ABSTRACT
Augustus’s new paradigm that would determine how sport would be organized, practiced, and understood within the Empire did not meet with universal acceptance. In the famous ‘bread and circuses’ passage of his tenth satire, the second-century poet Juvenal emphasizes that in republican times power in Rome fl owed upwards. It was the Roman people that with their votes bestowed commands, consulships, legions, and all else on the ruling classes. Now, under the Empire, the populace does not care any more. It has abdicated the power it once had, holds back from politics and longs eagerly for just two things, bread and games (Juvenal, Satires, Loeb, 10.79-81).1 The implications of this passage are far-reaching. Spectator sports – ludi – had been an essential element of the religious festivals that punctuated the secular year. They were primarily events conducted for the benefi t of the entire community, which would gather to watch them as an act of civic cohesion.2 Now they have lost that purpose, are reduced to being mere chariot races – circenses – and have no more spiritual, cognitive, or collective dimension to them than do the mere necessities of life. The spectacular games that have become a staple of imperial politics have in fact destroyed the social contract.
