Meanwhile the huge audience must not be conceived as sitting in quiet and restrained attention, but as roaring with laughter, applauding and stamping, shouting approval and encores, hissing and waving handkerchiefs.  And meanwhile the claqueurs will have been duly distributed by those interested in the success of the performance.  Every now and then a fine rain of saffron perfume is shed over the audience from pipes and jets distributed round the building.  It deserves remark also that in the theatre, as in the other places of amusement, the gathering frequently broke out into demonstrations of its feeling towards persons and politics.  There was safety in numbers, and the applause or hissing which greeted a personage or a topical allusion—­or a line which could be twisted into such—­could hardly be laid to the account of any individual.  A certain license was conceded and fully utilised at the festivals:  it served as a safety-valve, and wise emperors apparently so regarded it.  At Rome the government was indeed “despotism tempered by epigram,” but it was no less tempered by these demonstrations at the games and spectacles.

More worthy of imperial Rome were the exhibitions of chariot-races held in the immense Circus Maximus.  That building, already described, would at this date probably hold some 200,000 persons, but it could never provide room enough for the excited people, who not only gathered in multitudes from Rome itself, but also from all the country, even all the empire, within reach.  For weeks the chances of the parties have been discussed and betted upon; even the schoolboys have talked chariots, chariot-drivers, and horses.  The fortune-tellers have been consulted about them; dreamers have dreamed the winners; and many an underhand attempt, sometimes including the hocussing of men or horses, has been made to corrupt the sport.  The struggle is in reality not between chariot and chariot, but between what we should call stable and stable.  There are four parties—­the white, red, green, and blue—­whose drivers will wear the respective colours, in which also the chariots were probably painted.  By some means the green and blue have at this date contrived to stand out beyond the others, and the chief interest commonly centres upon these.

The day of the great spectacle arrives.  Outside the building and in the porticoes surrounding it the sellers of books of the races and of cushions are plying their trade along with venders of confectionery and perfumes.  The people are streaming into the numerous entrances which lead by stairways to the particular blocks or tiers of seats in which they are entitled to sit, and for which they bear a ticket.  Full citizens are wearing the toga, or, if the emperor has not forbidden the practice, the brightly coloured cloak which has been already described.  Seats are reserved for officials, senators, knights, and Vestal Virgins; and on the side under the Palatine is a large balcony-box for the emperor and his suite.