Roman Sports

1896 Words4 Pages

Roman Sports

I chose Roman sport because there are many Roman sports all of which

are very interesting. For example chariot racing a violent but

exciting sport. From the name you would imagine a horse and chariot

going round and round a course but it was more than that : they rammed

each other hoping to smash the other racer's chariot. In each lap you

never knew what might happen. I also chose roman sport because I think

gladiatorial fights would have been amazing to see and I know quite a

lot of information on them. Due to my interests in the fights I have

watched many documentaries and read many books on them.

The sports I will write about are gladiatorial fights and chariot

racing. In both I will be discussing the rewards, the dangers, which

people were involved, the many different participants, the equipment

involved and the popularity of each. I will also compare them to

modern sports.

Chariot racing

Stadium

Chariot races were held in places called circuses which they were

called

because of their oval shape. The Circus Maximus was one of the

biggest.

The building was by the time of Emperor Augustus 620 metres long and

140 to 150 metres at its widest point. The fact that it was built in a

valley stretching between two hills gives you an idea of its size. At

first there were no buildings, just a rough sandy track with

provisional markers. The viewers of the races had to sit on the hills

on each side of the track. Eventually as popularity rose they

developed it into a larger venue as can be seen today. It could seat

approximately 150 000 viewers while modern racing venues can support

up to 300 000 sp...

... middle of paper ...

...a gladiator because

many civilians joined just so they could become famous in Rome. There

is a lot of graffiti in Rome saying how much they liked certain

warriors and there is lots of writing from girls who are writing about

their heartthrobs. In modern times we have boxing matches and

wrestling matches which are both less violent than gladiator fights

but shows that sports with violence are still popular although people

don't like to think so.

Conclusion

I have found out a lot of things I didn’t know: for example that there

were another seven types of gladiator I had never heard of before as

only recently has evidence of their existence been found, how

fanatical people could get about the sports and how many animals were

killed in total. I have found writing this to be more interesting than

I had expected.

More about Roman Sports

Open Document