He is said to have fallen out but, being Nero, he was declared the winner. The Emperor Nero drove a ten-horse chariot in the Games. The main venue for it in Rome was the Circus Maximus, which could hold 150,000 people. When the Romans conquered Greece in 146 BC they adopted the sport. The Olympia hippodrome was of a size to allow 60 chariots to race at once. There were races with two and four horses. The first recorded chariot race in the ancient Olympics was in about 680 BC. It became part of the Greek Olympic Games, and in Roman times chariot racing - as re-enacted in the film Ben Hur - was very popular, attracting huge crowds. It had a long history as a battlefield shock machine - an early primitive tank from which arrows were shot as it raced through opposing ranks of foot soldiers.Ĭhariot racing only really came in when the chariot's time on the battlefield was over. Greeks in chariots attacked Troy, and there are accounts of its use in China and India. Rameses II of Egypt sent 5,000 chariots to overcome the Hittites in 1286 BC. The horse at this stage was without the accoutrements that made it a winner - horseshoes and saddles, the equipment to make riding easy. It was used in Mesopotamia, then in Asia Minor and Egypt and was the most powerful weapon of war. The chariot was first and foremost a war machine, which changed the way war was waged.
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