with shops and booths ... a colourful crowded disreputable area" frequented by "prostitutes, jugglers, fortune tellers and low-class performing artists".

Rome's emperors met the growing popular demand for regular ludi and the need for more specialised venues, as obligations of their office and cult. Over the centuries of its development, the Circus Maximus became Rome's paramount specialist venue for chariot races. By the late 1st century AD, the Colosseum