The Circus Maximus
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Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. State Farm, proud sponsor of My Cultura Podcast Network. It's the second century A.D. The Roman Empire is at its zenith and the city of Rome is adorned with great monuments. The metropolis is full of life, with ancient notice boards visible across the city, promoting the most popular sporting spectacle in Rome. Not the gladiatorial fights at the Colosseum, but chariot racing.

The streets are bustling with people, making their way towards this sport's greatest arena. A massive racetrack that could hold over 100,000 spectators. The Circus Maximus. It's the Ancient's On History hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and today we are talking about the Circus Maximus, one of Ancient Rome's greatest sports arenas.

Our guest is none other than Dr Matthew Nicholls from St John's College, Oxford. Matthew, he has been on the podcast once before, talking all about the Pantheon. This man is a walking encyclopedia for all the great monuments of ancient Rome, and it was a joy to hear him talk all things the Circus Maximus, from its architectural layout to the chariot races themselves. I really do hope you enjoy.

Matthew, welcome back to the podcast. Always a pleasure having you on. My pleasure too. Now, last time we talked all about the Pantheon. Now we're talking about another great building of ancient Rome, the Circus Maximus. When I think of entertainment in ancient Rome, my mind immediately goes to the Colosseum. But this building, although less impressive arguably today, is a building that was built in the

This held the more popular sport. This was the main venue in ancient Rome for it. It was, and it's much, much older than the Colosseum as a sporting venue as well. The Colosseum is AD80. The Circus Maximus goes back arguably to the 7th, 6th century BC. No such thing as a silly question to kick it all off. What was a Circus Maximus or what is the Circus Maximus? A circus is a venue for chariot racing, four-horse chariot racing. Circus Maximus just means a really big circus. Right. So,

So this is the greatest of them all. Yeah, it's superlative. The greatest circus, the biggest circus. Right. They love their superlatives sometimes, don't they? And also this other word that I think we're going to be revisiting as we go on with this talk, which is the word ludi. Now, what do we mean by the word ludi? Ludi means games, entertainment. So people will be familiar with the phrase bread and circuses. So the idea is, especially once Rome is ruled by emperors...

They dole out cheap or subsidized food and free or subsidized entertainment to the people at Rome as part of a deal. The phrase bread and circuses comes from the poet Juvenal, and he says the Roman people once masters of the universe and kind of handed out great commands and magistracies. But these days, they've given up all their political power in return for bread and circuses.

And this is lament by juvenile, but it's sort of true. The Roman populace is kept well-fed and happy and content by the supply of cheap grain and by entertainment. And entertainment comes in the form often of ludi. Ludi are games put on latterly by emperors, originally by magistrates in the Republican period. Magistrates may be competing for office or trying to bribe the electorate. It's not a crime in ancient Rome. It's just part of the political deal that you want to be elected. You give games to the people.

So magistrates like aediles, relatively junior magistrates, put on these games to show their largesse and wealth and competence. And they can be beast hunts, gladiatorial combat, athletic contests, theatrical shows, mime, but also chariot racing.

We'll get to a day at the races later on. You mentioned Juvenile there, and I feel I need to also ask about the source material, because if this building is much, much older than others like the Colosseum, do we have quite a wealth of surviving source material for the Circus Maximus and what it was for? Yeah, we do. It's a slightly disappointing building to visit. You've seen Ben-Hur and you're expecting to see that kind of arena. When you go there, it's mostly this

slightly depressing flat open strip of scrubby grass. There's some archaeology at the far end you can visit with a good VR show now, but other than that, it's just open field. So we have to go to other sources to find out more about it. We have literary sources. We have Dionysius Halicarnassus, who's important for the early circus. We have Livy for the circus in the Republican period. Later in the Imperial period, we have Pliny's description of the circus. So we can turn to literature. There are some tomb reliefs that show circus scenes because the

The race well-run is kind of a metaphor for life, and so some people put circus scenes on their tombs. Maybe they were involved in the life of the circus as well, because people put their job on their tomb. We have an important mosaic source for the Circus Maximus that kind of lays it out and shows us especially the arch at the far end, which is now almost totally gone. So there's a number of sources we can turn to. It also gets put on coins. We can find enough out there to get a good reconstruction made. Let's start with the origins of the Circus Maximus.

If it's quite old, I'm guessing the origins are shrouded in quite a bit of murkiness and mystery. But what do we think we know about the origins of this building? Well, let's think about the origins of the site before we get to the building. It's a long, flat, thin valley, the murkier valley between the Aventine and Palatine Hells.

So it's ideally placed for sport, right? It's flat. It's just outside the built-up center of the city. It's actually in this really nice location between the Palatine, where the aristocrats live, and the Eventine, where the plebs live. So it's this kind of point of mediation and meeting between different bits of the Roman population.

And it's the right shape for foot races and beast hunts and then chariot racing and horse racing. You just need a piece of flat open land. The fact that it's in a valley means that either side is naturally banked. So if people are standing or sitting on the banks, they can see the action. So from the very origins of Rome, I suspect this is where

races of various sorts and festivals and ludias that tradition evolved were taking place. Then it develops various religious associations as the goddess Merkia, the kind of stream goddess of the valley. There's a minor god called Consus who was the god of underground grain stores. So there must have been some kind of agricultural function in the area.

In among the kind of market gardens and farmland and woodland, some kind of track is carved out for racing. And then over time, it gets more and more built up. And as the city population rises, more and more people come to see the sport. So like wooden stands get built, then stone stands get built. And eventually you get to the great imperial circus we're all familiar with. Well,

Let's focus on the Imperial Circus. Talk to us a bit about the circus in Republican times, like the end of the 6th century BC all the way down to that figure of Augustus in the end of the hedonistic era in the late 1st century BC. I know this is a massive amount of time, but you see the likes of Gracchi, you see Julius Caesar,

coming to power, surely they influence the story of the Circus Maximus in quite a big way too. Yeah, they do, especially Caesar. So we start before the Republican period and the Regal period. Livy tells us Tarquins, the legendary kings of Rome, helped lay out the Circus. Tarquinius Priscus puts in some wooden seating, says Livy. Tarquinius Superbus, the last king in the late 6th century BC, puts in seating for the common folk at Rome.

Then lap counters get put in and starting stalls in the 4th century BC. They use eggs to count the laps and then later dolphins. And those go from about 174 BC. So over the centuries, it's getting gradually grander and grander, more and more formally laid out, more and more a building or a venue rather than just kind of a district, as it were.

And then really it's when we get to Caesar that the place is transformed. So Caesar is a great populist politician. He's one of a generation of politicians appealing directly to the common people. And he goes further and faster than anybody else. And this gesture of laying out the circus as a purpose-built venue for the entire population, basically, to come and watch races, is a great moment in this kind of bread and circuses tradition. So he takes an area...

that had been semi-formal, and he puts in wooden seating that can hold probably 150,000 people. Now, we think the population of Rome in the next generation is maybe a million, but if these are multi-day series of games that he's giving, the idea, I suppose, is that everybody gets to come to the circus. And when the whole city is there, kind of all fit...

Everybody can see everybody else. It's actually a big civic community thing and they can all see Caesar, right? So it becomes a venue for, yeah, for Caesarism. It's also used in the triumphal route, right? The triumph that Caesar and others celebrate in Rome winds its way through the circus and 150,000 people can sit there and watch like the elephants and the soldiers filing past. So...

It's a really important political venue for Caesar as well as an entertainment venue. The two things are the same. Sorry, did I just hear you right? 150,000 people? Yeah, Pliny says 250,000. I don't know that we believe him. But yes, and if you compare that to Wembley or the San Siro or somewhere, it's bigger than most modern sporting venues. It's enormous. So you think about the clever Roman logistics, get all these people in and out. And you mentioned Dionysius. He says, isn't it great that there are so many staircases, everyone can find their seat really quickly? Yeah.

It's very well engineered for the purpose. We'll get into the details of that as we go on. I mean, let's get to the time of Imperial Roman, the big man that is Augustus, who played a big role in the story of the Pantheon that we discussed last time. He also plays a big role in the improving of the Circus Maximus. This is also part of his...

founds Rome a city of brick, leaves it a city of marble legacy too. It is. And also he's got the legacy of Julius Caesar. So whenever anyone criticizes him or thinks they might be about criticizing populist or self-aggrandizing architecture, he can either say, no, I'm merely honoring the gods like with the Pantheon, or well, I'm simply fulfilling my deified father's wishes. Would you rather I didn't do that? So Caesar had rebuilt the circus and it burns down in 31 BC and Augustus rebuilds the circus.

And it's very, very popular, but he's got this mantle of Julius Caesar as a kind of defense against extravagance or accusations of popular building. Agrippa does a bit in there as well. Agrippa puts in the dolphins as lap counters alongside the eggs. Dolphins are a symbol of Neptune. Neptune's patron god of horses, actually, as well. Dolphins are super swift, so there's a kind of odd link between dolphins and chariot racing. Augustus rebuilds the seating. He rebuilds the pulvinar, which becomes the imperial box.

He has this single tier of stone seating and then two tiers of wooden seating above it. So under Augustus, it takes a big step forwards in terms of being a purpose-built, elaborately engineered, multi-tens of thousands seat of venue. Starting to move from wood to stone as well, I'm guessing. Yeah, getting that way. And then he also does stuff on what's called the Spina. So down the middle of the long, thin circus, there's this barrier called the Spina. It probably starts life as a drainage canal. Because remember, this is a valley with a tributary stream and the Tiber running through. It's kind of marshy. Yeah.

So various builders dig canals and ditches and drainage facilities. And probably the Spina starts off as a sort of monumentalized canal that the horses run round and round. And then in the imperial period, it turns into a series of fountain basins and stuff. And then along that barrier in those basins, various emperors put little shrines or statues. And Augustus puts an obelisk, which is captured from Egypt in 30 BC. Augustus conquers Egypt and brings back this obelisk, which is a symbol of the pharaonic rule of Egypt, but now the Roman conquest of Egypt.

The Romans know, or at least many of them do, that obelisks are sacred to Ra, the sun god. And for Romans, chariot racing can be associated with Apollo, who draws the sun through the sky in his chariot. So for the circus to have this obelisk in, there's another little gesture, kind of politico-religious gesture of significance. So Augustus really adorns the circus and makes it magnificent with bronze dolphins and extra seating and obelisks and so on. Must have been quite a sight. However...

That's not the final version of the Circus Maximus, is it? Because a few emperors later, 64 AD, something really tragic hits Rome. And I think it affects the Circus Maximus hard, doesn't it? Well, it starts in the Circus. So you're talking about the Neronian Great Fire of Rome. So if you imagine the Circus is a long, thin, U-shaped bank of seats, in the arches that hold those seats up are lots of little shops and booths. And your friend Dionysius talks about fruit sellers and food vendors and astrologers and shopkeepers under there.

So it's a kind of busy commercial district. Games don't happen every day. This is actually quite a hardworking piece of real estate and it's used for commercial activities and stuff as well. So all of those little shops and bars and restaurants are going to have braces in the back and it's a fire risk, especially all the wooden seats above. And in 64, the great fire of Rome that destroys a lot of Rome under Nero may well have started in such a space.

and the circus burns down and needs to be rebuilt. One great tragedy is another person's great opportunity. So I'm guessing for emperors that follow, or is there a particular emperor that follows Nero that decides to really rebuild the Circus Maximus in splendor? Yes. I mean, the greatest rebuilder is Trajan. He's a few reigns later. Other stuff is done in the interim. So there's a great arch put in in AD 81 by the Emperor Domitian to honour his older brother Titus, the conqueror of Jerusalem. So it's like a triumphal arch at the top of the circus. And we link the circus already to triumphal processions.

So, already by the 80s, it's being substantially rebuilt and monumentalized. But the biggest transformation is under Trajan, who's a great building emperor, who finally builds the all-stone, all-brick and concrete and stone version that becomes the final expression of the circus in Rome and whose remains survive today. Do we know much about the construction itself? Like as I asked you with the Pantheon in our last chat, do we know how long it took or that the people involved in the building? Well, yeah.

Well, we know a little bit. I mean, we can deduce it from looking at the remains that do survive. And by this point, this kind of Roman engineering had been brought to a picture of perfection. It was pretty standardized. And albeit the circus is the biggest expression of this sort of thing, they're very well used to building the complicated sets of staircases that you go into an arch, you go up a winding staircase, it takes you to the right seat for your ticket. They've done that in the Colosseum. They've done it in lots of other stadia. So although it's big in scale, it's actually quite modular, like there's repeated dimensions of arches all the way around the edges and

staircases winding up through it latrines and waterworks and stuff within the thickness of the piers that you can get a drinking fountain or go to the loo without having to leave the building and then on the ground floor the shops it's a very quintessential expression of a well-established roman building style built in brick and concrete so they're using that easy mix concrete they're using standardized brick sizes

these in travertine facing that comes from quarries not far from Rome it's a very excellent building process they have by this date well let's do the fun stuff now let's do a day in the life of someone going to see of an event to see a chariot races at the Circus Maximus at its height during this time in the Roman imperial period first off before the day of the games itself

Would you, if you're walking through the streets of Rome, would there be lots of advertisements? Would there be graffiti? Would there be people clamoring and letting you know what was about to come, what was about to happen in Circus Maximus? Yes, I would have thought so. If you go to Pompeii, graffiti are better preserved. You get these graffiti saying that on such and such a day, there'll be a show at the amphitheater and there will be awnings at a popular base, right? They're paying a bit extra to get the silk or canvas awnings out to shade you from the sun. So the nature and quality of the games would be advertised differently.

It'd be in the calendar. A lot of these games happen on festival days. You know when those are coming. We have two days of weekend every week. The Romans have these festival days that punctuate the year where people don't work. So you'd know about it, but it would be advertised and celebrated. And the emperors put the circus and the Colosseum on their coinage to remind people of their generosity. So yeah, everybody's looking forward to it.

Ovid, Augustineer, a poet, talks about the crowds and the circus. He talks about actually going there to pick up a lady friend. So it's a day out with opportunities for all the family. But what he is giving you is this kind of the life of the crowd and the idea that everybody's there and both genders are there and that it's a kind of festival day. And yeah, it's a slice of life, we could say. Slice of life, big festival day. And also as you're walking towards the Circus Maximus, by this time, of course, very much the time of the emperors,

As you walk towards it, will you also be able to see surrounding it other great pieces of Imperial architecture? I mean, what would you see? Oh, you certainly would. Depends where you're coming from. If you're coming from the Suburra, which is a crowded residential district just north of the Forum, you probably walk down through the Argulatum and then into the Forum of Nerva and Domitian. So the Imperial Forum, you might take a left turn and find yourself walking past the Colosseum, the Arch of Titus, the Meta Sudans, Nereus Aqueduct Arches,

And then the Sept Zodium of the Severan Empress, if you're that late. And then you take a right turn through Titus's Arch into the Circus. So you're walking past centuries of Roman imperial history. That route, the Empress put triumphal arches on it, and it's very, very heavily adorned. Coming in from other bits of the city, yeah, you walk past all sorts of storied and fabled bits of Rome. If you live over on the Aventine Hill, you come up over the Aventine Pass, like the Temple of Diana, and round over the top of the hill, and you can see the Circus laid out beneath you and across the hill.

side of the circus you see the palatine where the emperors live so wherever you come from by the time you're in the circus you are staring up at the palatine terraces of the emperor's palace so they kind of also look down those emperors those people look down on the circus maximus too yeah they do and emperors as it were good emperors tend to get a reputation for being in the circus not quite in the cheap seats but in among the people there are letters of augustus

saying it's very important that we all get seen at the games. And Julius Caesar gets a bad rep for doing his correspondence in the box, like checking his emails while the games are on. Domitian watches from some lofty Palatine terrace, and this isn't so good. So Trajan comes down and sits in the seating of the circus, and it is among the people again. So it's quite political. But the fact that the Empress Palace is up there on the hill, lowering down over the whole complex, there's no doubt about who has built this, who has sponsored the games, who is in charge.

I know that there were other circuses in Rome, but as this was the Maximus, was this the one that the elites and particularly the emperors, that's where they would want to show their face more than the others? Yeah, I think so, because they're showing it to more people. This is the great game. There are plenty of other circuses. There's an athletic stadium that Domitian builds up in the Campus Martius. There are circuses attached to imperial tombs actually outside of Rome where people might go to commemorate an emperor. You want lots of people to visit your tomb, so you build a circus there.

But this is the biggest and the best and the most important one. Well, let's talk about the entrances. If you, let's say, you're an everyday Roman free man or free woman, I mean, how would you enter the Circus Maximus? Very much like you'd enter the Colosseum. If you can picture the Colosseum in your mind, there's all the way around, there are arches, right? And actually, there's arches in the Colosseum. They have numbers over them that must correspond to some kind of ticket number.

So you go to the particular arch that's on your ticket number and that takes you to the right staircase for your seating. And if you're posh, you sit at the front, and if you're not posh, you sit far up in the gods, in the cheap seats. Something similar at the circus, probably, that you'd be directed to a particular entrance arch that leads you to a staircase that threads up through the building in a series of switchbacks and delivers you out of an exit into the right block of seating.

There was greater seating there in the circus as well as in other kinds of entertainment buildings. So, you know, senators and posh people lower down or at the southeast corner where the exciting first turn happens. There's an imperial box. Other seating perhaps a bit less restricted.

But if there's a quarter of a million people there or 150,000 people there, there's got to be a system for getting them in and out of the right entrances and exits. Otherwise, there will be multi-fatality disasters every time there's a race. So the fact that didn't happen every race day means there was an efficient system for getting people in and out. There were certainly some infamous cases, which we'll get to a bit later. I mean, one other question on the seating. So it seems to be where you sat really depended on your status, you know, lower down, more elite and then the Empress box, of course. Are

I know, correct me if I've got the details wrong, but with the Colosseum, I think there's a law introduced that women sat at the top of the back because of the shade or something like that, or maybe it was slightly different. Is there similar laws with the Circus Maximus, or is it very much women can sit with men and it's all around women?

I think we know a bit less detail for the Circus Maximus. There are Augustan and later era theatre laws, like Lex Roskia and so on, that specify where people sit in the theatres. Oh, the Augustus, yes. Yeah, so he legislates about theatre seating specifically. And then in the Colosseum, yes, there are divisions by social class and social status and rank within the seating blocs.

And we might imagine something similar in the circus. I mean, very early in its life, there was stone seating for senators and wooden seating for other people. And some kind of division must have remained, but it's just so enormously big that, you know, almost everybody is there in some seat or other. Ovid does suggest that men and women might sit together. Of course, yes. Ovid, of course. Moving on from that very quickly.

The day of the games, you found your seat, you sat down. How would the races themselves, what would happen before the races started? How would they announce that the whole spectacle was beginning? So Romans liked trumpets. In the Colosseum, there's a water-powered organ, a hydrolysis. Maybe there's one in the circus. Something can make a lot of noise, right? But a blast of trumpets, a flutter of banners, maybe the emperor comes into his box and everybody cheers or boos or however they feel that day.

I'd imagine that there'd be a lot of noise and color. Even before you get in, maybe you've bought a kind of, you know, a hot snack and a flag and a wine. Maybe you've made a bet because they do like betting on their racing. There are racing teams with colors like the greens and the blues and so on. So you'd have a faction and maybe there's a bit of rivalry within the crowd about different racing factions.

people placing bets. And then let's assume you're watching racing. It's not only racing that happens in the circus. There are kind of beast hunts there. There are processions, there might be executions, there might be athletic contests, but essentially, especially later on, a specialist chariot racing arena. So there's a series of 12 starting gates down at the northern end. Those have counterweighted doors that fly open at the right moment so everybody gets the right racing start.

The arena, there's like a kink in one wall of the seating to get a proper start and make everybody fairly positioned to get into the first straight. Then the first turn is the exciting bit. So the presiding magistrate or emperor drops his mapper, his handkerchief,

The gates fly open, the chariots spring out of the traps, they make seven anti-clockwise laps typically, these are four horse chariots, 12 of them. They crunch into each other at the corners, like in Formula One, the first turn is crucial for positioning, and they carry on going round and around until they cross the finishing line. And then you collect your winnings or commiserate your losses with another flagon of wine and then the next race happens.

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Well, let's explore these chariots in a bit more detail. So the Four Horses are the quadriga. So that was like the height of the chariots, wasn't it? But also with the charioteers and these whole teams. Now with gladiators, if you were a successful gladiator, you could get a bit of a following. You've hinted at their similar thing with the charioteers. Do we know much about who they were and how rich and famous they could become? Yes, these were Formula One drivers of the ancient world. Chariot racing was enormously glamorous.

emperors got very very invested in it you remember that caligula had a favorite horse called incitatus various emperor support various chariot racing factions domitian introduces some new ones these people have barracks or kind of club houses in the city where they're training stables and workshops are so they could be at the top of the game really famous i think the single highest paid sportsman of all time is a roman charioteer called i think gaius appius diocles i have to check the name and

And it's very hard to assign a pound or dollar value to an ancient currency, but we're told in his funeral inscription how much he'd won. And if you add it all up, it's like millions and millions and millions of dollars. It's kind of beyond Tiger Woods territory of sportsman earnings. So at the top of the game, they could be extremely well rewarded. It's quite dangerous, so they're earning it.

But there's a lot of glamour and a lot of prestige and a lot of money attached to it. Were they also, I mean, with gladiators, of course, it's kind of similar, but they were also part of the infamia or the kind of derided, very low on the social status ladder of ancient Rome. Do we know much about the charioteers, about their social status at the same time? Well, they were entertainers and they were putting their bodies on the line for sports. So they were never going to be top notch. But I think unlike gladiators and unlike theatre actors, chariot racing has got this longstanding royal glamour to it.

In Greece, it's the sport of aristocracy because it's very expensive to run horses. So, and Nero, the Emperor Nero, performs as a charioteer. He races with the 12-horse team at Olympia and falls out the chariot, but they give him the prize anyway because they have to. So, it does have this...

royal imperial allure to actually so does arena fighting sometimes like Commodus goes into the arena and shoots the heads of ostriches and so on so Roman emperors do as it were debase themselves by going into the arena but chariot racing I think has a bit more allure to it and a bit more glamour to it than some other forms of entertainment and also you hinted at like so these different teams and they're divided into colours these teams or does that change a bit too?

Yeah, it does. There are four teams and Domitian adds two others. From memory, I think he adds the whites and the purples. I have to check that, but it's like a short-lived addition. But these... They're like the factions in the Palio in Siena or people's football teams. I guess there might be a certain neighborhood loyalty to them or a family loyalty. So...

People just need a tribe to belong to and these racing colours add a bit of spice to the day. Fair enough. So the gates open and they're going round the Spina and they get to that first turn, which you say is one of the most important parts of the whole race. Yeah.

but also quite dangerous. So what are these crashes that can happen between these chariots? Well, you want to take the inside racing line at the corner, because if you go out wide, you're travelling more distance. But it's actually quite hard to turn a light chariot in a four-horse team. It requires good horsemanship and tight control of the reins. They have a little knife tucked into their boots. They can cut the reins if it all goes wrong. So they start off wide apart, these 12 starting gates.

They're all trying to funnel into the same space to be on the inside of the first turn. And so there's jockeying for position and kind of, you know, the chariot wheels bumping up against each other and they're moving at speed. So if the chariots collide, they'll probably fall out.

So it's, yeah, that's the thrilling moment where they, if you get an advantage of that first turn, you can then accelerate up the straight in first place. So it's, the turns are really the crunch points. But I've got on my notes the word shipwrecks. Is this kind of the name that they assign to if he does crash? Yeah, they're called shipwrecks and they're fragger. And you could imagine that the poor unfortunate charioteer is still kind of

almost tied to the reins of the horse, wrapped around his arms for controlling the team. So he's got to get out of that pretty quickly. He's got to dodge the flying wreckage and the thundering hooves behind him. It's a dangerous sport. Because you see in that epic movie, and we were talking about it a bit before we started recording the movie, Gladiator, where you obviously have the gladiatorial fight in the Colosseum, but then you also have the chariots.

And you kind of see those chariots crashing together during that fight. And that scene from Gladiator, it almost comes and feels like a bit of a meshing between gladiatorial combat and charioteering. And of course, a bit of fiction thrown in there too for entertainment purposes. Yeah, that's right. I mean, I like the arena scenes in Gladiator. They throw a bit of everything in, right? There were tigers as well and all sorts of stuff. That's not inaccurate. There were wild beasts that popped up through holes in the floor of the Coliseum.

And they liked spectacular historical reenactments and mythological reenactments in particular. So I dare say you would have seen some chariots in the Colosseum on occasion. It's just not big enough to get up to any speed. Whereas the Circus Maximus is. There's 335 meters between the turning speed of the whole arena floor is about 600 meters long. So you can get a fair turn of speed up.

but then you've got to bring it back at the corners and turn tightly. Well, exactly. It's the real skill of it, isn't it? And you can kind of see them picking up the speed or the straights and how they carefully go around the corners. Well, go around either end. I mean, one last bit on the architecture of the Spina when they're kind of going around that corner. I mean, if I got my notes, there was an architectural feature at either end of the Spina that indicated the turning points. Yeah, they're called metai or turning points. So they're kind of cone-shaped things. There's a group of three at each end. And they're there. They're quite tall because there'd be a roiling cloud of dust kicked up by the chariots.

And you need to see where you're making your turn. So they're quite tall markers and they get quite elaborate. They've got a kind of traditional cone-shaped space. And then later on, that shape gets used for fountains. For example, the fountain outside the Colosseum is called the Meta Sudans or the Sweating Meta, the Sweaty Meta, because water oozes down it. And that's at a turning point in the road. So it's like, whereas you make your left-hand turn from the Colosseum right up towards the Forum, you can pretend you're kind of turning around a circus turning post or meta.

So it becomes a defined kind of architectural shape. And then between them, there's this long barrier, the Spina, that gets covered in fountains and obelisks and statues and all sorts of stuff. If you were a VIP, VIP, VIP, and you weren't the emperor, could you be invited onto the Spina and watch it from there? I don't think people watch from the Spina. There are probably workers on the Spina who are tipping up the eggs and dolphins used for the lap counters. And again, those are quite high structures, so the whole crowd can see them and the charioteers can see them too, because you've got to keep track of these seven laps.

If you're VIP, VVIP, you're in the Empress Box, I suspect. Or maybe you're watching, if you're in the Priestly College of the Temple of Sol, you're watching from the steps of the Temple of Sol and this kind of thing. So there'll be special areas within the circus. But the Spina is quite a dusty and dangerous working place. But that's also something really important to highlight there, isn't it? We've talked about the charities, we've talked about the spectators. To hold events like this, and surely it would be the same in the Colosseum too, but this is more than 100,000 people perhaps at times.

The amount of workers that must be there. Oh, they're counting laps with eggs or dolphins or, you know, keeping an eye on the chariots themselves and other stuff like that, logistics. The whole workforce behind keeping the Circus Maximus running must have been huge. Oh, I'd have thought hundreds of thousands of people on a race day. So each team would presumably have to have its like paddock with the spare chariot wheels and engineers and doctors and pit stops. Look after the very expensive horses and charioteers.

Then there would be marshals and people keeping the building working. There would be track crews clearing the shipwreck wreckage and doing the lap counting. Somebody making sure that all the starting gates were properly oiled and moving the counterweight at the right moment to spring them open. Yeah, a cast of hundreds. And then also the private sector and all those shops and restaurants and bars under the arcades.

there'd be people ministering to the needs of the crowd. Big business, big business. Now, I mean, actually one big question you ask is, is it that there's no toilets in the Coliseum? In the Coliseum, I don't think there are, but there are latrines built into the thickness of the walls in the circus. Well, I was going to ask that next. So there are latrines in the circus as well. So they've realised that need. Yes, yes. And maybe it's a long day there. There's lots of races to watch. Yeah.

people partaking of refreshments. So how many races do we think on a normal day at a loony would happen at the Circus Maximus? Well, I don't know that we know that, but several around the more, the more races and the more like processions and dancing girls and stuff between the races, you know, the longer the day.

So a seven-lap race would take quite a while, but several seven-lap races would be a good day's entertainment. Well, these processions, actually, this entertainment when the races aren't happening, what types of entertainment should we imagine? Can we also imagine people dishing out bread and the emperor displaying their largesse at events like that too? Well, we know that happened in the Colosseum, like tokens thrown to the crowd, and your token might be for a cup of wine or it might be for a

a new cloak or something so or even some gold so yeah handing out these tokens distributing food and favors paying for the entertainment yeah all of this i would have thought and probably kind of big ceremonial opening procession and the rest of it a bit of visual drama music and color i'm guessing as well it was full of color and gold yeah well of course the liveries of the teams presumably were colored and they're so they're the horses and the bling on the chariots and they're kind of drapes in the emperor's box yeah it would have been a colorful spectacle

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So one thing on the racetrack itself, I think I remember saying so, it's quite deep in the ground today. So were the stands actually quite far up above the racecourse itself? Yeah, they would have been. So the modern ground level, I said right at the start, it's a slightly disappointing place to visit today. The modern ground level is about six metres above the ancient ground level. That's essentially because it's a narrow valley leading to the river and it's very prone to silting and flood. And

And it had a very long afterlife. There were market gardens on there. There was a gas works on there in the 19th century. Mussolini built a kind of expo park in the 20th century. So it's just layers and layers and layers of stuff above the ancient level. So if you take the ancient track level down six meters, it becomes a steeper, deeper valley. And the valley slopes become correspondingly higher up and further from the action. And that starts to give you a sense of how many people could be accommodated there.

Could I just ask, as we kind of get to the close of the games, and let's say the charities, they're going out the one... I mean, is there a winner's podium? Do we know that at all? Well, winners get prizes. I mean, they get a palm leaf, right? And maybe a monetary prize. So you could imagine them being invited up onto the Spina in front of the view of the crowd, or maybe up to the Emperor's Box to get their palm leaf. Again, I said earlier on that people put this on their tombs, and quite often the charity are showing, like, I've won the race of life, and here I am with my palm of victory. So we get a little sense of that from some of those tombs. And then exiting...

the Circus Maximus at the end of the race or the end of the day even for those people who competed in the races. I'm guessing they don't go the same ways as the spectators. Because you hinted how this is also part of the processional way. Is there an elaborate entrance and exit either end of the Circus Maximus? Yeah. So at the one end, at the river end, there's the starting gates, which are spring-loaded with grills that fly up and start the race. At the far end, there's a triumphal arch of the Emperor Titus, which is a three-bay arch

And you could imagine that maybe the victor would go out of there in style and maybe, you know, like the winner's enclosure at Cheltenham, mingle with a crowd who could pat the horses and say, well done. So there would be, we don't know this, but there could well have been a procession out of that arch. And it's quite a big kind of open area beyond that curved end of the circus up there.

Others might wend their way back to the starting gates. You assume there's a kind of technical paddock behind the starting gates where they get set up in the morning. So maybe they go out that way as well at some points. And that Arch of Titus. Now, when someone says the Arch of Titus, I think of, of course, the Jewish revolt and the one in the Roman Forum. So this one at the Circus Maximus, that's a different Arch of Titus. Yeah, but celebrating the same victory. So Titus has this very short reign.

And his younger brother takes over and commemorates him in the arch that survives today at the head of the Sacra Vea by the Colosseum. And this one was also a triumphal arch of the emperor, trying to cement the Flavian dynasty's place in the landscape of Rome. Vigo doesn't last long as an emperor, but is he too...

monumental arches to his name, one of which seems doesn't survive. So what surviving architecture do we have from the monumental circle? Bits and bobs of the arch masonry survives the city. It's now been excavated and actually you can buy a ticket and go and see it now. So there's kind of blocks of carved stone lying around down there. You get that the piers of the arch are there on the ground and you can see them on the marble plan of Rome, the ancient marble map of Rome shows the piers. They survive on the ground. They're on this mosaic. Bits of them survive. So you have a fairly decent idea of what the arch looked like.

Well, fair enough. Well, I think we've covered in detail really nicely kind of a day at the games of the Circus Maximus and how important it was, particularly in imperial times.

When those games aren't being held, and of course you mentioned that all these people are living nearby it, on what other occasions during Imperial Rome would the Circus Maximus be used when it wasn't a ludic? Well, for Triumph, and after Augustus, only emperors hold Triumphs, and they're quite rare events, but they're special. So you can imagine the entire city stands actually jammed full on a Triumph day. And because it's a long, thin space designed for chariots, it'd be quite a good venue for the Triumph to go past.

So that'd be one occasion. There might be all sorts of different games and events and entertainments in there, as well as chariot racing. You could imagine one end of it being used for kind of a more modest display of something or other. I imagine the shops and markets underneath it are in use all year round. The starting gate end, the river end, is right near the cattle market, the Forum Bovarium. And certainly early in its life, I imagine it had a commercial function. Maybe you'd pen the animals that were going to be sold in the cattle market. That probably stops at some point, but...

You could imagine other sorts of function and use throughout the year. As we start to wrap up, let's talk about the use of the Circus Maximus as times go on, first with the Romans and then into later history.

What happens to the Circus Maximus when we get to the time of later emperors? And I know during this time also, which I'd love us to talk about, there seems to be a major disaster that befalls the Circus Maximus too. Yeah, bits of the stands collapse. I think 13,000 people die. 13,000. Emperor Diocletian's time, I believe. Yeah. Wow. Which is a considerable disaster. And there are amphitheater riots and disasters and collapses fairly periodically throughout Roman history. These are big disasters.

for thousands of people in often quite an agitated state. Later on in Constantinople, there are very famous circus riots, right? The Nika riots. Yeah, that's right. So that's where circus racing becomes an absolute craze. And again, in...

Istanbul, Byzantium, Constantinople. The circus is right next to the Imperial Palace, which is the same configuration as at Rome, right? And says something about the imperial patronage or chariot racing. And there, there are massive riots and the whole city gets caught up in a huge turmoil over it. So it's a volatile space. Anywhere you gather thousands of people together, there's physical danger and there's also political danger because they become very incitable. They're in the sunshine all day being entertained and maybe getting a bit tipsy. That's kind of volatile and dangerous stuff. So emperors treat it

with respect, but it's so ingrained as part of the city's life that they carry on giving games and entertainments there. The last ones that we hear about, I think in the mid sixth century AD, so quite late, quite late, but Christianity doesn't sit very well with gladiatorial combat, chariot racing, theatre games. It's not really what the rulers of the Christian city want to do and it falls out of use. Falls out of use. And we were talking last time, of course, about the Pantheon and how that endures, of course, converted into a church.

I'm guessing no similar fate kind of befalls the Circus Maximus as we get through the Middle Ages and down near the present day. What kind of happens? Does it just...

Is it kind of disregarded almost? Well, it's almost worse than that. It's a kind of perfectly built, ready-made quarry because the seating are blocks of stone like the Colosseum and they're neatly arrayed in easily pried out ranks with kind of staircases to go and help yourself. So when you need to build a barn or an extension on your villa, you can go and load off a couple of cartloads of stone from it. The statues get smashed up and taken down and melted if they're bronze or burned for lime if they're marble and the stone blocks are carted away and

Also, because it's topographically quite a vulnerable spot, it's in this kind of valley that wants to flood all the time. They have to keep draining it. When the hydraulic engineering stops working, it floods and silts up and everything gets buried. So it crumbles away. The obelisk is taken away and put up in the Vatican, elsewhere in Rome, and all the fancy ornaments stripped away and reused or sold or melted or pillaged. So it just...

It just disappears. The last question, that other piece of architecture that you do see when you walk through the Circus Maximus today, there's that tower, isn't there, at one end? But I'm guessing that that tower isn't Roman. That's medieval. And it was a stronghold for a local family who were the medieval Rome people.

fell into this patchwork of completing like Montagues and Capulets as it were kind of rival barons carving out trunks of the city for themselves and this was a stronghold tower there was a mill there because the stream was still there and it was used to turn a water mill so if you go there now there are millstones and stuff and this tower was part of the later life of the circus like our episode on the pantheon this has been amazing a treasure trove of information that you've given to us today the whole story almost it feels like of the circus maximus from origins to its later falling out of use and

It is striking to think just those numbers, more than 100,000 people,

In the Circus Maximus, watching one of these spectacles some 1900, 1800 years ago, it blows your mind that they were able to build something like that and have such a huge event happening. It really does. I mean, it's the size of the city of Rome, right? The biggest city in the pre-industrial world at a million people. The proportion of those people who are watching chariot racing, this is really a venue for the whole city.

it really underlines the importance of bread and circuses to the emperors and to the people they ruled. Absolutely. Well, Matthew, this has been fantastic. And it just goes for me to say once again, thank you so much for taking the time to come to the podcast today. My pleasure. Our race is run.

Well, there you go. There was Dr. Matthew Nichols talking all things the Circus Maximus, one of the greatest sports arenas in ancient Rome. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you want more about ancient monuments, great structures of ancient Rome with Matthew, then I would strongly recommend you listen to the other episode we recorded with Matthew a few months back, all about that extraordinary technology

temple on the campus marshes that still survives down to the present day, beautifully preserved, the Pantheon. That was also a really fun episode, part of our Wonders of the World miniseries with Matthew. So definitely do check that one out too in the Ancients Archive. Go listen on Spotify. Last thing from me, wherever you are listening to the podcast, make sure that you are subscribed, that you are following the Ancients so that you don't miss out when we release new episodes twice every week.

That is enough from me, and I will see you in the next episode.

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