While for a provincial governor a day at the office consisted of receiving long lines of emissaries or resolving civil and administrative complaints, a day (or rather once-a-week) in the life of a charioteer consisted of seven brutal laps of high-octane racing. While a provincial governor might arm himself with an official seal to approve documents, a charioteer would carry a curved dagger and a jersey whip. And while a provincial governor would use his resources to resolve problems, a charioteer would use his to create them for the opposition.
Diocles was exceptional in his longevity. Born in 104 AD, he joined the White Faction (more on this in a moment) in 122 before racing for the Greens in 128. In 131, the 27-year-old became a racer for the russati or “Red Faction” and stayed with them for 15 years until he retired aged 42. Testament to how much of a celebrity he was is the amount of detail his dedicatory inscription goes into. And this has helped us reconstruct his career with a considerable degree of accuracy.
We know that his speciality was four-horse chariots. He raced them 4,257 times, coming first 1,462 times, second 861 times, and third 576 times. Diocles wasn’t necessarily the most consistent charioteer of the ancient world. But he was certainly one of the most loved, as suggested by the almost fanatical detail contained on his inscription. Part of this may have been because of the drama he brought. We know that he was a master of the “final dash”, winning in these circumstances no less than 502 times.
As already mentioned, for most of his career Diocles was a member of the russati or the “Red Faction”. Originally, Tertullian tells us, there had only been two charioteering factions: the Reds and the Whites. By Diocles’s day, however, there were four fully-fledged teams: the Reds, Whites, Greens, and Blues. Diocles’s affiliation with the Reds would have brought him fanatical adoration from some and passionate hatred from others. There are parallels between then and now— just as these days everybody has their own sports team or favourite player, in ancient Rome everybody had their own faction.
Inter-factional rivalry went beyond a bit of light-hearted competition, however, to become as passionate, violent, and high risk as the races themselves. In 77 BC, after learning about the death of one of the Red Faction’s star charioteers one fan went as far as to throw himself on the funeral pyre and be burned along side him. According to Suetonius, in 69 AD the Emperor Vitellius had some of the commoners executed for speaking ill of his beloved Blue Faction, taking their comments as a personal affront. Fights at the races were just as common too; the emperor fortunate enough to be separated from the extreme factional violence that took place in the stands.