The Colours of the Circus: a Prolegomenon to the Semantics of Faction Colours

The Roman chariot races were the greatest spectacles in the Roman Empire. Consequently, images of charioteers and chariot races can be found in nearly every context and in almost every media‑form of the Roman Imperial period as well as of Late Antiquity. On a significant number of those images from the domestic sphere – mostly on mosaics and mural paintings – as well as those found in grave contexts, colours can still be traced. This paper aims to investigate whether the colours of the four circus factions on such images were used in different ways to communicate specific values, ideas, and the sense of belonging. To this end, it explores when and why the colours of factiones were created, where they can still be found in the corpus of circus imagery, and how they were employed in the written tradition of both the Imperial era and Late Antiquity. It will then ask what additional layers of meaning the faction colours brought to representations of charioteers and chariot races in the funerary context with a focus on the so‑called circus sarcophagi.