The epigraph with Avilius Teres's palmarès

Gladiators? No thanks, or, at least, not as much as the cinema would suggest: the sport that really drew the hearts of the Romans was chariot racing in the circus. Each wearing the different colours that distinguish their teams respectively, the drivers hurtled supported by their fans, and their names were written on the "gadgets" of the time, but also on honorary epigraphs: a fragment of one of these, from the area of the ancient circus of Caligula, still preserves part of the “palmarès” of Avilius Teres, a great champion of the time of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, which reveals that the ancient Greeks and Romans were already fond of speed.