ROME, FEBRUARY AD 32
T HE STALLIONS ’ EYES rolled; specks of foam flew from their mouths as they answered their charioteer’s call and accelerated down the track. Barrel chests sucked dusty air into their straining lungs whilst pounding hearts pumped blood to the muscles in their legs, which were working to the very limit of their power as they pulled a light chariot seven times around the track. They felt the reins tug back; they slowed, their current sprint over and another corner to be rounded. The inside horse wheeled left in response to a sharp pull on the reins and led his three stable mates, at a speed at which they could just keep their footing, around the turning post at the far end of the spina , the central barrier of the Circus Maximus. Feeling another bite of the four-lash whip, they looked up the 350 paces of the dust-clouded straight and they were away again, inciting each other to greater effort in the fury of the race in which they were leading.
Their driver, in the colours of the Green Racing Faction, risked a quick glance over his shoulder to one of the three White chariots, just four paces behind, but gaining; beyond it his Green team-mate drew out into the track in an attempt to pull level with the chasing White. The leading Green driver snatched a small skin of water thrown at him by a boy from his team stationed on the spina; he squirted its contents over his dirt-encrusted face and into his parched mouth, discarded it and pulled his team to the right to avoid the mangled wreckage of two chariots, a Blue and a Red. A couple of well-aimed curses, written on folded lead sheets and studded with nails, flew past him as he neared the spectators; pulling back to the right, closer to the spina and out of range of the hurled missiles, he sped on, showering grit all over the crash. Within it, public slaves struggled to cut loose writhing horses entangled in the debris, whose screeches were lost in the tumult of a quarter of a million voices roaring on the ten remaining chariots. Waving the flags of their favoured faction, the citizens of Rome screamed themselves hoarse, stamping their feet on the stepped-stone seating, urging on the teams upon whom over a million sesterces was riding in bets.
The Green driver pulled on the reins wrapped about his waist and slid his team, in a spray of sand, around the turning post closest to the twelve starting boxes positioned next to the towering wood and iron arched gates of the circus; the next lap began. High on a column above the spina the fifth of seven bronze dolphins, marking the progress of the race, tilted down and noise of the crowd escalated even more, echoing around the Palatine and Aventine Hills, overlooking the Circus Maximus on either side, and on to the rest of the Seven Hills of Rome.
‘Come on, you Greens! This one has to be ours, lads!’ Marcus Salvius Magnus bawled in excitement to his two companions as the second-placed White chariot misjudged the corner, losing crucial ground and allowing the second Green team to come alongside. Magnus’ breath steamed as the temperature fell with the sun. The baying, sweat-reeking crowd around him, on the Aventine side of the main gates, sported Green colours and had worked themselves up into a frenzied celebration at the prospect of their team’s first win of the day.
‘Twenty-five denarii at eight to one! That’s two hundred, or eight hundred sesterces; Ignatius ain’t going to like that, Magnus,’ the huge bald man next to him shouted, punching the stump of his left wrist in the air.
‘Too right, Marius, we’ve finally got that bastard bookmaker this time, and with our biggest bet of the day.’ Magnus’ scarred, ex-boxer’s face creased into a grin; he looked down at the wooden receipt for the bet, signed by the bookmaker Ignatius, grasped in a massive fist of his other companion. ‘Two hundred denarii – that’s almost as much as a legionary earns in a year! It’ll make Ignatius’ eyes
T HE STALLIONS ’ EYES rolled; specks of foam flew from their mouths as they answered their charioteer’s call and accelerated down the track. Barrel chests sucked dusty air into their straining lungs whilst pounding hearts pumped blood to the muscles in their legs, which were working to the very limit of their power as they pulled a light chariot seven times around the track. They felt the reins tug back; they slowed, their current sprint over and another corner to be rounded. The inside horse wheeled left in response to a sharp pull on the reins and led his three stable mates, at a speed at which they could just keep their footing, around the turning post at the far end of the spina , the central barrier of the Circus Maximus. Feeling another bite of the four-lash whip, they looked up the 350 paces of the dust-clouded straight and they were away again, inciting each other to greater effort in the fury of the race in which they were leading.
Their driver, in the colours of the Green Racing Faction, risked a quick glance over his shoulder to one of the three White chariots, just four paces behind, but gaining; beyond it his Green team-mate drew out into the track in an attempt to pull level with the chasing White. The leading Green driver snatched a small skin of water thrown at him by a boy from his team stationed on the spina; he squirted its contents over his dirt-encrusted face and into his parched mouth, discarded it and pulled his team to the right to avoid the mangled wreckage of two chariots, a Blue and a Red. A couple of well-aimed curses, written on folded lead sheets and studded with nails, flew past him as he neared the spectators; pulling back to the right, closer to the spina and out of range of the hurled missiles, he sped on, showering grit all over the crash. Within it, public slaves struggled to cut loose writhing horses entangled in the debris, whose screeches were lost in the tumult of a quarter of a million voices roaring on the ten remaining chariots. Waving the flags of their favoured faction, the citizens of Rome screamed themselves hoarse, stamping their feet on the stepped-stone seating, urging on the teams upon whom over a million sesterces was riding in bets.
The Green driver pulled on the reins wrapped about his waist and slid his team, in a spray of sand, around the turning post closest to the twelve starting boxes positioned next to the towering wood and iron arched gates of the circus; the next lap began. High on a column above the spina the fifth of seven bronze dolphins, marking the progress of the race, tilted down and noise of the crowd escalated even more, echoing around the Palatine and Aventine Hills, overlooking the Circus Maximus on either side, and on to the rest of the Seven Hills of Rome.
‘Come on, you Greens! This one has to be ours, lads!’ Marcus Salvius Magnus bawled in excitement to his two companions as the second-placed White chariot misjudged the corner, losing crucial ground and allowing the second Green team to come alongside. Magnus’ breath steamed as the temperature fell with the sun. The baying, sweat-reeking crowd around him, on the Aventine side of the main gates, sported Green colours and had worked themselves up into a frenzied celebration at the prospect of their team’s first win of the day.
‘Twenty-five denarii at eight to one! That’s two hundred, or eight hundred sesterces; Ignatius ain’t going to like that, Magnus,’ the huge bald man next to him shouted, punching the stump of his left wrist in the air.
‘Too right, Marius, we’ve finally got that bastard bookmaker this time, and with our biggest bet of the day.’ Magnus’ scarred, ex-boxer’s face creased into a grin; he looked down at the wooden receipt for the bet, signed by the bookmaker Ignatius, grasped in a massive fist of his other companion. ‘Two hundred denarii – that’s almost as much as a legionary earns in a year! It’ll make Ignatius’ eyes
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