d
presented plays imitated from the Greek. The Romans had little taste
for this recreation which was too delicate for them. They preferred
the mimes, comedies of gross character, and especially the pantomimes
in which the actor without speaking expressed by his attitudes the
sentiments of the character.

=The Circus.=--Between the two hills of the Aventine and the Palatine
extended a field filled with race courses surrounded by arcades and
tiers of seats rising above them. This was the Circus Maximus. After
Nero enlarged it it could accommodate 250,000 spectators; in the
fourth century its size was increased to provide sittings for 385,000
people.

Here was presented the favorite spectacle of the Roman people, the
four-horse chariot race (quadrigae); in each race the chariot made a
triple circuit of the circus and there were twenty-five races in a
single day. The drivers belonged to rival companies whose colors they
wore; there were at first four of these colors, but they were later
reduced to two--the Blue and the Green, notorious in the history of
riots. At Rome there was the same passion for chariot-races that there
is now for horse-races; women and even children talked of them. Often
the emperor participated and the quarrel between the Blues and the
Greens became an affair of state.

=The Amphitheatre.=--At the gates of Rome the emperor Vespasian had
built the Colosseum, an enormous structure of two stories,
accommodating 87,000 spectators. It was a circus surrounding an arena
where hunts and combats were represented.

For the hunts the arena was transformed into a forest where wild
beasts were released and men armed with spears came into combat with
them. Variety was sought in this spectacle by employing the rarest
animals--lions, panthers, elephants, bears, buffaloes, rhinoceroses,
giraffes, tigers, and crocodiles. In the games presented by Pompey had
already appeared seventeen elephants and five hundred lions; some of
the emperors maintained a large menagerie.

Sometimes instead of placing armed men before the beasts, it was found
more dramatic to let loose the animals on men who were naked and
bound. The custom spread into all cities of the empire of compelling
those condemned to death to furnish this form of entertainment for the
people. Thousands of persons of both sexes and of every age, and among
them Christian martyrs, were thus devoured by beasts under the eyes of
the multitude.

=The Gladiators.=