a demonstraton at the chariot races, "to which the Romans are fanatically devoted." There, the assembled crowd implored Caligula to reduce their taxes. But, when the emperor ordered that all those who continued to protest be killed, "the people, when they saw what happened, stopped their shouting and controlled themselves, for they could see with their own eyes that the request for fiscal concessions resulted quickly in their own death." Caligula, himself, was assassinated soon after.

Factions were identified by their colors: either Blue or Green, Red or White. Domitian added gold and purple but they, like the emperor, were never popular and short-lived. Colors first are recorded in the 70s BC; during the Republic, when Pliny the Elder relates that, at the funeral of a charioteer for the Reds, a distraught supporter threw himself on the pyre in despair, a sacrifice that was dismissed by the Whites as no more than the act of someone overcome by the fumes of burning incense. According to Tertullian, these were the first two factions and, although the Blues and Greens are assumed to have appeared later in the first century AD, it is likely that all four colors extend back to the Republic. Whatever their origin, by the end of the third century AD, Blue and Green had come to dominate the other two factions, which seem to have aligned themselves as Red and Green, White and Blue.

"I conjure you up, holy beings and holy names, join in aiding this spell, and bind, enchant, thwart, strike, overturn, conspire against, destroy, kill, break Eucherius, the charioteer, and all his horses tomorrow in the circus at Rome. May he not leave the barriers well; may he not be quick in contest; may he not outstrip anyone; may he not make the turns well; may he not win any prizes..."

Races always were between factions, who trained its own drivers and reared its own horses. If all four factions raced, there would be one, two, or three teams from each (which is why the Circus could accommodate as many as twelve teams). Nero, himself, actually raced, and once, despite being thrown and having to be reposited in his ten-horse chariot at Olympian games in Greece, was declared the winner, although his victory was so insulting that it later was not recorded. The emperors spent fortunes at the races, and bets were laid and race results anxiously awaited. Pliny relates that the head of one faction made the results of a race known by sending birds, whose legs were marked with the color of the winning team, to his home town.

By the fourth century AD, the number of races had risen to sixty-six days each year. Ammianus Marcellinus complains that the plebs "devote their whole life to drink, gambling, brothels, shows, and pleasure in general. Their temple, dwelling, meeting-place, in fact the centre of all their hopes and desires, is the Circus Maximus. [They swear] that the country will go to the dogs if in some coming race the driver they fancy fails to take a lead from the start, or makes too wide a turn round the post with his unlucky team. Such is the general decay of manners that on the longed-for day of the races they rush headlong to the course before the first glimmering of dawn as if they would outstrip the competing teams, most of them having passed a sleepless night distracted by their conflicting hopes about the result."

Not surprisingly, later Christian writers inveighed against the Circus, convinced that it was the devil's playground, although, to be sure, it was criticized less than the gladiatorial games or the theater. In De Spectaculis, Tertullian writes (c. AD 200) with the fervor of the converted that the very attraction of the Circus is what makes it so damnable.

Ironically, in their condemnation of the Circus, the Christian apologists provide many details about it that otherwise would be unknown. Tertullian is the first to mention the spina. The eggs, he asserts, are symbolic of Castor and Pollux, twins born from Leda's egg; the dolphins, considered by the Romans to be the fastest of creatures, in honor of Neptune, who was patron of the equestrian order and of horses and riders. The chariots are dedicated to the pagan gods: the biga to the Moon, the quadriga to the Sun, and the seiugis to Jupiter. The Whites and Reds represented winter and summer, and were dedicated to Zephyrs and Mars, as the Greens were to the earth (spring), and the Blues to the sky or sea (autumn).

Cassiodorus writes of stewards who ride out to announce the beginning of a race, and of the white break line. He also relates the origin of the mappa used to signal the start of the race: Once, when Nero had taken too long at lunch and the crowd grew restive, he threw out his napkin from the royal box to signify that he had finished and the games could begin. Cassiodorus is the last to speak of chariot racing in the west. A century earlier, Rome had fallen to the barbarians, and increasing political instability led to more factional violence. After AD 541, no more consuls were appointed (they could no longer afford the honor in any event) and the burden of sponsoring the races fell to the emperor. But there were other demands on the imperial purse, and the last race in the Circus Maximus is recorded to have occurred in AD 549.

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