Meanwhile the treasures and spoils of triumph from the Jewish revolt were directly translated into the monumental embellishment of Rome, the capital of Empire. The exiled Hebrews provided the slave labour in building this edific. Begun by Vespasian, the commander who had ‘subdued’ the Jews, and completed a decade later by his son Titus.
This was the tiered spherical arena we know as the Colosseum, a place of public recreation symbolically erected on land appropriated for personal engrandiisment by the odious Nero. To Romans it was an amphitheatre, a model for imitation throughout the provinces from North Africa to South Wales, similar structures were raised in Nimes, Arles, Verona, El Djem and Caerleon– hundreds of Colosseum clones. Keith Hopkins points out, Roman enjoyment of spectacular violence is not a matter of individual sadistic-psychpathology, but seems to betray a deep cultural difference. The inauguration of the Colosseum was allegedly celebrating hunting shows involving the death of 9000 exotic animals. But how feasible is it to capture elephants and rhinos without sedative darts, transport them long distances by land and sea and cajole them to ferocity in front of a large crowd?
Documentary evidence of laborious zoological kidnap of a single hippo from the Upper Nile to Regent’s Park in 1850, suggests that supplying the Colosseum with large quantities of interesting animals was a logistical challenge beyond even the Romans. Further and more complex calculations about gladiatorial death-rates similarly indicate a strong tendency to exaggerate, and not only by ancient writers. Christian martyrologists piously inflated the number of casualties among the faithful.
There is, in fact, no firm evidence to prove that any Christian was ever torn apart by lions, inside the Colosseum. Hopkins and Beard make the case that even when stripped of its mythology, the amphitheatre subsisted as an enclosure designed to give a maximum amount of onlookers the closest possible view of a kill. So what was the Colosseum all about? The application of capital punishment (criminals and slaves) within the amphitheatre were conducted at midday, as a lull in proceedings, deemed a diversion only to those chronically bored. Connoisseurs of bloodshed came for more than the sight of exemplary justice. Death was, at it were, domesticated. By the end, its impossible to explain the Colosseum unless one concludes that it’s chief stakeholders–the emperors of Rome–all of them, ultimately ruled by terror. This arena by the Palantine, the hill on which Romulus founded his city, was the looming and central emblem of their power to play G-d in allocating life or death.
The ancient world is a broad church and there are many ways to re- imagining and re-presenting it. This is the perfect overview of one of the most iconic buildings in the world and the authors create an erudite but eminently readable history of the building. More compelling are two ideas presented at the end. First, the Colosseum’s re-use as a manure pit, fortress, housing, glue factory and church in the centuries following its abandonment. Interestingly it once held over 50,000 spectators, a number dwarfed by the 4 million or more visitors who come every year. Its initial construction was begun in 70 AD but without regular maintenance suffered severe dilapidation by the sixth century, and by the Renaissance era it was less than a monument than a quarry, ripe for plundering. We owe thanks to antiquaterians and some more influential members of the Christian community who realised it had a symbolic, even religious significance worthy of preservation, that thanks to them so much remains today.
There is a famous axiom of archaeologists, that the more famous a monument is, sadly the less likely any of its original structures are to survive. While some of the finer details have disappeared, enough remains to reveal much of the architectural beauty of the original whole. At the same time we have to salute the ingenuity of the Romans who created such an appealing structure, yet still had the organisational skills to build something functional enough to be filled by people and yet emptied more quickly than most modern football stadiums.
This book is extremely interesting, intelligently illustrated and written in a chatty fashion. If history matters, make this one your read.
