Note (return) — Chapter XII

At one end of the Circus were twelve portals (ostia), behind which the eager charioteers were waiting. In the middle of it there rose the long platform called the spina, at either end of which stood an obelisk brought from Egypt by an Emperor. (One of these obelisks now adorns the Piazza del Popolo, and the other the square in front of the Lateran.) At a signal from the king the races began. Whether the first heat would be between bigæ or quadrigæ (two-horse or four-horse chariots), we cannot say; but, of one kind or the other, twelve chariots bounded forth from the ostia the moment that the rope which had hitherto confined them was let fall. Seven times they careered round and round the long spina, of course with eager struggles to get the inside turn, and perhaps with a not infrequent fall when a too eager charioteer, in his desire to accomplish this, struck against the protecting curbstone. Ac each circuit was completed by the foremost chariot, a steward of the races placed a great wooden egg in a conspicuous place upon the spina to mark the score; and keen was the excitement when, in a match between two well-known rivals, six eggs announced to the spectators that the seventh, the deciding circuit, had begun. The entire course thus traversed seven times in each direction made a race of between three and four miles, and each heat would probably occupy nearly a quarter of an hour. 117 The number of heats (missus) was usually four and twenty, and we may therefore imagine Theodoric and his people occupying the best part of a summer day in watching the galloping steeds, the shouting, lashing drivers, and the fast-flashing chariot wheels.