The reader starts at chapter one with the Nika riots in Constantinople, when chariot racing was over a thousand years old. However, Meijer's book is more comprehensive in both its time span and range, in that it looks at all aspects of chariot racing, from start to finish, and in the process covers the venues, the supporters and the construction of the chariots themselves. The most recent book to address the topic before this was Cameron's Circus Factions in 1976 (though a 1991 paper by Elizabeth Rawson merits an honourable mention) Roman Circuses: Arenas for Chariot Racing by John Humphrey published in 1986, (second edition published in 1992). So this book by Fik Meijer - Professor of Ancient History at the University of Amsterdam - is a very welcome contribution to the study of chariot racing. And even when gladiator fights became a thing of the past, chariot races continued to be an essential part of Roman and Byzantine culture for centuries more. One such fan even threw himself onto a funeral pyre so that he could perish along with the remains of the charioteer he worshipped. Charioteers were highly-paid superstars who had flocks of devoted followers. Yet gladiator shows only took place anywhere between ten and twenty days per year, and had a maximum audience of some 50,000 people at the Flavian Amphitheatre (Colosseum).Ĭhariot races happened regularly, and attracted some 150,000 people to the Circus Maximus. These days when we think of spectacle in ancient Rome, we immediately think of gladiators in the arena.

Chariot races in rome