Originally Posted by
Anubis88
However I think the hippodrome offers a very good point; there was a reason it was able to hold 100.000 people in attendance. Even if you would argue people came from out of the city to watch the races, it's not possible that all the locals would visit the races in those events for various reasons. I'm pretty sure i've read about the hippodrome being packed at times as well. Think of modern stadiums and which % of population attends. Sure, in the Roman Empire a lot more people watched, but the city didn't completely freeze when the events were on, people were still working, you still have the children, the elderly, the injured, sick, non interested, monks etc that wouldn't attend so their numbers would add to the 100.000 watching the games.