| What makes it historical? |
When you hear the saying “Bread and Circuses,” this was just the kind of circus folks had in mind! The Circus Maximus was a 540-meter racetrack and stadium built (according to tradition) by the pre-Republic Roman kings between 599 and 500 BC. After a fire in 64 AD, it was rebuilt to house 250,000 spectators (that’s 200,000 more than the Colosseum)!
Chariot races ran almost continuously here for a thousand years! The chariots were color coded in red, white, blue, and green, and could be pulled by 4-12 horses. The most famous charioteer of all time was in the green division, a Spanish slave named Scorpus. Before he died in 95 AD at the age of 27, he had won over 2,000 chariot races here and used his winnings to buy his freedom!
The horses were also celebrities of the time with names like Amator, Avra, and Cupido preserved in mosaics for posterity! The Emperor Nero was such a fan of one particular racehorse named Incitatus that he gave him a marble stall, a furnished house, and a team of slaves to attend to his every whim! |
