Circus Maximus
About
Rome's great chariot-racing stadium in the valley between the Palatine and Aventine, traditionally founded under the kings; rebuilt in stone/monumentalized under Julius Caesar and Augustus, and rebuilt again by Trajan after a fire under Domitian, with Trajan's reconstruction completed c. 103 CE. The finished building stretched roughly 621 meters long by 118 meters wide, with three tiers of seating rising about 28 meters above the track. Trajan's rebuild added a marble facade to the lowest tier and roughly 5,000 more seats above the stone-and-concrete lower levels. This Trajanic-era Circus, capable of holding well over 150,000 spectators, was in full use in 117 CE.
What happened here
Two hundred thousand people can watch, and on race days most of them do. Four stables — Red, White, Blue, Green — supply the teams, and supporters wear the colour, bet on it, and brawl about it. Seven laps, twelve chariots, the tightest turns at either end of the central barrier where the crashes happen. Between races there are acrobats, and the barrier itself carries obelisks, statues and the lap-counting eggs and dolphins that are tipped one by one. Seating is mixed, unlike the theatre, which makes the circus the best place in the city to meet someone. Drivers start as slaves and the successful ones die rich and famous. The track is watered and raked constantly; the smell is horse, dust and food.
In ancient writing
- Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 3.68
Gives the circus its dimensions and describes the tiers of seating, the shops and porticoes beneath, and the euripus running down the middle.
Sources
Nearby
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →