CIRCUS GAI ET NERONIS:
built by Caligula as a private course for chariot
racing in the
HORTI AGRIPPINAE (q.v.). It was called circus Gai et
Neronis (Plin.
NH xxxvi. 74) and circus Vaticanus (ib. xvi. 200), and was
a favourite place for the sports and orgies of Claudius and Nero (cf. Suet.
Claud. 21; Tac.
Ann. xiv. 14 (?); Suet. Nero 53 (?)). On the spina
Caligula erected an obelisk (
OBELISCUS VATICANUS (q.v.) ) from Heliopolis
(Plin.
NH xvi. 201;
xxxvi. 74;
CIL vi. 882 =3 1911).
In the fourth century the north side of the circus was destroyed to
make room for the first basilica of St. Peter, and the south wall and the
two southernmost rows of columns of the church were built on the three
parallel north walls of the circus (see plan in Lanciani, Pagan and Christian
Rome 129). In the fifth century two mausolea were erected on part of
the spina, one of them being the tomb of the wife of the Emperor Honorius
(see Lanciani, op. cit. 198-205; Mel. 1902,388). One of these was destroyed
about 1520 (see
SEPULCRUM MARIAE), but the other stood until the
eighteenth century (DuP 38; Cerrati, cit.). For the mediaeval name Palatium Neronianum, see HCh 259 (S. Gregorii de Palatio). Some remains of
the circus were visible in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and in the
seventeenth, when the new church of St. Peter was being built, the ruins
were described by G. Grimaldi, whose notes are extant in several MS.
copies (see Hulsen, Il Circo di Nerone al Vaticano, in Miscellanea Ceriani,
Milan 1910, 256-278, and also Tiberii Alpharani De Basilicae Vaticanae
Structura, published by M. Cerrati, Studi e Testi fasc. 26
(1914) xxxiv.-
xxxvii.). Cerrati points out that the reason of the collapse of the old
basilica was that its walls were built, not on the centre of the walls of the
circus, but slightly to one side. The axis of the circus ran east and west,
and the carceres were at the east end, toward the Tiber, flanked by two
towers placed unsymmetrically. According to Grimaldi, the circus was
90 metres wide and 161 long, but the length is probably underestimated
(HJ 657-8; LR 551-554;
RE iii. 2581-2); while Cerrati determines the
width as 500, not 400, palms (i.e. 111.50 metres).
