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Updated: June 24, 2025
At Rome the government was indeed "despotism tempered by epigram," but it was no less tempered by these demonstrations at the games and spectacles. More worthy of imperial Rome were the exhibitions of chariot-races held in the immense Circus Maximus.
But the carriages get out into the by-streets, or up into the Piazza del Popolo, and some people sit in temporary galleries in the latter place, and tens of thousands line the Corso on both sides, when the horses are brought out into the Piazza to the foot of that same column which, for centuries, looked down upon the games and chariot-races in the Circus Maximus.
The Nemean and Isthmian games occurred more frequently than the Olympic and Pythian. As in the Pythian festival, contests in music and in poetry, as well as gymnastics and chariot-races, formed part of these games.
The Romans seem always to have been fond of horses and racing, though they never developed a large or thoroughly efficient cavalry force. Of the Ludi Plebeii we do not know the original character, but it is likely that these also began with circenses, the regular word for chariot-races.
Peter's Church; circuses where, it is said, three hundred and eighty-five thousand spectators could witness the games and chariot-races at a time; bridges, still standing, which have furnished models for the most beautiful at Paris and London; aqueducts carried over arches one hundred feet in height, through which flowed the surplus water of distant lakes; drains of solid masonry in which large boats could float; pillars more than one hundred feet in height, coated with precious marbles or plates of brass, and covered with bass-reliefs; obelisks brought from Egypt; fora and basilicae connected together, and extending more than three thousand feet, in length, every part of which was filled with "animated busts" of conquerors, kings, and statesmen, poets, publicists, and philosophers; mausoleums greater and more splendid than that Artemisia erected to the memory of her husband; triumphal arches under which marched in stately procession the victorious armies of the Eternal City, preceded by the spoils and trophies of conquered empires, such was the proud capital a city of palaces, a residence or nobles who were virtually kings, enriched with the accumulated treasures of ancient civilization.
It seats three hundred and eighty-five thousand people. How vast a city, which can spare nearly four hundred thousand of its population to see the chariot-races! Beyond is the Aventine itself. This also is rich in legendary monuments and in the palaces of the great, though originally a plebeian quarter. Here dwelt Trajan, before he was emperor, and Ennius the poet, and Paula, the friend of St.
The gardens of the Luxembourg were, if anything, even more attractive than the Tuileries gardens. Another delightful place for children was the Hippodrome, long since demolished and built over. It was a huge open-air stadium, where, in addition to ordinary circus performances, there were chariot-races and gladiatorial combats.
These modern Olympics consist of chariot-races and wrestling, horse and foot races, ascensions of balloons, carrying three or four persons, descents from them by means of a parachute, mock-fights and aquatic tilting.
We found the piazza, on one side of which the church stands, encumbered with the amphitheatrical ranges of wooden seats that had been erected to accommodate the spectators of the chariot-races, at the recent Feast of St. John. The front of the church is composed of black and white marble, which, in the course of the five centuries that it has been built, has turned brown and yellow.
As soon as the appointed number of chariot-races was concluded, the decoration of the Circus was suddenly changed; the hunting of wild beasts afforded a various and splendid entertainment; and the chase was succeeded by a military dance, which seems, in the lively description of Claudian, to present the image of a modern tournament.
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