 Chapter 31, Section 5 of J.B. Bury's The Student's Roman Empire, Part 2. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Student's Roman Empire, Part 2 by John Bagnell Bury. Chapter 31, Roman Life and Manners, Section 5, Public Amusements. The Games and Spectacles. The public games at Rome were not only a striking feature of Roman life, but they possessed under the empire an important political significance. They were one of the two great baits which the emperors used to divert the mass of the people from political life. The other was the cheap or free distribution of bread. Fronto says that it seems to be very politic in the emperor to neglect actors and performers in the circus and amphitheater, knowing that the Roman people is held especially by two things, the corn supply and the spectacles, anona et spectaculis, and that the success of a government depends on amusements as well as on serious matters of policy. These two seducements were set together in Juvenile's famous expression, hanum et circensis. For the cheap supply of food and the cheap exciting amusements, which the emperors provided for them, the degenerate populace of Rome were contented to surrender their political rights. The public games under the empire increased in number, variety and splendor. We must distinguish between, one, the Ludii Sinisi, consisting of dramatic performances in the theater, and the Ludii Circensis, including both, two, the races in the circus, and three, exhibitions of gladiators and beasts in the amphitheater. Games were given either by the councils or the praetors or the quaesters or the emperor himself. The councils had charge of the Actaean games, which were celebrated at Rome annually on September 2, the anniversary of Actaeum, and of the games in honor of Augustus' birthday, September 23. Early in the second century, the duty of giving gladiatorial shows, munera as they were called, devolved upon councils elect, and, later in the same century, on councils entering upon office. The duties of administering public games, which under the republic had belonged to the Adiles, were transferred by Augustus to the praetors. But the gladiatorial shows, which under the empire were exhibited publicly, as well as by private persons, devolved not upon the praetors but upon the quaesters, who in the reign of Claudius were relieved from the duty of paving the streets in order to undertake this new burden. This arrangement lasted for about seven years, but was revived under Domitian. It is important to observe that the public games gave an opportunity for the expression of public opinion. Quote, In republican times much importance was attached to the manner in which the public men were greeted in the theater by the people. In imperial times we hear of the audience rising up when the emperor or a distinguished man entered, or waiting handkerchiefs and vociferously addressing complimentary titles or good wishes, often in a kind of song. Of course there was the most clamorous outcry for the liberation of slaves or criminals, who had made a good exhibition in the contests, for the discharge of distinguished gladiators, and many a jive was directed at unpopular people and even the emperor himself. The people also made use of these occasions to declare against clas, against detested ministers, e.g. to jealous, and make many other appeals and demonstrations. Indeed these were pretty much the only occasions on which the feelings of the people could be expressed or gauged under the empire, and the importance which was attached to this expression of the popular will may be seen from the fact that Titus, in order to carry out certain executions which he considered advisable, put people throughout the theater to demand them, end quote. A feature of the games in imperial times were the scrambles. The giver of the games often provided presents to be thrown among the audience and scrambled for. These were called misilia. They consisted of fruits and other eatables, but more often of tickets, tesserae, by which various entertainments could be enjoyed. Another practice was to sprinkle the stage and seats with perfumes, especially saffron. The theater. There were three theaters in Rome in the imperial period. One, that of Pompeius, erected in 55 B.C., was the first stone building of the kind at Rome. It was constructed in the model of the theater at Mitoline and contained 40,000 seats. Two, the theater of Marcellus held 20,500 spectators. Three, the theater of El Cornelius Balbus had room for 11,510 people. The Roman theater was like the Greek, from which it was copied but with certain differences. As the Dionysiac chorus of Greek drama played no part in Roman representations, the orchestra or dancing floor was not required for its original use and its shape was modified. It no longer forms almost an entire circle but only a semi-circle and is appropriated to seats for a portion of the audience. The consequence of this was that the part of the theater occupied by the audience, the cavea, was semi-circular also. A further change was that whereas in the Greek theater the stage and the seats of the audience were not connected, but open passages ran between them. In the Roman theater the walls of the stage buildings and the walls of the cavea were continuous. The orchestra was approached by vaulted passages at the sides. Honnings of various colors were spread over the building to protect the people from rain or sun. Before the beginning of a play the stage, Pulpitum, was concealed by a curtain, auleum, and at the falling of the curtain, not as with us at its rising, the play began. The seats in the orchestra were reserved for senators. Distinguished foreigners were sometimes admitted. The fourteen rows in the cavea nearest the orchestra were assigned to the knights by the law of Rosius Otho, 67 BC. The beetle who arranged the spectators and looked after the seats was called designator. Such an official named Leotis was often mentioned by Marshall as clearing the equestrian seats of intruders. Augustus made further regulations in the allocation of special parts of the theater to special classes of persons. There was a tribunal or imperial box reserved for the emperor or the person who presided at the performance over the stage to the left of the spectators. Opposite on the right was a similar tribunal occupied by the Vestal Virgins and the emperors had her place among them. The pieces performed were, as under the Republic, comedies, tragedies, ethylene farses, and mimes. The mimes which represented vulgar characters speaking in vulgar language were especially popular and the composition of mimes was much cultivated. The female parts were acted by women and the performances were often of a very licentious nature. The plots generally turned on some loose love affair. Some mimes had ghosts in them, for example the Phasma of Cthulis and L'Orealis, who has been called the Dick Turpin of the Ancients, was the subject of another. In this mime L'Orealis was represented as being crucified and martial relates that a criminal was set to act the part and actually nailed to a cross and lacerated by a bear. But a new kind of performance came into vogue under the empire and became, among the higher classes at least, more popular than the mime. This was the pantomime in which a whole story was represented by the movements and gestures of a single dancer. Such a grave personage as the philosopher Seneca owned that he delighted in these performances and such men of literary distinction as Lucan and Stadius composed saltatory dramas. Quote, the rage for exhibitions of dancing that arose about the time of the empire cannot be better exemplified than by the fact that poems of Ovid, not written for the theatre at all, were pantomimized just as our second rate novels are dramatized and actually orrations were set to music and adapted for dancing, end quote. The subjects were of all kinds, generally love stories. The actor appeared successively in various characters and a chorus saying cantica during the dancing. There is much evidence in ancient writers to show that these performances were extremely fascinating. The art of the dancer, as far as the reproduction of the character which he impersonated as concerned, soon became quite conventional. Lucan tells of an actor who, having to dance Kronos eating his children, danced instead Thaestis eating his children. There is no doubt that these pantomimic performances in which passion and tenderness were represented by the voluptuous motions of the dancer had a serious effect on morality. And we hear of Roman ladies of high birth falling in love with the pantomimi who were feted somewhat in the same way as distinguished musicians are made much of among us. Some of the actors, a history in imperial times generally means pantomimus, were influential at court, like Menester and Paris. But legally they were infamous, disqualified from public and certain private rights. And they were generally slaves, freedmen, or foreigners. The fact, however, that men of equestrian rank often appeared on the stage in imperial times bettered the social position of the actors in general. The interference of Tiberius and Domitian with the histrionic profession has been mentioned under their reigns. But these cases are exceptional. The Circus. The Circus Maximus, which stood in the valley between the Palatine and Aventine hills, was for a long time the only Circus in Rome. And it was the model of the Circus Flaminius, 217 BC, and all later buildings of the kind. It was a long building, at least 2,000 feet long and 600 feet wide, curving in a semi-circle at the eastern end, towards the Porta Capena and at the western in the Foramboreum closed by the chambers Carcerus from which the chariots started. All around the building were tiers of seats divided into blocks, cune, or wedges, and this part of the edifice was called the Cavaia. The Cavaia was also divided horizontally into bands, maniana, of which there were probably three. At the foot of the Cavaia, separating it from the racecourse, a marble platform called the Podium ran all around the building and on the Podium were arranged marble seats for distinguished persons. Augustus introduced new regulations for the distribution of the spectators like those which he made for the theatre. He assigned the Podium to Senators and other persons of high position and defined special parts of the Cavaia for soldiers, for women, for boys and their tutors, and for married plebeians. Before this, men and women used to sit together. In restoring the circus after the fire of 31 BC, Augustus added a marble pulvenar or box for the use of the imperial family. In the Cavaia, some of the seats were marble, but others, even in the 2nd century AD, were of wood and when the building was crowded, accidents often happened. In the reign of Antonius Pius, it is recorded that the seats gave way and a thousand people were killed. The carceries were low vaulted rooms, each large enough to contain a chariot with its horses and closed by graded doors which were thrown open at the start. Above the carceries towered high state boxes where the councils or others sat and the whole structure was called the opidum from its likeness to the turreted gates of a town. The race course was divided into two arms by the Spina, a long platform on which were placed statues, small obelisks, trophies. When Augustus restored the circus, he placed in the center an Egyptian obelisk which at the present day stands in the Piazza del Popolo at Rome. At each end of the Spina there was a set of seven marble eggs, one of which was removed according to each lap curriculum of the race Mrs. was run for there were generally seven laps. The turning points or mete consisted of three tall cones set together on a semi-circular base close to each end of the Spina. The start was made from a chalk line drawn across the arena opposite the mete which were nearest to the carceries. The signal was given by the president of the games who waved a napkin, mappa. The goal was a chalk line drawn at a point between the two turning points and opposite to the box in which the judges sat. Considerable damage was done to the circus Maximus by a fire in 36 AD. Claudius restored it. He rebuilt the carceries which were hitherto of Tufa in white marble and set up new mete of gilt bronze instead of the old wooden ones. The circus then contained room for 250,000 people. Domitian made some further improvements but under Trajan the building became really magnificent. Quote, the whole cavea with its tiers of seats, the carceries, the emperor's pulvenar and the central Spina were then of gleaming white marble decorated with golden colors studded with jewel-like glass mosaics and adorned with long lines of columns made of richly colored oriental marbles and rows of large statues in marble and gilt bronze together with costly metal screens and richly sculptured thrones for officials of rank. End quote. The other cersaia of Rome were the circus Flaminias, that of Gaius and Nero in the gardens of Agrippina at the foot of the Vatican and that of Hadrian north-west of his mausoleum. The games of the circus were opened by a procession which assembled on the Capitoline hill and descending into the forum passed by the Vicus Tuscus and the Velabrum into the Forum Boreum where it entered the circus Maximus by the procession gate Porta Pompeii at the western end. It then passed round the Spina stopping to sacrifice and to salute the emperor's pulvenar. The procession was headed by the presiding magistrate or by the emperor driving in a chariot and dressed as a triumphant imperator. A slave held a golden wreath over his head. He was followed by a band of nobles then came the chariots and riders who were to take part in the races then the priests according to their collegia with the images of the gods. The games consisted chiefly of chariot races and the chariots were drawn by various numbers of horses generally two or four but sometimes as many as ten. The races were extremely dangerous and required extraordinary courage and skill on the part of the charioteers, R.A.J. Each driver aimed at upsetting his competitors and there were probably few games at which some unfortunate charioteers were not crushed to death or seriously injured. It was the custom for the charioteer to keep the reins looped around his waist and this made the danger much greater so he carried a knife in his belt to cut himself free. It must have been often impossible to use it in the sudden shock of an accident. There was heavy bedding, Sponzio, on the races and successful drivers often received immense sums from those who backed their horses. Scorpus, a charioteer in Demetian's reign is recorded to have gained 15 purses of gold within an hour. The popularity of the jockeys is shown by the fact that the statues of them were erected, a feature of Rome which surprised Lucian. The racehorses were bred chiefly in northern Greece, Spain, Mauritania and Sicily and carefully trained. No horse was allowed to run before the age of five years. The most famous racehorse in the age of juvenile and marshal was herpeness. Marshal mentions as one of the marks of the man about town, Belisomo, knowledge of the ancestors of herpeness. When a magistrate or any other person gave an exhibition of games at the circus, he merely supplied the money and committed the whole management of the arrangement, the providing of the horses and charioteers, to certain established companies which were called factions, factiones. These factions were distinguished by colors, panty. The two oldest were the white, the albata and the red, rousata. Then in the early days of the empire came the blue, Venkta and the green, Prasina. Demetian added a fifth, distinguished by purple and gold. The green and blue came ultimately to be far the most important. Each faction was elaborately organized and had an enormous number of officials and slaves. It was only natural that rivalry should be developed among these factions and riots and disturbances often took place in consequence. Under the later empire at Constantinople they obtained the significance of political parties and their rivalry sometimes issued in horrible scenes of bloodshed. Amphitheater. The most characteristic amusement of the Romans were the gladiatorial shows and the combats of wild beasts. Notwithstanding the advance of their civilization and other respects, the love of these cruel sports prevailed among all classes and is a mark of barbarism which conspicuously distinguishes Rome from Greece. At first the shows of gladiators used to take place in the forum and the shows of wild beasts in the circus. But the want was felt of a new kind of building, not long and narrow like the circus, but such that all the spectators could have a good view of the whole space at the same time. The first attempt to supply this want was that of Cerebonius Curio, who, B.C. 50, constructed two theaters placed on pivots so that they could be turned either front to front so as to form one building, a double or amphitheater for exhibitions of gladiators and wild beasts or else back to back and form two theaters for dramatic performances. This building was wooden and likewise the amphitheater built by Julius Caesar a few years later. The stone amphitheater of Statilius Taurus as has been already related was burnt down in the reign of Nero. Augustus had contemplated erecting an edifice of this kind in the middle of Rome, but the design was not carried out until Vespasian began and Titus and Domitian completed the Flavian amphitheater. The shape of this wonderful building occupied about six acres of ground was an ellipse. The seats of the spectators were arranged in tiers all around the building and were reached by four corridors, each corridor corresponding to a story. The corridors of the three lower stories received air from without by eighty great arched openings separated by piers. In front of each pier stood a column and over the arches round the whole building ran a continuous entablature. The columns of the lowest story were Roman Doric of the second Ionic and of the third Corinthians. The fourth story has no arches but a windowed wall and is adorned with pilasters in composite style. A wall ran round the arena high enough to protect the spectators against danger from the wild beasts. From the top of this wall rose as in the circus the podium a terrace wide enough to accommodate two or three rows of marble seats which were reserved for the senators, the ambassadors of foreign nations and probably the Vestal Virgins. The emperor and the person who exhibited the games had raised seats on the podium. The greatest or stairs rose in tiers above the podium and accommodated the other spectators. They were divided into moniana or stories. The lowest of these consisted of the fourteen rows of seats reserved for the knights, the next was appropriated to the populace and the third to the common people. Higher still there was a gallery which was set apart for women who were not allowed into the other parts of the building. Between each story there was a landing place, Precinctio. Moreover the mainiana were not continuous but were divided into cune or wedges by flights of stairs. Each spectator had a ticket to the exact place where he was to sit. The space in the center consisted of boards covered with sand to absorb blood once it was called the arena. Underneath the arena were elaborate substructures being dens from which the animals were raised in movable cages and let loose into the arena by trap doors. They cannot, however, have been kept long in these places as sometimes between the exhibitions of animals the arena used to be flooded with water for the purpose of a sea fight. The general effect of the Flavian Amphitheater and its spectacles is happily given in a celebrated description of Gibbon. Quote, The outside of the edifice was encrusted with marble and decorated with statues. The slopes of the vast concave which formed the inside were filled and surrounded with sixty or eighty rows of seats of marble likewise covered with cushions and capable of receiving with ease above four score a thousand spectators. Sixty-four vomitories, for by that name the doors were very aptly distinguished, poured forth the immense multitude and the entrances, passages and staircases were contrived with such exquisite skill that each person, whether of the senatorial, the equestrian, or the Flavian order, arrived at his destined place without trouble or confusion. Nothing was omitted which, in any respect, could be subservient to the convenience and pleasure of the spectators. They were protected from the sun and rain by an ample canopy occasionally drawn over their heads. The air was continually refreshed by the playing of fountains and profusely impregnated by the grateful scent of aromatics. In the center of the edifice the arena or stage was trued with the finest sand and successively assumed the most different forms. At one moment it seemed to rise out of the earth like a garden of the Hesperides and was afterwards broken into the rocks and caverns of Thrace. The subterraneous pipes conveyed an inexhaustible supply of water and what had just before appeared a level plain might be suddenly converted into a wide lake covered with armed vessels and replenished with the monsters of the deep. In the decoration of these scenes the Roman emperors displayed their wealth and liberality and we read on various occasions that the whole furniture of the amphitheater consisted either of silver or of gold or of amber end quote. In the wooden amphitheater temporarily erected by Nero the nets designed to protect the spectators were of gold wire. Gladiators were of two classes. There were those who were forced to fight such as slaves, captives, condemned criminals and there were those who have their own free will undertook to fight and took an oath of obedience when they entered on the gladiatorial career. Men of all classes, even senators and knights and not only men but women fought as gladiators under the empire. The places where gladiators were kept were called schools, ludae. Four ludae were built by Domitian at Rome. The training masters were called Lannister and the gladiators sometimes belonged to the trainers who hired them out for exhibition sometimes to private citizens who hired Lannister to train them. In BC 68 the senate fixed a limit for the number of gladiators which a citizen could keep but this was removed by the emperor Gaeus. The emperor however appointed an officer to inspect and control the ludae. The gladiatorial practice in the schools was carried on with wooden swords called rudes and when a gladiator was discharged he received a rudus as a token of his release. At the public shows the real fighting was preceded by a sham fight or a prelusion fought with these wooden weapons. When a gladiator received a wound the people used to cry habit, a hit or hoc habit, a palpable hit the wounded man was at his adversary's mercy the spectators when they wished him to be slain used to turn up their thumbs when they wished him to be spared they probably waved to their handkerchiefs. The most usual occasion for the gladiatorial shows Munera was a funeral. Gladiators fought in different ways and with various arms there were the Sam knights who wore a helmet with a high crest and bore the oblong skudam there were the Thracians who had the round buckler worn by that people a short sickle like sword and greaves the mere Malones armed like the Gauls and generally matched against the Retiari the Andibate who fought blindfold as their helmets had no eye holes the Esadari who fought in chariots the Retiari who were armed with a net once their name to entangle their adversary and a three-pointed spear to attack him when he was enmeshed and the Secutoris who were matched with the Retiari and possibly received their name pursuers because when the Retiarius failed in casting the net he had to fly and the Secator pursued him around the arena gladiatorial combats were a common subject of Roman painters and sculptors the combat of men with beasts or of beasts with beasts was called a Venatio a hunting we should call it a beast baiting all sorts of animals were exhibited we hear of full fights of battles with bulls and elephants combats of men with elephants lions, tigers, bears and boars were common the number of beasts slaughtered at a Venatio was sometimes enormous it is said to have reached 11,000 in Trajan's games after the Dacian conquest some scenes in these beast baitings were commemorated in Marshall's Book of Spectacles he describes a rhinoceros tossing a bull a bear sticking fast in the blood moistened sand of the arena the feats of the beast slayer Bestiarius Carpoferus in dealing with bulls and lions the taming of wild animals was also carried on to great perfection we hear of elephants dancing leopards yoked and bears bridled various scenes were represented in the amphitheater by means of pageants Pajanata lofty structures of wood of several stories which could be raised and lowered or open out and close in by machinery Strabo saw a pageant of this kind exhibited in the forum the scene represented Aetna and a condemned Sicilian Brigand was placed on the summit the pageant suddenly collapsed wild beasts who were concealed beneath we hear of boys being caught up from the top of a pageant to the awning of the Flavian amphitheater End of Chapter 31 Section 5 End of J.B. Bury's The Student's Roman Empire Part 2