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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.
The starting gates are to the left, and a conjectured start-line cuts across the track, to the right of the nearest meta. The Romans probably borrowed chariot technology and racing track design from the Etruscans, who in turn had borrowed them from the Greeks. Rome's public entertainments were also influenced directly by Greek examples.
Floorplan of Circus Maximus. This design is typical of Roman circuses. The performance space of the Roman circus was normally, despite its name, an oblong rectangle of two linear sections of race track, separated by a median strip running along the length of about two thirds the track, joined at one end with a semicircular section and at the other end with an undivided section of track closed ...
This was the most dangerous part of the track and the Greeks put an altar to Taraxippus (disturber of horses) there to show the spot where many chariots wrecked. It was built on the slope of a hill if possible and the ground taken from one side served to form the embankment on the other side.
The place is considered to be one of the largest and best preserved Roman hippodromes of its type in the Roman world. [5] Its seating section is surmounting a gallery. The start boxes and parts of the median strip (spina) with an obelisk on it are visible. Each end of the course is marked by stone turning posts .
Horse- and chariot-races were part of the ludi, sacred games held during Roman religious festivals, from Archaic times. A magistrate who presented games was entitled to ride in a biga. [13] The sacral meaning of the races, though diminished over time, [14] was preserved by iconography in the Circus Maximus, Rome's main racetrack.
From the fifteenth century, the road served as the racetrack during the Roman Carnival for an annual running of riderless horses called the "corsa dei barberi", which is the source for the name Via del Corso. Following the assassination of King Umberto I in 1900, the road was renamed Corso Umberto I.
At its simplest, the Roman race-course took the form of two posts; each called a discrimen or a meta, round which the runners, whether on foot, on horses or in chariots, raced. The normal arrangement was more formalised as two straights, separated by a spina but very close to each other and with a very tight turn at each turning point.