If the Senate, the imperial palace, and the Christian cathedral stood for the legislative, executive, and religious power of the eastern Roman Empire, the Hippodrome represented the power of entertainment. The Hippodrome was one of the four buildings framing the central square of Constantinople. 330, the year he re-founded Byzantium as Constantinople, he remodeled the Hippodrome to make it one of the capital’s most prominent buildings. The HippodromeĬonstantine the Great, the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity, took interest in charioteering. Bets were placed on which team or driver would win, and although the charioteering was top billing, there was plenty of activity to keep the crowd amused between races: Food vendors, acrobats, dancers, and animal tamers, all were a part of the noisy scene at the Hippodrome. There were several categories of race, typically broken up by the age of the driver: teenagers, charioteers in their early 20s, and very experienced pilots ages mid-20s and older. The number of laps varied, but a seven-lap race could last as long as 15 minutes. In the quest for victory a charioteer faced plenty of hideous fates: crashing his vehicle, becoming tangled in the reins and being throttled or maimed or falling out and being crushed under stampeding horses’ hooves. The number of races might range from eight to 25 in the course of a day, giving viewers the chance to see many of their favorite racers risk their lives. The typical events at the Hippodrome promised nonstop spectacle and excitement for the fans of chariot racing. While not as large as Rome’s Circus Maximus, it was still huge historians disagree on its capacity, putting it somewhere between 30,000 and 100,000. Even after Rome’s importance began to fade, the new eastern imperial power center, Constantinople, built a monumental racetrack, the Hippodrome. From provincial outposts such as Jerusalem, the setting of Ben-Hur, to Rome-whose Circus Maximus was the biggest arena in the empire-chariot racing packed in the crowds with its spectacle. The fervor of the races led to tensions that occasionally simmered over into full-scale revolt. If anything, the emotions on the big screen pale in comparison to the passions of ancient Romans.Ĭhariot racing stoked fanaticism in the Roman world, and fans flocked to see their favorites compete. For all its artistic license, the movie’s creators were not exaggerating the danger of the races nor the excitement of the arena. Before a frenzied crowd of thousands, horse-drawn chariots hurtle around a track as each pilot tries to avoid catastrophic crashes to win the day. Perhaps the greatest action sequence caught on film is the chariot race from the 1959 Hollywood blockbuster Ben-Hur.
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