In the valley which divided the Palatine and the Aventine, on the very spot where the games were being celebrated when the Romans seized the Sabine women, Tarquinius Priscus constructed the famous Circus Maximus which was enlarged and improved from time to time, till, in the reign of Constantine, it was acapable of accomodating half the population of Rome. In this circus an astonishing number of wild beasts were exhibited: two hundred and fifty-two years before Christ, a hundred and forty-two elephants; during Caesar's third dictatorship, four hundred lions; but the Emperor Gordian, and forty years afterwards the Emperor Probus, converted the circus into a temporary wood, and turned into it an incredible multitude of wild animals of every kind for the amusement of the people, who were at liberty to take whatever they could catch. The popularity of the circus increased with the corruption of morals which accompanied the decline of the empire. Ammianus Marcellinus, animadverting on the avidity with which such amusements were sought, and the zest with which they were enjoyed, holds the following language: 'The Circus Maximus is their temple, their dwelling-house, the place of their public meeting, and of all their hopes. In the forum, in the streets, and the squares, multitudes assemble together and dispute, some defending one thing and some another. The oldest take the privilege of age, and cry out in the Temples and the Forum that the republic must fall, if, in the approaching games, the person whom they support does not win the prize, and first pass the goal. When the much-desired day of the equestrian games arrives before sunrise all rush headlong to the spot, exceeding in swiftness the chariots that are to run, and upon the success of which their wishes are so divided that many pass the night without sleep.' Lactantius confirms this account, and adds, that the people, from their great eagerness, often quarrelled and fought. Very little remains by which to identify this renowned resort; nothing, indeed, but a few fragments of its porticoes along the slopes of the Palatine and the Avantine; while place of the Spina is occupied by the unclassical gasworks of modern Rome; and its two Egyptian obelisks have been transferred, the one to the Piazza del Popolo, and the other to the Piazza di San Giovanni in Laterano.

Rev. Joseph Cross, The American Pastor in Europe ed. by J. Cumming (London: Richard Bentley, 1860), 195-196.