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Roman Circus

Circus, in ancient Rome, was a large oblong building adapted for chariot-races and horse-races, and used also for the exhibition of athletic exercises, mock-contests, and conflicts of wild beasts. The Circensian Games were alleged by tradition to have originated in the time of Romulus; and Tarquinius Priscus celebrated a notable victory by games. The games continued to be held annually, and a permanent edifice was soon afterwards constructed. This was distinguished, subsequent to the erection of the Flaminian and other large circi, as the Circus Maximus.

The circus was especially adapted for chariot-races, an amusement of which the Romans were passionately fond. The length of a race was seven circuits round the spina, and twenty-five races were run in each day. The number of chariots was usually four. T*he athletic exercises, such as boxing and wrestling, sometimes terminated fatally. A regular battle was sometimes represented (PuynaEquestrij et Pedestrts). By the formation of canals and the introduction of vessels, a Naumachia, or sea-fight, was occasionally exhibited ; but, under the empire, this species of exhibition, as well as the Venatio, was gradually transferred to the Amphitheatre (q.v.). Animals for the Venatio or hunting were procured from every available part of the Roman empire, including Africa and Asia. The exhibition not only afforded an opportunity for the display of private munificence or ostentation, but attained the importance of a political engine, which none who aspired to popularity could afford to overlook. The turbulent classes often demanded doles of bread and circus games (paiiem et circentes) from candidates. When Pompey opened his new theatre he is said to have given public exhibitions in the circus for five days, during which five hundred lions and twenty elephants were destroyed. The Greek hippodrome was very similar in its arrangements to the Roman circus.

While the circus was designed for chariot-races, the stadium was used for footraces. Of these there were several, but the Imperial Stadium on the Palatine, between the house of Augustus and the buildings of Septimius Severus is the only one which remains in a tolerable state of preservation. The Stadium of Domitian on the Campus Martius is believed to be represented by the present Piazza Navona, recently renamed the Circo Agonale.

The oldest circus was the Circus Maximus, in the valley between the Palatine and the Aventine. It is supposed to date from the regal period, but was enlarged by Julius Caesar. Tarquinius was said to have built the great circus which lies between the Aventine and Palatine Hills. He was the first who erected covered seats round it; for until then the spectators stood on scaffolds supported by poles. And he divided the places between the thirty curias. He assigned to each curia a particular part, so that every spectator was seated in the place that belonged to him. This work also became in time one of the most beautiful and most admirable structures in Rome. The valley between the Palatine and Aventine, the site of the Circus Maximus, was formerly the Murzian Lake or bay, formed by an arm of the Tiber. The valley in which it stood was originally called the Murzian Valley. Here Romulus gave the games when the Romans ran off with the Sabine women. The stream of the Almo runs through it: this branch of the Almo was taken from the main stream, about six miles from Rome, and made to pass through the Circus to supply with water the canal made by Csesar which separated the spectators from the arena.

The circus was 3-1/2 stadia [or 1875 feet] in length, and 400 feet in breadth. It must have been altered and enlarged at various times. Dionysius says it could hold 150,000 persons; Pliny, 260,000; and P. Victor, 385,000. Its extent also has been variously estimated. In the time of Julius Caesar it was one stadium or 625 feet wide, while the depth of the buildings surrounding the open space was half a stadium, or alosmt 312 feet.

The plan was oblong, rounded at one end and square at the other. Along the sides and at the curved end were ascending ranges of stone seats for the spectators. At the other end were the carceres or stalls in which the horses and chariots were kept, until, on a given signal, the gates were simultaneously flung open. In the centre was the spina, a long and broad wall round which the charioteers drove, terminating at both ends at the mettv or goals- conical pillars which marked the turnings of the course. Julius Caesar made an euripits or canal round the course to protect the spectators more effectually during the conflicts of wild beasts.

Round the two greater sides, and one of the lesser, ran a canal, 10 feet deep and as many broad, to receive the water; behind the canal, porticoes are erected three stories high, of which the lowest has stone seats, as in the theatres, raised a little above the level of the ground, and the two upper porticoes have wooden seats. The two larger porticoes are connected into one, and joined together by means of the lesser, and, meeting, form a semicircular figure; so that all three constitute one amphitheatral portico of 8 stadia, capable of receiving one hundred and fifty thousand persons. The other lesser side is left uncovered, and contained several arched starting-places for the horses, which were all opened at one signal. On the outside of the circus ran another portico of one story, which had shops in it, and habitations over them. In this portico were entrances and ascents for the spectators at eveiy shop, contrived in such a manner that so many thousand persons may go in and out without any molestation.

The Circus of Maxentius, erected AD 310, the enclosure walls of which have been preserved almost entire. These display the interesting phenomenon of pots of earthenware built into them, which not merely expedited the progress of the work, but allowed of its being more easily repaired than was possible in any other mode of construction. Its length was 1574 feet, and breadth 269, and 18,000 spectators could be accommodated within its vast walls, yet it was a small building compared with the Circus Maximus. In 1825 three inscriptions were found proving this to be the circus consecrated to Romulus, son of Maxentius. Two towers flank the entrance, supposed to have been the seats for the judges. It is the most perfect specimen of a Roman circus remaining. The arrangements of a Roman circus can best be studied in the well-preserved circus on the Appian Way, near the tomb of Ciecilia Metella, built in 311 AD, which usually bears the name of the Emperor Maxentius, but is more correctly assigned to his son Romulus. The meta, the spina, the carceres, and the seats for the emperor and the spectators may still be traced. An Egyptian obelisk from this circus now adorns the Piazza Navona.

Of the Circus of Flaminius, built in 220 BC on the Campus Martius immediately below the northern slope of the Capitoline Hill, no vestiges remain. The same is the case with the Circus of Nero on the Vatican, which occupied the hollow between S. Peter's Church and the Sacristy through which the visitor now drives to the Vatican Museum.