ABSTRACT
The importance of television in providing cheap-and sometimes nourishingentertainment, particularly for the poor, should stop us moralising against ‘circuses’, even if we find the particular form some of the Roman entertainments took revolting. In the first place, it is clear that, even had they wanted to, the Roman urban masses could not have spent their days in idleness at the races, the theatre or at other shows. Just after the Social War, at the start of the period considered in this book, there were 57 days of games, taking up approximately three separate weeks in April, one in July, a fortnight in September and another in November.1 These regular, public games were part of the religion of the state, commemorating triumphs and the averting of disasters. On the same grounds, further sessions were added by Sulla and then by Julius Caesar; the tendency to establish regular festivals to celebrate imperial occasions had led by AD 354 to there being a total of 177 days on which public games took place. (The modern office worker in Britain has over 130 free days in the year.)
While ‘games’ is the literal and customary translation of the Latin ‘ludi’, it is potentially misleading. The majority of the days of public games were devoted to theatrical performances —ludi scaenici-often with chariot racing, which was much more expensive to put on, as the climax on the last day; gladiatorial fights, known technically as munera, were generally not part of the regular public games. ‘So on 56 of the 77 days of regular public games at the time of Augustus, on 101 out of 177 days in the mid-third [sic] century AD, any Roman who could secure a seat sought his entertainment in the theatre; on seventeen in Augustus’ time, on sixty-six in the fourth century, he sought it in the Circus’.2 While the Circus Maximus could probably hold 150,000 or so spectators,3 the three theatres together only seated between 25,000 and 28,000, and it seems possible that only one theatre was used at a time; we are specifically told of a play being given twice in a day, which suggests this was somewhat unusual. On the other hand, Suetonius, admiring Augustus’ lavish and splendid shows, said that sometimes players were performing throughout the City and on many stages.4 The
1 This chapter owes much to Balsdon (1969), ch. viii ‘Holidays at Home: Public Entertainment’, here at p. 246.
