Circus Flaminius

The Circus Flaminius was a large, circular area in ancient Rome, located in the southern end of the Campus Martius near the Tiber River.

By the early 3rd century AD, the only open space that remained was a small piazza in the center, no more than 300 meters long, where the ludi (public games) had always been held.

Most notably Augustus demolished the small theater dedicated to Apollo, as well as the temples of Diana and Pietas, to build the Theatre of Marcellus on the eastern side of the Circus.

In the early Principate two monumental arches were added at the north and south ends of the Circus, the northern one dedicated to Germanicus in the year of his death (19 CE), and the southern one to the stepson of Augustus, Drusus.

[11] In the 1960s, this long-held identification was challenged by the joining of new fragments to the Forma Urbis, which identified the arcades as in fact belonging to the Theatre of Balbus and its connecting portico (the "Crypta Balbi" as the archaeological site is known).

New excavations combined with the new configuration of the Marble Plan altered the understanding of where the Circus Flaminius was located, moving it southwest closer to the Tiber and placing it on a southeast–northwest axis.

[12][13] A previously disregarded reference in the Mirabilia Urbis Romae ("Circus Flammineus Ad Pontem Ludeorum"), which placed it near the Pons Fabricius, and a fragment of the Marble Plan labelled "CIR FLAM" which fitted south of the Portico of Octavia, confirmed the Circus to be roughly located between the Tiber to the south and the Porticos of Octavia and Phillipus to the north, and hemmed in by the Theatre of Marcellus to the east.

[16] The obscure Taurian Games were held to propitiate the gods of the underworld (di inferi), and seem to have been symbolically grounded in the site itself, as they were never moved to a different circus.

[17] The Circus also hosted ceremonies related to the Roman triumph, as the Flaminian Fields traditionally figured along the triumphal route towards Capitoline Hill.

In 63 BC Lucius Licinius Lucullus celebrated his triumph in the Third Mithridatic War and exhibited his spoils in the Circus, including a solid gold statue of Mithridates.