Time Scout by Robert Asprin & Linda Evans

Achilles, eyes bright despite the limp which he struggled to hide, followed Margo’s chair. Outside the Circus Maximus, thick crowds fought toward the entrances. Dozens of stalls marked the locations of shops selling food, wine, even glass bowls and cups with circus racing scenes molded into them. Commemorative sports glasses, Margo marveled. Who’d have guessed? Other stalls housed “bookies” who took bets on the outcomes of upcoming races and the combats scheduled for afterward. Crowds of men thronged the betting stalls, shouting for their turn to place bets before the games began, collecting their markers, handing over their coins.

She’d read somewhere, in one of those endless books in La-La Land’s library, that betting on the games had been illegal in Rome. If that were the case, those charged with enforcing the law apparently didn’t mind looking the other way most of the time.

Quintus’ slaves set the sedan chairs down near an arched entrance to the great arena. Margo thought seriously about bolting through the crowd, but Quintus took her arm, smiling and chatting, and guided her straight toward the entrance. He paid her admission and collected three red handkerchiefs to cheer on the faction favored by the emperor. At least, she was pretty sure red was the color Claudius favored, since she overheard the words Imperator and Princeps used in connection with the red handkerchiefs. He handed her one handkerchief and handed the other to Achilles, then dismissed his own slaves.

He gave Achilles some copper coins and dispatched him on some errand; the boy returned sooner than Margo had expected with a basket of food and a jar of wine. Then Quintus escorted Margo into the Circus Maximus. She slowed to stare, overawed. Quintus grinned, then led her to seats midway up a wooden section of the stands, in the second tier near the first turning post. Everyone she saw up in the third tier was either collared as a slave or dressed as a foreigner: no togas. She smiled grimly, pleased she’d understood that all on her own. Doubtless the only reason she was seated here, rather than up there, was because she was the guest of a Roman.