Roman Empire Fan loyalty was fierce and at times erupted into sports riots. Racing was perilous, but charioteers were among the most celebrated and well-compensated athletes. One star of the sport was Diocles, from Lusitania (present-day Portugal), who raced chariots for 24 years and had career earnings of 35 million sesterces. Horses had their fans too, and were commemorated in art and inscriptions, sometimes by name. The design of Roman circuses was developed to assure that no team had an unfair advantage and to minimize collisions ("naufragia," "shipwrecks"), which were nonetheless frequent and spectacularly satisfying to the crowd. The races retained a
RMS Lusitania Kingdom a war zone, and the German embassy in the United States had placed newspaper advertisements warning people of the dangers of sailing on "Lusitania". On the afternoon of 7 May, a German U-boat torpedoed "Lusitania", off the southern coast of Ireland and inside the declared war zone. A second, unexplained, internal explosion, likely munitions she was carrying, sent her to the seabed in 18 minutes, with the deaths of 1,198 passengers and crew. Because the Germans sank, without warning, what was a completely defenceless, officially non-military ship, killing almost a thousand civilians, many of whom were children, they were