The Circus Maximus (Latin for "largest circus"; Italian: Circo Massimo) is an ancient Roman chariot-racing stadium and mass entertainment venue in Rome, Italy. In the valley between the Aventine and Palatine hills, it was the first and largest stadium in ancient Rome and its later Empire. It measured in length and in width and could accommodate over 150,000 spectators.This is a modern recalculation of the seat capacity at the Circus, a substantial downward revision of Pliny the Elder's estimate of 250,000. For discussion, see In its fully developed form, it became the model for circuses throughout the Roman Empire. The site is now a public park.
Events and uses
The Circus was Rome's largest venue for ludi, public games connected to Roman religious festivals. Ludi were sponsored by leading Romans or the Roman state for the benefit of the Roman people (populus Romanus) and gods. Most were held annually or at annual intervals on the Roman calendar. Others might be given to fulfill a religious vow, such as the games in celebration of a triumph. In Roman tradition, the earliest triumphal ludi at the Circus were vowed by Tarquin the Proud to Jupiter in the late Regal era for his victory over Pometia.
Ludi ranged in duration and scope from one-day or even half-day events to spectacular multi-venue celebrations held over several days, with religious ceremonies and public feasts, horse and chariot racing, athletics, plays and recitals, beast-hunts and gladiator fights. Some included public executions. The greater ludi (meaning sport or game in Latin) at the Circus began with a flamboyant parade (pompa circensis), much like the triumphal procession, which marked the purpose of the games and introduced the participants.Described by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 7.72.1–13, supplemented by Quintus Fabius Pictor's history.
During the Roman Republic, the aediles organized the games. The most costly and complex of the ludi offered opportunities to assess an aedile's competence, generosity, and fitness for higher office.Aedileship was a rung on the cursus honorum, available to patricians and plebeians of wealth and high standing. Despite the sometimes crippling personal cost of running for office and providing "extras" for the ludi, a successful aedile could secure popular favor and a substantial share of the vote at election time. Julius Caesar was among those who solidified his support through his lavish ludi as aedile. Some Circus events, however, seem to have been relatively small and intimate affairs. In 167 BC, "flute players, scenic artists and dancers" performed on a temporary stage, probably erected between the two central seating banks. Others were enlarged at enormous expense to fit the entire space. A venatio held there in 169 BC, one of several in the 2nd century, employed "63 leopards and 40 bears and elephants", with spectators presumably kept safe by a substantial barrier., A later iron cage-work barrier is evident at Pompey's venatione of 55 BC.
As Rome's provinces expanded, existing ludi were embellished and new ludi invented by politicians who competed for divine and popular support. By the late Republic, ludi were held on 57 days of the year; an unknown number of these would have required full use of the Circus.Bunson, Matthew, A Dictionary of the Roman Empire, Oxford University Press, 1995, p. 246. On many other days, charioteers and jockeys would need to practise on its track. Otherwise, it would have made a convenient corral for the animals traded in the nearby Forum Boarium, just outside the starting gate. Beneath the outer stands, next to the Circus' entrances, were workshops and shops. When no games were being held, the Circus at the time of Catullus (mid-1st century BC) was probably "a dusty open space with shops and booths ... a colourful crowded disreputable area" frequented by "prostitutes, jugglers, fortune tellers and low-class performing artists"., citing T. P. Wiseman, "Looking for Camerius. The Topography of Catullus 55," Papers of the British School at Rome, 1980, pp. 11–13 with footnotes.
Rome's emperors met the growing popular demand for regular ludi and the need for more specialised venues, as obligations of their office and cult. Over the centuries of its development, the Circus Maximus became Rome's paramount specialist venue for chariot races. By the late 1st century AD, the Colosseum had been built for most of the city's gladiator shows and smaller beast-hunts, and most track-athletes competed at the purpose-designed Stadium of Domitian, though long-distance foot races were still held at the Circus.Extraordinarily long races of up to 128 miles, if Pliny the Elder is to be believed; see Eventually, 135 days of the year were devoted to ludi.
Even at the height of its development as a chariot-racing circuit, the circus remained the most suitable space in Rome for religious processions on a grand scale and was the most popular venue for large-scale venationes; in the late 3rd century, the emperor Probus laid on a spectacular Circus show in which beasts were hunted through a veritable forest of trees, on a specially built stage., citing Historia Augusta, Probus, 19.2–4. With the advent of Christianity as the official religion of the Empire, ludi gradually fell out of favour. The last known beast-hunt at the Circus Maximus took place in 523, and the last known races there were held by Totila in 549.; citing Procopius, The Gothic Wars, 3. 37. 4. For the last known beast-hunt at the Circus, see . Humphrey describes the last known Circus event (549) as "games".
Topography and construction Regal era
The Circus Maximus was sited on the level ground of the Valley of Murcia (Vallis Murcia), between Rome's Aventine and Palatine Hills. In Rome's early days, the valley would have been rich agricultural land, prone to flooding from the river Tiber and the stream which divided the valley lengthwise. The stream was probably bridged at an early date, at the two points where the track had to cross it, and the earliest races would have been held within an agricultural landscape, "with nothing more than turning posts, banks where spectators could sit, and some shrines and sacred spots".. Humphrey describes this as "like a Greek hippodrome"
In Livy's History of Rome, the first Etruscan king of Rome, Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, built raised, wooden perimeter seating at the Circus for Rome's highest echelons (the equites and patricians), probably midway along the Palatine straight, with an awning against the sun and rain. His grandson, Tarquinius Superbus, added the first seating for citizen-commoners (plebs, or plebeians),Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, I. 35, 56 either adjacent or on the opposite, Aventine side of the track.The Aventine was a predominantly plebeian area. Otherwise, the Circus was probably still little more than a trackway through surrounding farmland. By this time, it may have been drainedTarquin might have employed the plebs in constructing a conduit or drain (cloaca) for Murcia's stream, discharging into the Tiber. See but the wooden stands and seats would have frequently rotted and been rebuilt. The turning posts (metae), each made of three conical stone pillars, may have been the earliest permanent Circus structures; an open drainage canal between the posts would have served as a dividing barrier.Etruscan tomb paintings of chariot races offer a possible seating model for this earliest phase; noble sponsors and other dignitaries sit in elevated stands, complete with awning. Commoners lounge or sit below, at ground level. At the early Circus Maximus, the sloping ground afforded the possibility of turf seating tiers at an early date – as imagined by Ovid in his account of the first Consualia – replaced with wooden seating tiers by later sponsors and benefactors. See , for early metae and a possible canal as central dividing barrier, see summary on pp. 292–3.
Republican era The games' sponsor (Latin editor) usually sat beside the images of attending gods, on a conspicuous, elevated stand (pulvinar) but seats at the track's perimeter offered the best, most dramatic close-ups. In 494 BC (very early in the Republican era) the dictator Manius Valerius Maximus and his descendants were granted rights to a curule chair at the southeastern turn, an excellent viewpoint for the thrills and spills of chariot racing.In the earliest exercise of the right, a curule chair would have been brought to the spot; its permanent positioning there is unlikely. See In the 190s BC, stone track-side seating was built, exclusively for senators.Livy has the plebs seated "promiscuously" (antea in promiscuo spectabant) up to then: see
Permanent wooden starting stalls were built in 329 BC. They were gated, brightly painted,Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, 8.20.1 and staggered to equalise the distances from each start place to the central barrier. In theory, they might have accommodated up to 25 four-horse chariots (Quadrigas) abreast but when team-racing was introduced,Racing teams might have been used as early as the Regal era (according to some later Roman traditions), or as late as the end of the Punic Wars. they were widened, and their number reduced. By the late Republican or early Imperial era, there were twelve stalls. Their divisions were fronted by herms that served as stops for spring-loaded gates, so that twelve light-weight, four-horse or two-horse chariots could be simultaneously released onto the track. The stalls were allocated by lottery, and the various racing teams were identified by their colors, with the main two being the Blues and the Greens.; the gates probably used the same animal-sinew torsion springing as the Roman ballista; Ibid, pp. 137–138: opposing teams of Reds and Whites are prominent in late Republican literature, and Greens and Blues in the Imperial era. Some Roman authors held that team-racing in multiple colors dated back to the regal era. Ibid, p. 175 for allocation of stalls by lottery. Typically, there were seven laps per race. From at least 174 BC, they were counted off using large sculpted eggs. In 33 BC, an additional system of large bronze dolphin-shaped lap counters was added, positioned well above the central dividing barrier (euripus) for maximum visibility.
Julius Caesar's development of the Circus, commencing around 50 BC, extended the seating tiers to run almost the entire circuit of the track, barring the starting gates and a processional entrance at the semi-circular end.A processional entrance at the semi-circular end,. prior to the erection there of Titus' triumphal arch, is assumed by most modern sources. See The track measured approximately in length and in breadth. A canal between the track perimeter and its seating protected spectators and help drain the track. The inner third of the seating formed a trackside cavea. Its front sections along the central straight were reserved for senators, and those immediately behind for equites. The outer tiers, two thirds of the total, were meant for Roman plebs and non-citizens. They were timber-built, with wooden-framed service buildings, shops and entrance-ways beneath. The total number of seats is uncertain, but was probably in the order of 150,000; Pliny the Elder's estimate of 250,000 seating places is unlikely. The wooden bleachers were damaged in a fire of 31 BC, either during or after construction.As far as is known, there was no significant expansion of seating between Caesar's improvements and Pliny's estimate of 250,000 seats. His estimate ignores the necessary interruptions of seating rows by access stairways and corridors. It might represent a per foot run seating estimate, or include those watching from the nearby heights, outside the building proper. In late Imperial regionary catalogues, seating estimates for the Circus become even wilder; one gives an impossible 450,000 seats. Discussion is in
Imperial era