2-888-262 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Chariot Race in the Circus Maximus - Rome, 1850. '...the Circus Maximus....originally founded in the infancy of Rome by Tarquin the Elder, became, by subsequent repeated enlargements...one of the grand sights of the city. It was surrounded by noble porticoes and seats of marble, wherein...no less a multitude than 485,000 spectators could be accommodated. Upon the spina...were raised the two Egyptian obelisks...There are some fragmentary traces of this circus still to be seen on its well-known site, now called the Via de' Cerchi...Suetonius telis us that Nero, when he played the charioteer in the circus, had ten horses yoked to his car (decemjugis). The same Imperial madcap introduced races between camels, matched two and two, in the circus; and Heliogabalus delighted the populace with an equally strange variety of contest - that of racing elephants'. From "Illustrated London News", 1850.