Roman Entertainment pani et circenses

General Information Ludi Circenses Lies between the Palatine and the Aventine Hills. Originally built around 550 BC. Rebuilt around 100AD. 600m x 200m Maximum Seating Capacity: 250,000

Basic Design Spina: central axis; decorated with statues, trophies, and 7 movable eggs or dolphins used to count laps.

Basic Design Meta: gilded bronze turning posts shaped like cones.

Basic Design Carceres: starting gates; 12 stalls; opened by a catapult system. Intricate substructures that supported the seats and provided numerous walkways Pulvinar: Imperial box for the emperor and other dignitaries.

Chariots, Horses, and Drivers Factiones: racing corporations represented by different colors (e.g. Albata, Russata, Veneta, Prasina). Charioteers were professionals drawn from the lower classes (freedmen and slaves). Become public idols.

The Races Began with a procession/parade into the Circus (Bets were placed at this time). Starting signum: trumpet blast followed by the presiding magistrate dropping a napkin (mappa). Up to twelve teams competed (2 or 4 horses); Novelty races: 10 horses, foot races, or trick riding Raced 7 laps counter-clockwise. Crashes were common. Full day’s program = 24 races. Prize=palm branch / gold crown and neck chain. Defixiones or “curses” found in many arenas

The Victor!!!!

In Pollice Verso (1872) by Jean-Léon Gérôme (Phoenix Art Museum), the Vestals signify death to the fallen gladiator. Translated as "Thumbs Down," the picture perpetuated that mistaken notion. It also inspired Gladiator (2000), where Ridley Scott was obliged to have Commodus indicate "thumbs up" in sparing Maximus.

The most extravagant venationes occurred at the dedication of the Colosseum by Titus, when there was a naumachia, gladiatorial combat, and the exhibition of "five thousand wild beasts of every kind in a single day" (Suetonius, Titus, VII.3), and in the games celebrated by Trajan, after his victories over the Dacians, "in the course of which some eleven thousand animals, both wild and tame, were slain, and ten thousand gladiators fought" (Dio, LXVIII.15). The Historia Augusta records that, at the millennium of Rome's founding (AD 248), Philip I (the Arab) displayed thirty-two elephants, ten elk, ten tigers, sixty tame lions, thirty tame leopards, ten hyenas, a hippopotamus and a rhinoceros, ten "archoleontes," ten camelopards (giraffes), twenty onagri (wild asses), forty wild horses, and a variety of other animals (Gordian, XXXIII). In AD 281, in venationes celebrating the victories of Probus, a thousand ostriches, a thousand stags, a thousand boars, as well as "deer, ibexes, wild sheep, and other grass-eating beasts, as many as could be reared or captured" were released in the Circus, which had been planted to look like a forest. The populace then was admitted and allowed to take whatever they could capture. Another day, in the Colosseum, one hundred male lions, their roars sounding like thunder, were released. Venationes

Naumachiae

Naumachiae