The Sound and the Fury: The Passion for Chariot Racing in Imperial Rome By Sinclair Bell

Writing in the early second century C.E., the Latin author Juvenal bemoans how his dinner party has been interrupted by the clamor in the Circus Maximus, the oldest, largest, and most famous venue for chariot races in ancient Rome:

All Rome today is in the Circus. A roar strikes upon my ear which tells me that the Green has won; for had it lost, Rome would be as sad and dismayed as when the consuls were vanquished in the dust of Cannae. Such sights are for the young, whom it befits to shout and make bold wagers with a smart damsel by their side; but let my shriveled skin drink in the vernal sun, and escape the toga (11.193, trans. G.G. Ramsay).

Aerial visualization of imperial Rome, including the Circus Maximus and Flavian amphitheater, for the documentary film “The Greatest Race: Rome’s Chariot Superstar.” (© Faber Courtial / Lion TV, Smithsonian Channel, Channel 4, ZDF, ARTE) Blazing heat, blooming romances, high-stakes betting, and a boisterous crowd: a day at the races found no favour with the Satires’ crusty author, who—like so many of his elite peers— saw them as the province of the scabrous masses. But what was an irksome and ultimately incomprehensible passion for this man of letters was an occasion of great personal consequence for many—perhaps even most—Romans. For around the same time as Juvenal’s dinner party, Roman families began burying their prematurely-deceased children in lavish marble sarcophagi carved with scenes of cupids racing chariots in the setting of a circus, likely modeled after the Circus Maximus itself.

Marble sarcophagus for a child with scenes of cupids racing chariots in the setting of a circus, probably the Circus Maximus. Marble. 160-180 C.E. Dimensions: L 53 in.; H 15 in.; Depth 19 ½ in.; Th sides 2 ¼ - 2 ½ in. Toledo Museum of Art (Toledo, Ohio), Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey, by exchange, 2008.129. (© Toledo Museum of Art)

Interestingly, this is the single most popular type of imagery for these vessels in that age group. The example illustrated here is of particular significance due to the rare preservation of some of its patination (including remarkably preserved blue pigment along the central barrier), which indicates that each of the four cupid charioteers was originally painted in the colors of the four respective racing “factions”: the Blues, the Greens, the Reds, and the Whites. This also suggests that the deceased child was outfitted in death in her or his favorite team’s colors—just as the costumes of at least one faction were alleged to have spawned imitation clothing for children, whose doting parents outfitted them with “little green jackets” (as Juvenal also dismissively informs us: Satires, 5.142). For some Romans, then, the chariot races were a consuming passion not just during the course of their lives, but even in their deaths, which they acknowledged in the passing of their little ones. By contrast, we do find any other form of sport or “spectacle” (gladiatorial combats, theatrical performances, and wild beast hunts) insinuate itself into the realm of the living and the dead in this way. What made the chariot races so compelling and meaningful to so many? As the site of the legendary Rape of the Sabine women, the Circus Maximus—unlike any other building for Roman spectacles (i.e., the theater, amphitheater, or stadium)—was intertwined with the legendary foundation of Rome itself. At its most fully developed stage under the emperor Trajan, the structure measured circa 580 m. long and 140 m. wide. The venue could have accommodated approximately 150,000 spectators, though it may have been less or as many as 250,000.

Sestertius of Trajan. Circa 103–11 C.E. Orichalcum. 26.26 g, 6:00, 33 mm. Yale University Art Gallery, Gift of Ben Lee Damsky, inv. no. 2018.65.1. (© Yale University Art Gallery/public domain.)

View from the southeast of the remains of the Circus Maximus in Rome. (Peter Clarke; Collective Commons BY-SA 3.0)

While its architectural remains are poorly preserved today, a recent program of excavation and restoration by the Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali has done much to clarify our understanding of its building history and operation, including the new tourist-friendly virtual reality tour. These kinds of three-dimensional, archaeological reconstructions— mostly of the Circus Maximus but also of provincial sites such as Trier—have helped archaeologists to test hypotheses and consequently enrich our perspectives on the ancient appearance and experience (for instance, viewer sightlines) of these venues as well.

Visualization of the opening procession in the Circus Maximus during the Roman imperial period for the documentary film “The Greatest Race: Rome’s Chariot Superstar.” (© Faber Courtial / Lion TV, Smithsonian Channel, Channel 4, ZDF, ARTE) Visualization of the central barrier (euripus) in the Circus Maximus during the Roman imperial period for the documentary film “The Greatest Race: Rome’s Chariot Superstar.” (© Faber Courtial / Lion TV, Smithsonian Channel, Channel 4, ZDF, ARTE)

Aerial visualization of Trier in the late Roman period, including the circus. (© GDKE/Rheinisches Landesmuseum Trier/Visualisierung: Dießenbacher Informationsmedien 2017)

The architectural form of the Circus Maximus served as the prototype for satellite arenas elsewhere in Italy and around the Mediterranean, with most (but not all) built after its Trajanic remodeling. Among these, more than 50 other circuses are now known, the majority being found in the regions where horse-breeding was already well-established: Italy, North Africa (16 known, 8 confirmed archaeologically), and Spain (19 known, 12 archaeologically confirmed). The evidence from other parts of the Roman empire remains patchier, although circuses are found in most of the major cities (especially the capitals) of the provinces, including the east (e.g. Antioch, Bostra, Tyre), west (e.g. Lyon, Vienne, Trier), and northwest (e.g. Colchester). The sizes of these venues vary considerably across the empire, from more than 500 m. (at Antioch and El Djem/Thysdrus) to 269 m. (at Jerash/Gerasa)—where the chariot races have recently revived for the tourist industry there.

Aerial view of the circus at Jerash. (Reference APAAME_20080918_DLK-0168. Photographer: David Leslie Kennedy. Image credit: Aerial Photographic Archive for Archaeology in the Middle East. (Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works)

As the largest of the Roman buildings for spectacles, the Circus Maximus was the grandest stage for the capital’s hallowed traditions, urban splendor, and global ambitions—‘a fitting place for a nation which has conquered the world’ (Pliny the Younger, Panegyric 51). But the chariot races that filled that stage in imperial Rome, like other venues across its vast territories, were much more than mere ceremonial events or spectacular diversions (“bread and circuses”) to the spectators who watched them. To be sure, a chief attraction of attending the games must have been their edge-of-your-seat, high-speed spectacle: the opportunity to witness a favorite faction, charioteer, or horse prevail while risking life and limb and, at the same time, to watch rivals suffer spectacular crashes in defeat.

Relief (funerary?) with scene of the circus races. Late third (?) century C.E. Marble. H. 55 cm. x L. 1.30 m. Foligno, Palazzo Trinci, Museo Archeologico. (Image: author; reproduced with permission of the Comune di Foligno)

But because the races simultaneously signified so many different things to its different spectators over time—political showmanship, religious performance, athletic competition, social conviviality, romantic interlude, and much besides—one could experience the same day at the games as one’s neighbor in the stands in a radically different way, depending on one’s interests, passions, and sympathies. Not unlike certain NASCAR fans today, for whom the races are a dependable, routine event that lends their lives structure and even simulates a religious-like experience, so for some Romans ‘their temple, their dwelling, their assembly, and the height of all their hopes is the Circus Maximus’ (Ammianus Marcellinus, 28.4.29; transl. John C. Rolfe). In that sense, the circus was a “monumental miniature” of its society, and that society was consumed with the idea and image of victory: from depositing curse tablets at the arena’s starting gates to favor certain teams to everyday conversations in the streets and debates at dinner tables about the victories and defeats of favorite horses and charioteers to their depiction on domestic mosaics and tomb monuments.

Mosaic depicting a charioteer and horse from each of the four circus factions (Red, White, Blue and Green). Third century C.E. from a villa at Baccano, Italy. Now in Rome, Palazzo Massimo all Terme, inv. 1247. (© 2012 Fotosar – MIBAC – Soprintendenza Speciale per I Beni Archeologici di Roma)

Chariot races, then, were events that could play a highly significant role in the way that Romans at all levels of society structured their private experiences, both inside and outside the arena. The races brought fame and glory to Rome’s political leaders, from urban magistrates to emperors, through which they sedimented their authority and reproduced state power; they granted lowborn charioteers the winnings to transform themselves from slaves into citizens or, by a sudden false turn, immortalized them with the glory of dying in the circus before adoring audiences; they transported horses from the Sicilian pastures, North Africa, and Cappadocia to the imperial capital, where their fame rivaled court poets and apostles; and they lured hundreds of thousands of spectators to arenas with the promise of exhilarating moments of personal revelation—of winning a bet on a horse, of finding romance in the stands, of seeing a curse fulfilled, of finding salvation in a hero or losing all hope witnessing his death.

Romans came to the circus not only to live in the hyper-charged present, to see and to be seen within the collective hive, but also to imagine an escape from their own mundane lives—perhaps even to alter their very fates. The potential for such moments of individual revelation, set against the backdrop of the sound and the fury of the crowd, undoubtedly explains why—hundreds of years after he wrote them—Juvenal’s words still rang true: “all Rome today is in the Circus.”

Sinclair Bell is Professor of Art History at Northern Illinois University, and the lead presenter for the recent documentary on the Smithsonian Channel, “The Greatest Race: Rome’s Chariot Superstar.”