Time Travel in Rome's Piazza Navona

On the day this blog is due I will be in Rome, being a writer-in-residence to kids at St Stephen's High School. So I thought I’d dig up a suitable post from my Roman Mysteries Travel Guide. When in Rome, try a little Time Travel. Here’s how to do it in Rome’s Piazza Navona! Caroline Lawrence

A Top Fan took my advice... and loved it!

Sit in at an outdoor table of the Tre Scanlini in Piazza Navona as the afternoon is cooling into evening. Order a tartuffo. Tartufo is Italian for ‘truffle’. But this is no fungus; it’s a triple chocolate ice-cream treat. It will be expensive. That doesn’t matter. You will never forget this experience. 

As you wait for your tartuffo to arrive, look at the shape of the

Piazza Navona. Does it remind you of anything? It used to be a race-course for chariots, like the Circus Maximus, only smaller. It was built by the Emperor Domitian, Titus’s younger brother. Where the people are walking (and where you are sitting!) used to be the race course, with chariots driving at breakneck speed. Imagine four-house chariots driving there now – from your left to your right, and trampling all the unsuspecting tourists! 

The central part of the Piazza Navona – with its obelisk and fountains – would have been much thinner in the first century AD, about the width of the base of the obelisk. That was the central barrier of the racecourse, called the ‘spina’ or the ‘euripus’. The fountains are too wide and wouldn’t have been there in Roman times, but parts of the euripus would have been filled with water for the sparsores, the boys who sprinkled the track with water to keep the dust down. Instead of the big fountains at either end, imagine bronze cones, each about as tall as a cypress tree. Those cones were called metae, and they were the turning posts. This is where all the worst crashes occurred, as charioteers made a 180 turn at great speed. 

The chariots weren’t wooden chariots like the ones in Ben-Hur. Those were ceremonial chariots, used for solemn processions. Racing chariots were probably not much more than a wicker basket on wheels, designed to be as light and fast as possible. Imagine driving a basket on wheels behind four powerful stallions going at breakneck speed.

You have the reins wrapped around your waist, to keep your hands free to use the whip or tweak a particular rein. But if you are thrown out of your chariot you will be pulled along the sandy racetrack. Charioteers were given a knife in their belt to cut themselves free of the reins if they were thrown out of the chariot. Imagine trying to cut through eight thick leather straps as you are dragged along the sandy track with horses thundering past on your right and left, their hooves only inches away! Whew!

Your tartuffo should have arrived by now. You deserve it. As you savour the triple chocolate, remind yourself that chocolate was unknown to the Romans. Poor Romans. But wait, they had chariot races and we don’t. Which would you rather have: chocolate or chariot races? 

Now look at some of the Roman men and women walking in the Piazza. Imagine them dressed in tunics and sandals. Imagine the women in stolas and pallas. You can easily see which Roman men would have been patricians or senators. And you can easily spot the rustic farmers and peasants. That beautiful female street-sweeper must be a slave from Germania. And that big muscular youth, showing off to his friends, is probably a gladiator. That man with the thinning hair and the wire-rimmed glasses is the spitting image of Cicero. 

One mystery I have never been able to solve is this: What did Italian men do with their hands before cigarettes and mobile phones were invented? 

Author of the million-selling Roman Mysteries, Caroline Lawrence is now writing the Roman Quests, a series set in Rome and Roman Britain in the final years of the volatile Emperor Domitian, who had a caffé named after him.

The Year of the (Green) Horse

...also Blue, Red and White! by Caroline Lawrence

My fellow History Girl Katherine Roberts recently blogged about horsey books for YA readers and got me thinking!

When schoolchildren ask me what I would do if I could time-travel back to ancient Rome, I always answer without hesitation: A day at the races! When I was researching the 12th book in my Roman Mysteries series, The Charioteer of Delphi, I learned so many amazing things about chariot racing I had never come across whilst studying Classics at Uni. Here are twelve fascinating facts that convinced me this would have been THE most exciting thing to do in the Eternal City.

1. Chariot racing was the most popular public event in Imperial Rome, attracting far greater crowds than beast fights and gladiatorial combats.

2. The size of the arenas reflect this: the Flavian Amphitheatre (now known as the Colosseum) held 50,000 people keen to watch beast fights and gladiatorial combats. But the Circus Maximus held five times that number! Nearly a quarter of a million people could fit in Rome’s famous hippodrome. As far as I know, there is no arena of equivalent size in the world today.

3. Unlike the Colosseum, women and men could sit together at the races. This is why the poet Ovid tells young men that the Circus Maximus is a good place to pick up girls!

4. Chariots were not the sturdy wooden vehicles we see in almost every dramatisation of Ben Hur. They were very springy and light so they could go as fast as possible. Oil lamps, frescoes and reliefs show that they were made of wicker and leather. Driving one would have been like driving a basket on wheels!

5. Most chariots were pulled by ungelded stallions; two for a biga (2-horse chariot) and four for a quadriga (4-horse chariot). As many as twelve teams ran in each race. That means you could have the testosterone of up to 48 ungelded stallions thundering around the racecourse at any one time.

6. Charioteers were mainly young men in their teens and twenties. Some of them achieved superstar status, but like football players today, you stayed faithful to your faction (your team) not to specific personalities. The life expectancy of a chariot racer was not long, and if one survived more than a thousand races he became known as a miliarius or thousander. It was the same for a horse!

7. The charioteer would tie the reins around his waist. This left his right hand free to wield the whip and his left to tweak one of the eight reins. With the reins tied around his waist, he could use his whole body to steer. He wore a curved knife in his belt so that if he was thrown from his chariot he could cut himself free as he was being dragged along.

8. Whenever a chariot crashed, the crowd would yell out naufragium! This means ‘shipwreck’ in Latin! See? I told you it was fun!

9. Some charioteers downed a concoction of bull’s mucus before the race to make them more phlegmatic (i.e. to calm them down). They called this disgusting potion snorteum. 

10. Four dozen horses thundering around a dirt track could raise a cloud of dust thick enough to obscure the action and choke the spectators. For this reason there were special boys called sparsores (or sprinklers) to keep the dust down. They would run out onto the track between laps and sprinkle the dust with water. There were frequent fatalities.

11. For me, the most exciting fact is that every single element of the Circus is symbolic, relating it to the cosmos.

• The four faction colours represented the four seasons and also the four humours or temperaments. Red stood for summer or the choleric temperament. Blue was autumn and also melancholic. White was winter and phlegmatic. Green was spring and sanguine. Charioteers wore leather helmets and jerkins in the four colours of their factions. The horses were adorned with ribbons and gear in these colours, too.

• The seven laps represented the days of the week.

• The twelve starting gates (and lanes) represented the months of the year.

• There were often twenty-four races held per day. These represented the hours of the day.

• The water of the euripus (canal in the central spina) represented the sea.

• The dirt race-track represented the earth around the sea.

• The obelisk rising from the euripus represented the sun.

12. Finally, as if to prove how little some things change, you could buy chariot-themed souvenirs at the Circus Maximus such as glass beakers or clay oil-lamps.

Now come on, admit it! Wouldn't a day at the Roman races be your first choice, too?

Caroline Lawrence writes history-mystery books for kids. She has written over twenty books set in first century Rome and is now writing a series about a detective in the Wild West. There are horses in those books, as well. For more info, go to www.carolinelawrence.com and follow her @CarolineLawrenc