4/2/2024 0 Comments Roman colosseum chariot races![]() that it was possible to make as much as 15 bags of gold for winning a single race. Successful racers who survived could grow enormously wealthy-another Roman poet, Martial, grumbled in the first century A.D. Ancient inscriptions frequently record the deaths of famous racers in their early 20s, crushed against the stone spina that ran down the center of the race track or dragged behind their horses after their chariots were smashed.Ĭharioteers, who generally started out as slaves, took these risks because there were fortunes to be won. As many as 12 four-horse teams raced one another seven times around the confines of the greatest arenas-the Circus Maximus in Rome was 2,000 feet long, but its track was not more than 150 feet wide-and rules were few, collisions all but inevitable, and hideous injuries to the charioteers extremely commonplace. Or to put it another way, basic sustenance and bloodshed, because the most popular entertainments offered by the circuses of Rome were the gladiators and chariot racing, the latter often as deadly as the former. ![]() ![]() “That’s all the common people want.” Food and entertainment. “Bread and circuses,” the poet Juvenal wrote scathingly. From a poster advertising the 1925 film version of Ben-Hur. A Roman chariot race, showing men from two of the four color-themed demes, or associations, that produced the Blues and the Greens.
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