The factions of the circus
A material difference may be observed in the games of antiquity: the most eminent of the Greeks were actors, the Romans were merely spectators.
The Olympic stadium was open to wealth, merit, and ambition; and if the candidates could depend on their personal skill and activity, they might pursue the footsteps of Diomede and Menelaus, and conduct their own horses in the rapid career.
[Read and feel the xxiiid book of the Iliad, a living picture of manners, passions, and the whole form and spirit of the chariot race. West's Dissertation on the Olympic Games (sect. xii-xvii) affords much curious and authentic information.] Ten, twenty, forty chariots, were allowed to start at the same instant; a crown of leaves was the reward of the victor, and his fame, with that of his family and country, was chaunted in lyric strains more durable than monuments of brass and marble.
But a senator, or even a citizen, conscious of his dignity, would have blushed to expose his person or his horses in the circus of Rome. The games were exhibited at the expence of the republic, the magistrates, or the emperors: but the reins were abandoned to servile hands, and if the profits of a favourite charioteer sometimes exceeded those of an advocate, they must be considered as the effects of popular extravagance, and the high wages of a disgraceful profession.
[Edward Gibbon: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol. 4, chap. XL, sect. II, para. 1; London mdcclxxxviii]
Submitted by Peter Mudge on Tue, 06/02/2007 - 19:33.
by
Leading from the front
At risk of opening a can of classical worms I should like to comment on Peter’s piece because it raises interesting ideas about how different political systems and their leaders arise from different and deep cultural roots.
Martin Slavin
According to the historian Livy (X, 27,30), in the battle near Sentino with the Gauls in 295BC, the Romans “were terrified by a new method of warfare; the enemy arrived armed, on two-wheeled and four wheeled vehicles…; great was the noise of the horses and wheels and the Roman mounts were thrown into a panic by that fearful din to which they were unaccustomed.”
In the year 55 BC Caesar had this to say in his account of his experience in Britain: “The method of combat is as follows; first the Britons race in all directions across battlefield [in two man chariots] hurling spears,……; then they force their way into the cavalry lines and, jumping down off their chariots, proceed to fight on foot. The charioteers in the meantime slip out of the battle zone and arrange the chariots so that, should their kinsmen be beset by the enemy they can quickly turn back and return to their positions. Hence in battle they have the dual advantage of the mobility of horsemen and the stability of infantry.
Owing to their daily practice, they are capable of reining in the galloping horses even on steep ground, and adroitly maneuver their mounts, rush forward, seize the yoke of their horses and then nimbly leap back into their chariots” (Gallic War, IV, 33)
Further passages in Polybius, Strabo, Diodorus, and Tacitus attest …..that each one was manned by a charioteer and a warrior; as in the case of Homer’s heroes, the chariots were reserved for high-ranking figures.
Source; The Celtic War Chariot, Andres Fuger-Gunti, p356, The Celts, Rizzoli, 1991
In other words the political elite were the front line shock troops who put their lives on the line for the benefit of their tribe.