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    MLA

    Romano, David Gilman. "A Roman Circus in Corinth." Hesperia. The American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA). 2005. HighBeam Research. 29 Aug. 2016 <https://www.highbeam.com>.

    Chicago

    Romano, David Gilman. "A Roman Circus in Corinth." Hesperia. 2005. HighBeam Research. (August 29, 2016). https://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-147059813.html

    APA

    Romano, David Gilman. "A Roman Circus in Corinth." Hesperia. The American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA). 2005. Retrieved August 29, 2016 from HighBeam Research: https://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-147059813.html

    Please use HighBeam citations as a starting point only. Not all required citation information is available for every article, and citation requirements change over time.

A Roman Circus in Corinth.

Hesperia
Hesperia

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September 22, 2005 | Romano, David Gilman | Copyright
COPYRIGHT 2006 The American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA). This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights or concerns about this content should be directed to Customer Service.
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ABSTRACT

During the 1967-1968 excavations of the Gymnasium area in Corinth, a long and narrow structure (the "Apsidal Building") was discovered. It is argued here that the structure represents the eastern meta and a portion of the spina of a circus, where chariot races were held. The circus appears to have been planned as an integral component of the Caesarian design of the city, constructed during the Augustan period, renovated in the late 1st century A.D., and refurbished as late as the 6th century. Furthermore, the circus was often the site of the equestrian contests of the Corinthian Caesarea festival and at times of the Panhellenic Isthmian Games.

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When Colonia Laus Iulia Corinthiensis was founded in 44 B.C. by Julius Caesar, the new Roman colony was built on the site of the former Greek polis that had been destroyed by the consul Lucius Mummius in 146 B.C. (1) During the interim period of 102 years, the Greek city was deprived of its civic and political identity and was largely deserted until the arrival of the earliest Roman colonists, a combination of freedmen and veterans. (2) Although certain architectural elements of the Greek city were retained in the new foundation, the Roman architects and engineers brought with them a plan for the colonial city and proceeded over time to build new buildings, monuments, and structures of characteristic Roman type. (3) For example, the amphitheater at Corinth, located in the northeast corner of the planned colony of 44 B.C., was probably constructed during the Augustan period. (4) Later, under Vespasian, in the early 70s A.D., a second Roman colony was founded at Corinth, Colonia Iulia Flavia Augusta Corinthiensis, with subsequent planning and building activity. (5)

Another structure characteristic of a Roman city was the circus, the place where chariot races were held and where spectators watched the contests. (6) Most typically, four-horse chariots, quadrigae, and two-horse chariots, bigae, would compete on a closed racecourse, although other equestrian contests and sometimes athletic, gladiatorial, and dramatic events could be staged in a circus as well. (7) It is suggested here that Corinth had a circus and that it was planned from the earliest days of the colony, constructed as an integral component of the Augustan phase of the city, and then used throughout much of antiquity. (8) I also propose that the equestrian contests of the pentaeteric Corinthian Caesarea festival were held in this circus, and sometimes the Panhellenic Isthmian Games as well.

DESCRIPTION AND EARLY IDENTIFICATION

During the 1967-1968 excavations of the Gymnasium area in Corinth by the University of Texas, under the direction of James R. Wiseman, a long and narrow structure was discovered ca. 45 m to the south of a structure tentatively identified as the Gymnasium. (9) The structure, aligned in a roughly east-west direction and called at the time the "Apsidal Building," was excavated for a distance of about 19 m with an interior width of ca. 3.5 m; the west end of the structure was not found, presumably lying beyond the area excavated (Figs. 1-3). The maximum width of the excavated structure is 4.49 m and the east-west length of the curved eastern portion is 4.84 m. A hard-packed surface identified as that of a courtyard was found to the north, east, and south of the structure.

[FIGURES 1-3 OMITTED]

The curved eastern end is constructed of eight well-finished, curved marble slabs that are backed by a series of large reused poros blocks of various shapes, including a column fragment. The curved marble slabs on the exterior were clamped together. One surface of every marble block is a half-round; all but one of these half-round surfaces have been embedded in the ground although in one case the half-round is the present top surface. Approximately 2 m west of the east end of the structure, the curved end of the wall is continued by rectangular blocks that run in a straight line approximately east-west. A cross-wall of additional reused blocks joins the ends of the curved eastern end of the structure. (10) After an interval of 1-2 m, poros blocks, two courses high on the south, continue the east-west walls of the structure toward the west.

Three large pits cut into the bedrock were associated by the excavator with the original use of the structure. The pits, which are aligned roughly east-west, are spaced equally (ca. 6.0 m center to center) and are of similar dimensions. (11) Shallow channels lead toward the pits from different directions. To the south of the pits, a drain, approximately 0.50 m wide and 8 m long, covered with marble slabs, was excavated, beginning 11.5 m west of the east end of the structure and extending west into the western scarp (Fig. 3). The drain is associated with a later use of the structure.

A number of worked marble pieces, including a large cone (Figs. 4, 5), were found during excavation of the structure. The marble cone, found immediately to the north of the walls, is characterized by having its apex cut horizontally; the top horizontal surface has a central circular cutting similar to an empolion cutting, 0.09 m in diameter and 0.018 m deep. The bottom of the marble cone is broken off and thus the original size and form are not known. (12)

[FIGURES 4-5 OMITTED]

Several marble sculptural fragments were found in a 6th-century A.D. dump deposit above the Apsidal Building: a large marble egg-shaped object (S-2879; Fig. 6), a colossal marble hand (S-2877), and a third of the head of a young boy (S-2873) as well as most of his right arm (S-2876); a life-size terracotta comic mask (MF-12977) was also found. (13) The left leg from a statue of an athlete (S-2923), with an attached palm tree support, was discovered just outside of the dump. (14)

[FIGURE 6 OMITTED]

Three lead tablets were excavated immediately outside of the Apsidal Building: MF-12994, MF-68-271, and MF-68-272 (Fig. 3:A-C). (15) A heavy foundation wall, wall 16, was found approximately 18 m north of, and roughly parallel to, the Apsidal Building (Figs. 7-9). This wall, 1.2 m wide, was excavated for a total length of approximately 16 m. (16) At 6 and 10.5 m north of wall 16, where the West Waterworks structure begins, are robbing trenches (labeled as two pillaged trenches) for two walls that run parallel to wall 16 (Figs. 8, 9). (17) The space between these walls was filled with dumped material.

[FIGURES 7-9 OMITTED]

Twenty-five meters to the east of the eastern (excavated) end of wall 16, and on the same axis, Wiseman found evidence for a similar wall, 1.50-1.70 m wide; this stretch was excavated to a length of 8.15 m (Fig. 7). An additional lead tablet was found in this vicinity, approximately 23 m to the northeast of the east end of the Apsidal Building. (18) The wall continued under a farm road to the west, and its robbing trench was discovered to the east for another 7 m as cuttings in bedrock. A parallel wall was found approximately 7 m north of this wall. The northern wall, about a meter wide originally, is partially preserved and robbed. Wiseman suggested that these two parallel foundations may have been for a stoa, with a total width (including the walls) of 8.75 m, and that the building faced south onto an open hard-packed courtyard, which was explored for 19 m to the south of the foundations (Fig. 7). (19)

The only excavation undertaken to the west of the long and narrow structure (ca. 60 m to the west) was the early trench I, excavated by R. B. Richardson in 1896, in which a portion of a Late Roman wall made up of spolia was discovered (Fig. 7). In addition, to the south, Richardson dug a narrow north-south trench approximately 50 m long in which he found very little other than a series of blocks covering an area ca. 5 m wide at the north end. (20)

Although Wiseman did not positively identify the structure in the original excavation report, Charles K. Williams subsequently made the suggestion that the Apsidal Building could be a rural or outdoor shrine to Diana Nemorensis, possibly set up by the Roman freedmen when settling the Caesarian colony. (21) Williams envisioned an open-air temenos surrounded by a simple low wall and suggested that the original shrine to Diana, from the early days of the Caesarian colony, had been located somewhere near the Fountain of the Lamps (Fig. 16, below) and that it was rebuilt with its original component parts in the present location. He identified the truncated marble cone as a sacred log, or lignum, dedicated to Diana, of a type known from frescoes from Herculaneum and the House of Livia on the Roman Palatine. Fresh considerations of the excavated evidence, however, incorporating the newly understood principles and manifestations of the planning and design of the Caesarian colony at Corinth, indicate instead that the architectural features of the so-called Apsidal Building represent part of a circus facility.

[FIGURE 16 OMITTED]

IDENTIFICATION OF THE APSIDAL BUILDING AS A CIRCUS

I owe the original idea of the identification of the Apsidal Building as a circus meta and spina to Williams. (22) The eastern end of the excavated structure is of an appropriate general size and shape for the low wall of a meta, or turning post, of a Roman circus. This feature at Corinth is surrounded on three sides--north, east, and south--by a series of layers of hard-packed road metal. (23) The two lines of parallel blocks extending to the west (Fig. 3: walls 1, 2) could reasonably define the spina of a circus. Furthermore, many of the finds associated with the so-called Apsidal Building can be related to the functions of a meta or spina or to the use of the overall facility as a circus. For comparisons of design, the western turning post (meta secunda) of a circus at Lepcis Magna has been excavated and published and serves as a close parallel (Fig. 10). (24)

[FIGURE 10 OMITTED]

The large truncated marble cone described earlier, found above the foundations and near the north wall of the structure, should be interpreted as a part of the turning post itself; the empolion cutting at the top of the cone would have received a finishing element. …


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