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The ''biga'' (Latin, plural ''bigae'') is the two-horse chariot as used in ancient Rome for sport, transportation, and ceremonies. Other animals may replace horses in art and occasionally for actual ceremonies. The term ''biga'' is also used by modern scholars for the similar chariots of other Indo-European cultures, particularly the two-horse chariot of the ancient Greeks and Celts. The driver of a ''biga'' is a ''bigarius''.〔''CIL'' 6.10078 and 6.37836. The general term for chariot driver is ''auriga''.〕 Other Latin words that distinguish chariots by the number of animals yoked as a team are ''quadriga'', a four-horse chariot used for racing and associated with the Roman triumph; ''triga'', or three-horse chariot, probably driven for ceremonies more often than racing (see Trigarium); and ''seiugis'' or ''seiuga'', the six-horse chariot, more rarely raced and requiring a high degree of skill from the driver. The ''biga'' and ''quadriga'' are the most common types. Two-horse chariots are a common icon on Roman coins; see ''bigatus'', a type of denarius so called because it depicted a ''biga''.〔This is disputed.〕 In the iconography of religion and cosmology, the ''biga'' represents the moon, as the ''quadriga'' does the sun.〔Doro Levi, "Aion," ''Hesperia'' 13.4 (1944), p. 287.〕 ==Greek and Indo-European background== The earliest reference to a chariot race in Western literature is an event in the funeral games of Patroclus in the ''Iliad''.〔John H. Humphrey, ''Roman Circuses: Arenas for Chariot Racing'' (University of California Press, 1986), p. 5.〕 In Homeric warfare, elite warriors were transported to the battlefield in two-horse chariots, but fought on foot; the chariot was then used for pursuit or flight.〔Donald G. Kyle, ''Sport and Spectacle in the Ancient World'' (Blackwell, 2007), pp. 161–162.〕 Most Bronze Age chariots uncovered by archaeology in Peloponnesian Greece are ''bigae''.〔Mary Aiken Littauer, "The Military Use of the Chariot in the Aegean in the Late Bronze Age," in ''Selected Writings on Chariots, Other Early Vehicles, Riding and Harness'' (Brill, 2002), p. 90.〕 The date at which chariot races were introduced at the Olympian Games is recorded by later sources as 680 BC, when ''quadrigae'' competed. Races on horseback were added in 648. At Athens, two-horse chariot races were a part of athletic competitions from the 560s onward, but were still not a part of the Olympian Games.〔Kyle, ''Sport and Spectacle in the Ancient World'', p. 161.〕 ''Bigae'' drawn by mules competed in the 70th Olympiad (500 BC), but they were no longer part of the games after the 84th Olympiad (444 BC).〔Edward M. Plummer, ''Athletics and Games of the Ancient Greeks'' (Cambridge, Mass., 1898), p. 38.〕 Not until 408 BC did ''bigae'' races begin to be featured at Olympia.〔Humphrey, ''Roman Circuses'', pp. 6–7.〕 In myth, the ''biga'' often functions structurally to create a complementary pair or to link opposites. The chariot of Achilles in the ''Iliad'' (16.152) was drawn by two immortal horses and a third who was mortal; at 23.295, a mare is yoked with a stallion. The team of Adrastos included the immortal "superhorse" Areion and the mortal Kairos.〔Antimachus apud Pausanias 8.25.9. A psychoanalytic discussion of this yoking is given by George Devereux, ''Dreams in Greek Tragedy: An Ethno-Psycho-Analytical Study'' (University of California Press, 1976), p. 12 ()〕 A yoke of two horses is associated with the Indo-European concept of the Heavenly Twins, one of whom is mortal, represented among the Greeks by Castor and Pollux, the Dioscuri, who were known for horsemanship. 〔Robert Drews, ''The Coming of the Greeks: Indo-European Conquests in the Aegean and the Near East'' (Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 152.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Biga (chariot)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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