PURPOSE: To offer a device for driving the vertical roll of V-stand mill with which the driving part of the vertical roll stand mill can be protected from water and scale, which the replacement of the mill housing is easy and which is structurally made compact in a rolling line which is directly connected to a multistrand continuous casting machine.

CONSTITUTION: In the rolling line which is directly connected to the multistrand continuous casting machine, a driving source for driving the vertical roll is arranged by the side of the strand and a reverse U-shaped power transmission system is constituted by combining universal joint 6, unversal joint lifting device 7, upper and lower reduction gears 4, 8, etc., the vertical roll is driven from the upper part with this power transmission system and also the power transmission system is rotatable around an axis that is approximately orthogonally crossed to the drawing-out direction of the strand with a revolving device 9.