o many battles, so many
marches, so many weary negotiations with emperors and kings, Theodoric
celebrated his Tricennalia at Rome. On this occasion the gigantic
Flavian Amphitheatre--the Colosseum as we generally call it--seems not
to have been opened to the people. The old murderous fights with
gladiators which once dyed its pavement with human blood had been for a
century suppressed by the influence of the Church, and the costly shows
of wild beasts which were the permitted substitute would perhaps have
taxed too heavily the still feeble finances of the State. But to the
Circus Maximus all the citizens crowded in order to see the
chariot-races which were run there, and which recalled the brilliant
festivities of the Empire. The Circus, oval in form, notwithstanding its
name, was situated in the long valley between the Palatine and Aventine
Hills. High above, on the north-east, rose the palaces of the Caesars
already mouldering to decay, but one of which had probably been
furbished up to make it a fitting residence for the king of the Goths
and Romans. On the south-west the solemn Aventme still perhaps showed
side by side the decaying temples of the gods and the mansions of the
holy Roman matrons who, under the preaching of St. Jerome, had made
their sumptuous palaces the homes of monastic self-denial. In the long
ellipse between the two hills the citizens of Rome were ranged, not too
many now in the dwindled state of the City to find elbow-room for all. A
shout of applause went up from senators and people as the Gothic king,
surrounded by a brilliant throng of courtiers, moved majestically to his
seat in the Imperial _podium._

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 bigae or quadrigae (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