Theatre & Chariot Racing
Roman Theatre
The Romans inherited theatre from the Greeks, but adapted it to their own tastes and social context. Roman theatre buildings differed from Greek ones in important ways: Greek theatres were cut into hillsides to use natural slopes for seating, while Roman theatres were freestanding stone structures built on level ground, using arched substructure to support the tiers. The seating area (cavea) was a semicircle rather than the more-than-semicircle of Greek theatres, and the stage building (scaenae frons) was an elaborate multi-storey stone backdrop decorated with columns, niches and statues. The stage itself was lower and wider than its Greek predecessor. Roman theatres in the prescribed sources include the large theatre at Pompeii, which was built into the slope of a hill and could seat an estimated 5,000 spectators.
The Large Theatre at Pompeii
The large theatre at Pompeii is a prescribed material source. Built in the second century BC and remodelled in the Augustan period, it is one of the oldest surviving examples of a Roman theatre. Its form combines elements of both Greek and Roman design. The cavea is cut partly into the slope of a hill (mons) and partly supported by arched substructure, giving it a transitional character between the purely Greek hillside theatre and the purely Roman freestanding design. The stage and the scaenae frons behind it have been largely lost, but inscriptions on the theatre and tombs nearby — including the Tomb of Naevoleia Tyche — provide evidence for the people who funded and used theatrical performances. Naevoleia Tyche was a freedwoman who built this monument for herself and her husband. The ship represents their trade, and the bisellium honours her husband Gaius Munatius Faustus for his public services.
Roman drama ranged from literary comedy to popular mime. Roman comedy (comoedia) was heavily influenced by Greek New Comedy. It relied on stock characters: the cunning slave (servus callidus) who outwits his master; the boastful soldier (miles gloriosus); the miserly old man (senex); the young man in love. Performances used masks, colourful costumes and exaggerated gestures so that audience members far from the stage could follow the action.
Mime (mimus) and pantomime (pantomimus) were even more popular with Roman audiences than literary comedy. Mime was a short, often bawdy, improvised or scripted performance without masks, featuring female performers as well as male — a significant difference from Greek drama, where all roles were performed by men. Pantomime was a more refined form: a solo dancer performed narrative scenes from myth using music and gesture, while a chorus narrated. In Satires 6, Juvenal shows that pantomime performers could attract intense attention, especially from elite women.
Roman actors (and especially actresses) were legally classified as infames — people of low social standing who had forfeited normal civic rights. Yet popular performers could be idolised by audiences, causing tension with the elite. Pliny (Letters 7.24) disapproves of people who applauded a freedwoman’s pantomime performers to flatter her.
Chariot Racing
If the amphitheatre offered Romans violence and drama, the circus offered pure speed and the passionate tribal loyalty of the factions. Chariot racing was the oldest and arguably most popular form of public entertainment in Rome. Races were held in the circus, an oval track centred on a long narrow barrier called the spina. Chariots raced seven laps around the spina. The standard unit was one race of seven laps, and a typical day of racing might feature up to twenty-four races.
The Circus Maximus, Rome
The greatest of all Roman circuses was the Circus Maximus in Rome, a prescribed material source. Sitting in the valley between the Palatine and Aventine hills, the Circus Maximus was the largest public building in the Roman world. In its imperial form it measured around 600 metres in length and 200 metres in width, with seating capacity estimated by ancient sources at well over 100,000 spectators — modern historians suggest the figure may have reached 150,000 or more. The starting gates (carceres) occupied one curved end of the track, arranged in a staggered line to give each chariot an equal distance to the first bend. The spina in the centre was decorated with obelisks, lap-counting mechanisms (seven wooden eggs and seven bronze dolphins were moved to count the laps), and temples. The Circus Maximus was a venue for religious processions as well as races; the games often honoured specific gods, and the procession (pompa) before racing was itself a religious ceremony.
Charioteers and their horses competed for four colour-coded teams called factions: the Blues (Veneti), Greens (Prasini), Reds (Russati) and Whites (Albati). Support for a faction was inherited and passionate. The charioteer Gaius Appuleius Diocles, recorded in inscriptions, competed in over 4,000 races and won more than 1,400 — one of the most celebrated sporting careers in the ancient world.
Juvenal (Satires 11) describes the noise and excitement of the Circus Maximus in vivid terms, but from the perspective of a man who refuses to attend, preferring to read in peace while the rest of Rome empties into the races. His tone is one of superiority and mild contempt for the masses who are so easily swept up in faction loyalty. He contrasts the modern enthusiasm for chariot racing with what he sees as the more sober, martial values of earlier Romans.
Pliny the Younger (Letters 9.6) expresses a similar disdain. He writes to a friend confessing that he cannot understand the appeal of watching horses race round a track, when the fans care only for the colour of the cloth (the faction colours), not for the skill of the individual rider. Both sources reveal how chariot racing created an almost tribal loyalty that cut across social class — and both reveal the ambivalence of educated Romans towards this most popular form of entertainment.