Chapter 17, “Entertainment,” considers Constantinople as a nexus of social space, civic ceremony, commercial entertainment, and endless diversion where streets and plazas were regularly taken over by processions, churches and monasteries were filled with clergy and worshipers, and competitive games and performances took place in the open-air hippodrome.

This chapter explores the central image of currus (chariot), and its top-of-line model, quadriga (the four-horse car), which occupy the most commanding position within the rhetoric of Roman transportation. Already a symbol of unique power and prestige due to its built-in, inherited features, this Roman vehicle takes most distinct shape in two powerful and complementary forms, the four-horse currus triumphalis, in which generals proudly paraded in the triumphal procession, and the currus circensis, the breakneck-fast racing vehicle of Roman chariot-racing. The chapter analyzes the rhetoric of currus in oscillation, alternating between examinations of some its winningest portraits of victory (on the battlefield and in the circus), on the one hand, and uncovering a series of unsettling representations of the danger and violence it claims to transcend. Visions of victorious currus in Ennius, in the story of Ratumena, and in Cicero are counterbalanced by an investigation of ‘chariot-talk’ in Plautus, explorations of the meaning of winning in Roman didactic, and telling versions of the story of Phaethon.