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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.
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 ...
Images on pottery show that chariot racing existed in thirteenth century BC Mycenaean Greece. [a] The first literary reference to a chariot race is in Homer's poetic account of the funeral games for Patroclus, in the Iliad, combining practices from the author's own time (c. 8th century) with accounts based on a legendary past.
The carceres had four statues of horses in gilded copper on top, now called the Horses of Saint Mark. The horses' exact Greek or Roman ancestry has never been determined. They were looted during the Fourth Crusade in 1204 and installed on the façade of St Mark's Basilica in Venice. The track was lined with other bronze statues of famous horses ...
Modern replica of a Roman milestone on the Via Claudia Augusta near Unterdiessen, Bavaria. Modern signage of the revitalized track near Unterdiessen, Bavaria.. The Via Claudia Augusta is an ancient Roman road, which linked the valley of the Po River with Rhaetia (encompassing parts of modern Eastern Switzerland, Northern Italy, Western Austria, Southern Germany and all of Liechtenstein) across ...
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.
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The Appian Way, one of the oldest and most important Roman roads The Roman Empire in the time of Hadrian (r. 117–138), showing the network of main Roman roads Roman roads (Latin: viae Romanae [ˈwiae̯ roːˈmaːnae̯]; singular: via Romana [ˈwia roːˈmaːna]; meaning "Roman way") were physical infrastructure vital to the maintenance and development of the Roman state, built from about 300 ...