ABSTRACT
Philip Astley was not a highly educated man and it is doubtful whether he was fully aware of these fascinating precursors of the art of the circus which he founded. Yet the parallel is an interesting one, since in all the centuries between the demise of the Roman circus in the 4th century and the foundation of Astley’s Amphitheatre at the end of the 18th century there was nothing in existence which could properly be called a circus-circus, that is defined as an organised sequence of performances within a ring of spectators.
