Ancient Rome In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–509 B ...

, a ''mappa'' was a white cloth or napkin used by the presiding magistrate (a

consul Consul (abbrev. ''cos.''; Latin plural ''consules'') was the title of one of the two chief magistrates of the Roman Republic, and subsequently also an important title under the Roman Empire. The title was used in other European city-states throug ...

, a

praetor Praetor ( , ), also pretor, was the title granted by the government of Ancient Rome to a man acting in one of two official capacities: (i) the commander of an army, and (ii) as an elected '' magistratus'' (magistrate), assigned to discharge vario ...

, or sometimes a dictator) to signal the start of a chariot race at a hippodrome by tossing it down into the arena. Its use is attested to beginning in the early years of the Roman Empire, though chariot races pre-date it by hundreds of years. Any piece of white cloth could serve as a ''mappa''.

Roman consul A consul held the highest elected political office of the Roman Republic ( to 27 BC), and ancient Romans considered the consulship the second-highest level of the ''cursus honorum'' (an ascending sequence of public offices to which politic ...

s were often depicted on coins holding a ''mappa'' in their raised right hand, and the ''mappa'' therefore became represented as an item of imperial regalia. In the early

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

period of art history, following the fall of Rome and the

Western Roman Empire The Western Roman Empire comprised the western provinces of the Roman Empire at any time during which they were administered by a separate independent Imperial court; in particular, this term is used in historiography to describe the period fr ...

, it becomes difficult to distinguish between a ''mappa'' and an ''

akakia The ''akakia'' (, el, , literally or "not-wickedness". ''a-'' "not" or "against", ''kakia'' "wickedness"), previously known as an ''anexikakia'' ("enduring wickedness", "forgiveness", "forbearance", "patience") was a cylindrical purple silk rol ...

'' (a piece of cloth consisting of a roll of purple silk which held a small amount of symbolic dust). Prior to the reign of Justinian II in the 7th century CE all such ambiguous cloths were probably ''mappas'', while following him they were consistently ''akakias''. The ''mappa'' was an item of pagan regalia, and the ''akakia'' was a Christian replacement for it in a symbolic drift.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mappa Ancient chariot racing Culture of ancient Rome Ancient Roman sports Byzantine art