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AUDIENCES— POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
The chariot races which took place in the circuses provoked heavy betting. Martial has recorded for us that popular jockeys even had statues erected in their honour.
The gladiatorial fights and the fights between men and beasts took place in the amphitheatres. The Flavian Amphitheatre, for example, was able to accommodate about 50,000 spectators. 'Sixtyfour vomitories (for by that name they were very aptly distinguished)', writes Gibbon,1 'poured forth the immense multitude; and the entrances, passages and staircases were contrived with such exquisite skill, that each person, whether of the senatorial, the equestrian, or the plebeian order, arrived at his destined place without trouble and confusion. Nothing was omitted which, in any respect, could be subservient to the convenience and pleasure of the spectators. . . .'
The Roman circus and the amphitheatres were during the history of the late Roman Empire the only places where 'public opinion' could express itself. Yet even this was at times a dangerous undertaking. The Emperor might have those whose demands displeased him executed. We still can boo our Prime Ministers, though we might be mildly rebuked by the Evening Standard. It was the function of the rich senators to finance plays. It had become their only function.
The great Roman writers bitterly attack the decay of the austere spirit of the Romans. Thus we read in Martial's Tenth Satire: 'For that sovereign people that once gave away military command, consulships, legions, and everything, now bridles its desires, and limits its anxious longings to two things only — bread, and the games of the circus (Duas tantum res anxius optat panem et circenses) .' Nor did his aristocratic contemporary, Tacitus, in this respect hold different views. In his early Dialogue on Oratory, he sets the facts of contemporary education against those educational norms which guided the previous age of Roman History. 'In our day we entrust the infant to a little Greek servant-girl who is attended by one or two, commonly the worst of all the slaves, creatures utterly unfit for any important work. Their stories and their prejudices from the very first fill the child's tender and uninstructed mind. No one in the whole house cares what he says or does before his infant master. Even parents themselves familiarise their little ones, not with virtue and modesty, but with jesting and glib talk, which lead on by degrees to shamelessness and to contempt for themselves as well as for others. Really I think that the characteristic and 1 Cf. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
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