The races could also be used to symbolically make religious statements, such as when a charioteer, whose mother was named Mary, fell off his chariot and got back on and the crowd described it as "The son of Mary has fallen and risen again and is victorious."
Indeed, reliefs of Porphyrius, the famous Byzantine charioteer, show him in a victor's pose being acclaimed by partisans, which is clearly modeled on the images on the base of Emperor Theodosius's obelisk. The factions addressed their victors by chanting "Rejoice.your Lords have conquered" while the charioteer took a victory lap, further indicating the parallel between the charioteer’s victory and the emperor’s victory.
An explicit parallel was drawn between the victorious charioteers and the victorious emperor. In addition, chariot races were sometimes held in celebration of an emperor’s birthday. The chariot races were important in the Byzantine Empire, as in the Roman Empire, as a way to reinforce social class and political power, including the might of the Byzantine emperor, and were often put on for political or religious reasons. There continued to be burnings and mutilations of humans who committed crimes or were enemies of the state in the hippodrome throughout the Byzantine Empire, as well as victory celebrations and imperial coronations. Anastasius was praised for this action by some sources, but their concern seems to be more for the danger the hunts could put humans in rather than for objections to the brutality or moral objections. 457–474) banned public entertainments on Sundays in 469, showing that the hunts did not have imperial support, and the venationes were banned completely by Emperor Anastasius (r. Despite the influence of Christianity in the Byzantine Empire, venationes, bloody wild-beast hunts, continued as a form of popular entertainment during the early days of the Empire as part of the extra entertainment that went along with chariot racing. The fact that chariot racing became linked to the imperial majesty meant that the Church did not prevent it, although gradually prominent Christian writers, such as Tertullian, began attacking the sport. 379–395) in 393, perhaps in a move to suppress paganism and promote Christianity, but chariot racing remained popular. The Olympic Games were eventually ended by Emperor Theodosius I (r. However, the end of gladiatorial games in the Empire may have been more the result of the difficulty and expense that came with procuring gladiators to fight in the games, than the influence of Christianity in Byzantium. 306–337) preferred chariot racing to gladiatorial combat, which he considered a vestige of paganism. Although Anastasius's single epigram reveals almost nothing about him, Porphyrius is much better known, having thirty-four known poems dedicated to him.Ĭonstantine I (r. The six charioteers about whom these laudatory verses were written were Anastasius, Julianus of Tyre, Faustinus, his son, Constantinus, Uranius, and Porphyrius. In place of the detailed inscriptions of Roman racing statistics, several short epigrams in verse were composed celebrating some of the more famous Byzantine Charioteers. The manufacturer, Saeculus, whose name is stamped on the base of the lamp, often featured gladiator or race scenes.Like many other aspects of the Roman world, chariot racing continued in the Byzantine Empire, although the Byzantines did not keep as many records and statistics as the Romans did. The most common lamp type had a flat, circular body, decorated with a wide range of different motifs wildlife, deities, allegorical symbols, and scenes of everyday life. Huge quantities of mould-made terracotta lamps were mass-produced throughout the Empire, ranging in form from animals to objects such as boats and pine-cones. The starting gates and the crowd in the stands complete the scene.Ĭandles and lanterns were known in the Roman world, but lamps which burned olive oil were far more popular. Below them is the central island (spina, literally 'spine') of the circus, complete with statues, shrines, an obelisk and turning posts (metae). In the centre the four-horse chariots (quadrigae) of the four factions (Reds, Blues, Whites and Greens) race around the track. The lampmaker has skilfully condensed the whole event into a small space. The scene on this terracotta oil lamp almost certainly represents a race in the Circus Maximus in Rome, the largest in the world, with a capacity of 250,000 people. The circus, with its long, narrow structure purpose-built for chariot and horse races, was an essential feature of any large Roman city.