(Image: author reproduced with permission of the Comune di Foligno)Īs the largest of the Roman buildings for spectacles, the Circus Maximus was the grandest stage for the capital’s hallowed traditions, urban splendor, and global ambitions-‘a fitting place for a nation which has conquered the world’ (Pliny the Younger, Panegyric 51). Foligno, Palazzo Trinci, Museo Archeologico.
Relief (funerary?) with scene of the circus races. The venue could have accommodated approximately 150,000 spectators, though it may have been less or as many as 250,000. At its most fully developed stage under the emperor Trajan, the structure measured circa 580 m. What made the chariot races so compelling and meaningful to so many? As the site of the legendary Rape of the Sabine women, the Circus Maximus-unlike any other building for Roman spectacles (i.e., the theater, amphitheater, or stadium)-was intertwined with the legendary foundation of Rome itself. By contrast, we do find any other form of sport or “spectacle” (gladiatorial combats, theatrical performances, and wild beast hunts) insinuate itself into the realm of the living and the dead in this way. For some Romans, then, the chariot races were a consuming passion not just during the course of their lives, but even in their deaths, which they acknowledged in the passing of their little ones. This also suggests that the deceased child was outfitted in death in her or his favorite team’s colors-just as the costumes of at least one faction were alleged to have spawned imitation clothing for children, whose doting parents outfitted them with “little green jackets” (as Juvenal also dismissively informs us: Satires, 5.142). The example illustrated here is of particular significance due to the rare preservation of some of its patination (including remarkably preserved blue pigment along the central barrier), which indicates that each of the four cupid charioteers was originally painted in the colors of the four respective racing “factions”: the Blues, the Greens, the Reds, and the Whites. Interestingly, this is the single most popular type of imagery for these vessels in that age group. ASOR-AFFILIATED RESEARCH CENTERS FELLOWSHIPS.FELLOWSHIPS FOR EXCAVATION PARTICIPANTS.ASOR-AFFILIATED ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROJECTS.