SUMMUM CHORAGIUM
a building in
Region III (Not.; FUR 7) in which the
machinery and apparatus for the public games in the amphitheatre were
stored (cf. Fest. 52: instrumentum scenarium; Plaut. Capt. 56). Its
site is indicated by the discovery of numerous inscriptions on the south
side of the via Labicana, between the Colosseum and S. Clemente, in the
immediate neighbourhood of the ludus Magnus and ludus Matutinus
(
CIL iii. 348, vi. 297, 646, 776 (cf. 30829), 8950, 10083-10087). These
inscriptions show that this choragium was administered by imperial
freedmen and slaves, and summum has therefore been interpreted as
meaning imperial, in distinction from other choragia that belonged to
aerarium (Hirschfeld, VG2 293-6; contra Mommsen, Staatsrecht, ii. 1070,
n. 2). It may also mean the principal storehouse of the kind (
DS i. 1117).
The building was probably erected before the time of Hadrian, and the
inscriptions belong to the second century (Marquardt, Staatsverwaltung,
iii. 547; HJ 302;
RE iii. 2405;
DE ii. 219-220). It gave its name to
a vicus summi Choragi (FUR 7).
