=327. The Race-Track: Procession before the Races.=--Inasmuch as horse races are not peculiar to the Imperial Age let a brief description of the Great Circus and its contests suffice. The long reaches of seats are, of course, portioned off to give the senators and equites the coigns of vantage. There is a lofty imperial box (_pulvinar_) on the northern side leading directly down from the Palatine. Here the Emperor and his suite can refresh themselves, and from a wide terrace command a marvelous view over the long area of the immense hippodrome. [Illustration: CIRCUS MAXIMUS. _Restoration by Spandoni._] Down the center of this area runs its central “backbone” (_spina_), forming a long low wall separating the outward and inward tracks, adorned with an unusually elaborate set of statues, columns upholding trophies, and even with one or two tapering obelisks imported from Egypt. In a kind of open pavilion at either end of the spina can be seen seven huge marble eggs and as many marble dolphins. One of each of these will be removed as each lap is finished, there being seven laps normally in every race. The great yellow race-track on gala occasions can be sprinkled with some powerful perfumes, and with glittering particles of mica or with red lead. When at last the multitudes have gathered, the contestants enter in solemn procession by the Triumphal Gate at the extreme eastern end of the Circus, and ahead of the array of chariots first of all there goes the magistrate giving the games, himself in a magnificent car and surrounded by a brilliant hedge of attendants on horse and foot. Very likely he is then followed by certain priestly colleges in pontifical vestments, by statues of deities piously borne on gilded litters, by bands of trumpeters and harpists raising their clangor, and then last, but not least, come the racing cars themselves. =328. Beginning a Race in the Circus.=--The master of the games takes his seat in the _podium_, the center of the reserved benches near the end of the track. The chariots disappear in the great line of _carceres_, “prison houses,” the carefully closed stalls at the western end of the Circus. After due waiting, fidgeting, chattering, wagering along the mountainous slopes of the benches, all the trumpets blow together. Silence for an instant grips the tens of thousands, while the president rises in his lodge and waves out a broad _mappa_, a white cloth visible far up and down the entire circus.