100 



DISCOVERY 



" The spell. I conjure you by the great names 

 that you bind every limb and every sinew of Vic- 

 toricus, whom Earth the Mother of all living things 

 bare, the Blue charioteer, and his horses which he is 

 going to drive, Juvenis and Advocatus and Bubalus 

 belonging to Secundinus, and Pompeianus and Baianus 

 and Victor and Eximius belonging to Victoricus, and 



petitive factions or parties, whose colours were white, 

 red, green, and blue. In the contests of their repre- 

 sentative charioteers every individual was passion- 

 ately interested. At the end of the first century after 

 Christ, Martial, the poet, complains that, as a topic 

 of conversation in polite society, literature cannot 



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Dominatus belonging to the Messalas, and any others 

 which may be harnessed with them." 



The object of the spell is to prevent Victoricus, the 

 charioteer of the Blues, winning the races in the 

 circus. The passion for racing, which existed in 

 imperial Rome, is notorious, and the provincial towns 

 in this imitated the capital. There were four' com- 



compete with the latest news of the betting upon 

 Scorpus, a charioteer, who died when only twenty- 

 seven, and is recorded to have earned in one hour 

 fifteen purses of gold. According to Juvenal (the 

 contemporary satirist), a charioteer of the Reds earned 

 a salary roughly a hundred times that of the most 

 successful barrister. Betting wa's heavy ; but, apart 



