page_title: Biga (chariot)
section_title: Bigatus
hierarchical_section_title: Biga (chariot) / Bigatus
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Villa del Casale - Enfants auriges sur un char mené par des échassiers.
context_page_description: The biga 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.
  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; 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. In the iconography of religion and cosmology, the biga represents the moon, as the quadriga does the sun.
context_section_description: The bigatus was a silver coin so called because it depicted a biga. Luna in her two-horse chariot was depicted on the first issue of the bigatus. Victory in her biga was later featured.
caption: Boys acting out chariot races with a cart pulled by two large birds, possibly herons or ostriches (mosaic, Villa del Casale, c. 300 AD)
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