and the inscription in question belongs to the late second century BC. These games to the goddes Roma were founded in the early second century BC. This statement is particularly well illustrated by an agonistic catalogue of victors at the Romaia games at Xanthos in Lycia recently discussed by Louis Robert.
This hypothesis is suggested by a general dearth of inscriptions referring to be confirmed by what happened at Olympia (and presumably at other Crown Games) where chariot races were actually discontinued on various occasions during the first century AD.Īs Cameron has pointed out, the few Roman period are either Romans perhaps no longer able to enter at Rome or Greeks from the host city or the immediate neighbourhood. In the Classical and Hellenistic periods many towns of Greece and Asia Minor witnessed chariot racing as part of traditional Greek-style games, but the fields used for such races seem rarely to have been upgraded into fullybuilt circuses during the Roman period and we may suspect tahet equestrian events became a less and less important part of those games, despite the fact that the games did continue through much of the Roman period. In Greece and Asia Minor the picture is rather different from that seen farther east where several monumental hippodromes clearly modelled to a considerable degree on Roman circuses were built particularly during the second and third centuries AD. There are two excellent books by Alan Cameron on certain aspects of sport : Circus Factions treats the organization of the sport and the role of the factions and their supporters particularly in the late Roman and Byzantine periods : Porphyrius the charioteer, a study of the famous charioteer of Constantinople of the late fifth and early sixth centurie, starts from a colleciton of monuments to charioteers erected on the barrier at Constantinople but includes discussion of the place of the charioteer in late antique society and his connections with the emperor and the imagery of victory. Many different kinds of book could be written on the subject of Roman circuses and chariot racing.
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