376 ANNALS OF THE ROAD. 



handed down to us. Before, however, I conclude this 

 part of my subject, I must observe that the honours of 

 victory were not confined to the owners of the chariots 

 and horses, for the latter (the horses) were crowned 

 amidst the applause of the spectators, and in one instance, 

 where forty chariots were broken in one race, the vic- 

 torious one was preserved in the Temple of Apollo. 

 Having stated this havoc among the competitors, it is 

 no wonder that Ovid should say that the honour of 

 contending for this prize was almost equal to the winning 

 of it. 



There was one Pausanias, a Cappadocian, who wrote a 

 history of Greece about two hundred years after the birth 

 of Christ, who, though he might have been a little more 

 explicit (but perhaps his taste did not lie that way), has 

 given us a pretty just idea of a race with chariots over 

 the Olympic course, and poets of all nations have immor- 

 talised the sport. Sophocles modestly sings of half a 

 score starting at the same time, but Pindar avails himself 

 ot his licence, and makes the number forty. When we 

 consider that the length ' of the course they ran upon did 

 not exceed an English mile, and that the charioteers had 

 to make twenty-two turnings round the two pillars — 

 generally, we may conclude, at full speed — it may well be 

 imagined what dreadful accidents must have happened. 

 Nothing, indeed, but the form of the chariot used could 

 have ensured safety to anyone. By the representations we 



1 The Circus Maximus at Rome, in which the Romans exhibited thei. 

 chariot races, was an oval building of one thousand eight hundred feet in 

 length, and four hundred in breadth. 



