Chariot racing was one of the most popular Iranian, ancient Greek, Roman, and Byzantine sports. In the Roman form of chariot racing, teams represented different groups of financial backers and sometimes competed for the services of particularly skilled drivers. Chariot races could be watched by women, who were banned from watching many other sports.
About Chariot racing in brief
Chariot racing was one of the most popular Iranian, ancient Greek, Roman, and Byzantine sports. In the Roman form of chariot racing, teams represented different groups of financial backers and sometimes competed for the services of particularly skilled drivers. Chariot races could be watched by women, who were banned from watching many other sports. The sport faded in importance in the West after the fall of Rome. It survived much longer in the Byzantine Empire, where the traditional Roman factions continued to play a prominent role for several centuries. Their rivalry culminated in the Nika riots, which marked the gradual decline of the sport. It is unknown exactly when chariots racing began, but it may have been as old as the chariots themselves. It was first added to the Olympics in 680 BC with the games expanding from a one-day to a two-day event to accommodate the new event. The chariot race was not so prestigious as the foot race of 195 meters, but it was more important than other equestrian events such as racing on horseback, which were dropped from the Olympic Games very early on. The races themselves were held in the hippodrome, which held both chariot races and riding races. The elongated racecourse was divided longitudinally into two tracks by a stone or wooden barrier, the embolon. All the horses or chariots ran on one track toward the east, then turned around the embolons and headed back west. Distances varied according to the event, but the distances varied from 1,000 to 2,000 yards.
The race was begun by a procession into the hipprome, while the names of the drivers and owners were announced. The tethrippon of a herald was used to signal the start of the race. Various mechanical devices were used, including the starting gates which were lowered around the posts at the end. According to Pausanias, these were invented by the architect Cleitas. Other mechanical devices known as the ‘aglee’ and ‘dolphin’ were raised to signify that the race did not begin properly until the final gate was opened at which point each chariot would be more or less lined up alongside the ones that had started on the outside, although the ones outside would have been traveling faster than the ones in the middle. The first literary reference to a chariotrace is one described in the Iliad by Homer, at the funeral games of Patroclus. The event, which was one lap around the stump of a tree, was won by Diomedes, who received a slave woman and a cauldron as his prize. In 2008, Annie Muller and staff of the German Archeological Institute used radar to locate a large, rectangular structure similar to Pusanias’s description. The structure was situated at the south-east corner of the sanctuary of Olympia, on the large flat area south of the stadium and ran almost parallel to the latter. Until recently, its exact location was unknown, since it is buried by several meters of sedimentary material from the Alfeios River.
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This page is based on the article Chariot racing published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 07, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
