The Colosseum Rome

The first sight of the Colosseum is highly gratifying. It reassures the most bewil¬dered visitor. No one could mistake it for any¬thing but a large shambles designed with the utmost skill to focus the attention of many thousands of people upon a small field of ac¬tion, then to disperse them with the greatest possible efficiency. The amazing thing about the Colosseum is the fact that it is built in a marsh, and that its stupendous weight has been resting for all these centuries upon artificial foundations set in water.

This part of Rome is still water¬logged with springs which trickle down from the Esquiline Hill, as you can see today in the underground churches beneath S. Clemente. How the Colosseum was built on such a soil is a wonder of engineering, and I can well imag¬ine that any architect might forsake all else in Rome to study the problems of this trium¬phant mass.
In the year 1864 one of the peri¬odic stories about buried treasure in the Colosseum was revived with success by a cer¬tain Signor Testa.

He claimed to have a clue to the Frangipani treasure believed to have been concealed there in the middle Ages when that family turned the amphitheatre into a fortress. Pope Pius IX became inter¬ested and gave permission for the excava-tions, which were followed with breathless interest by everyone in Rome. Nothing of in¬trinsic value was found, though the effort was not wasted as it gave Lanciani his only chance to examine the foundations of the Col¬osseum.

He wrote that he saw the upper belt of the substructures, arched like those of the ambulacra above ground; and underneath them a bed of concrete which must descend to a considerable depth. So beneath the visible The Colosseum the arches of the Colosseum are others, carry¬ing the weight of the building on cores of the indestructible Roman concrete sunk into the water.

It was the Venerable Bede, writing in his monastery at Jarrow somewhere about AD 700, who first addressed the building as the Colosseum in the famous proverb that Byron translated as:

While stands the Colosseum, Rome shall stand;
When the Colosseum, Rome falls shall fall; And when Rome falls the world. Bede had never been to Rome, but no doubt he had heard of the Colosseum from Saxon pilgrims and may even have preserved a say¬ing current in Rome in those days. I climbed all over the mighty monument, thinking that it is the most comprehensible ruin in Rome.

It demands little imagination to rebuild it in its splendour and fill it with 80,000 spectators, with Caesar in the royal box, the senators in their privileged seats near the rails, the aristocracy, and the Vestal Virgins; then, ascending, to the mob in the highest seats of all, for the audience in the Colosseum was seated in strict rotation. There was an official called a designator who saw to it that people kept in their proper places.

There were at various times dress regulations which had to be obeyed. Roman citizens were obliged to attend the games in the toga, and the magistrates and senators came in their official dress. This enormous gathering, rising in tiers and mostly clothed in white, must have presented a mighty spec¬tacle, with the senators in their striped togas and red sandals, the consuls in their purple tunics, the ambassadors and members of the diplomatic corps in the dress of their various countries, the praetorian guard in full dress, and the emperor in his royal robes. High above the gallery protruded stout masts where sailors from the fleet at Misenum, who had been trained in the manipulation of a vast awning, swarmed among the ropes and pul¬leys as in some gigantic galley.

Even with a slight wind the sound of this velarium was like thunder, and on gusty days it could not be used at all. One can imagine what it must have been like to walk through the deserted Forum on a day of the games and to hear the flapping of this great awning, then to be pulled up by a savage roar of sound from eighty thousand voices.

Such a gathering of people assembled to enjoy suffering and death must have been a fearful sight, and I remembered the story of St. Augustine's friend, Alypius, who was taken to the games against his will by a number of fellow students. At first Alypius shut his eyes and refused to look, but, hear¬ing a sudden savage shout, he opened his eyes to see a gladiator beaten to his knees.

His heart filled with pity for the man, then as the death blow was delivered he drank down a kind of savageness and sat there, open-eyed and initiated. With the exception of Sene¬ca, not one of the writers of antiquity, not even the kindly Horace and the gentle Pliny, condemned the degradation of the amphi¬theater, and the world had to wait for Chris¬tianity before men had the courage and the decency to close such places.

As I climbed about the broken tiers and ledges, I thought of the organization which fed this monstrous circle of savagery. All over the empire officials trapped and brought wild animals for the arena, and in the course of centuries the number of noble beasts that died to please the mob is said to have almost exterminated certain species from the Ro¬man world. It is said that the elephant disap¬peared from North Arica, the hippopotamus from Nubia, and the hon from Mesopotamia.

The Colosseum 25 Long before the Colosseum was built this slaughter of animals used to be the popular prelude to the combat of gladiators; one dis¬play occupied the morning and the other the afternoon. Sulla once exhibited 100 lions in the arena and this, Cicero says, was the first time these animals were allowed to roam about instead of being tethered to stakes. In 58 BC several crocodiles and the first hippo¬potamus to be seen in Rome were exhibited in a trench of water in the arena, and during a venatio attended by Cicero in 55 BC, 600 lions were slain and 18 elephants tried to break down the barriers in an attempt to escape.

The only animal which roused any compas¬sion in the heartless Roman mob was the elephant. Cicero says that this was due to a notion that it had something in common with Mankind; and the elder Pliny says that these animals, which had been procured by Pompey, implored the compassion of the multitude by attitudes which surpass all description, and with a kind of lamentation bewailed their unhappy fate, until the whole assembly rose in tears and showered curses on Pompey.

Unfortunately, such pity did not go very deep, and for centuries to come the mob continued to watch the slaugh¬ter of elephants and every other kind of ani¬mal; indeed, as the empire declined these fearful shows became even more extrava¬gant.

There were schools in Rome where men were trained to fight animals and to de¬vise tricks to amuse and thrill the mob. Such men, known as bestiarii or venatores, were lower in rank than the gladiators. Criminals could be sentenced to join such establish¬ments and to be trained in an arena with the animals. After the Colosseum was built, the animals destined for the amphitheater were kept in a zoo known as the Vivarium, on the neighboring Celian Hill. On the day of the games they were taken under the amphi¬theater and placed in lifts, worked by pulleys and windlasses, which pulled the cages up to the arena.

The death of animals merely stimulated the palate for the afternoon combat of men. In imperial times there were four state schools in which gladiators lived under strict discipline. They were fed on a special diet and trained in every kind of weapon from the sword and the lance to the net and lassoo.

The professional gladiator, like the modern film actor, was the idol of the crowd and, of course, of some women. There is a wall scribble in Pompeii which describes a certain glad¬iator as the maiden's sigh. With good fortune their popularity lasted longer than that of a film star today, for we hear of old warriors, the heroes of a hundred fights, winning the wooden sword, which was handed to them in the arena as a badge of honorable retirement. There was also a great deal of money to be made.

In addition to the state schools, there were numerous private ludi, where gladiators were maintained at the expense of rich ama¬teurs or businessmen, who hired them out to fulfill engagements all over the country, as the promoters of bullfights today engage matadores with their cuadrilla. The Colos¬seum could also be rented.

A rich man, or a politician anxious to curry favor, could orga¬nize games to take place in the Colosseum and while they were in progress he occupied place of honor, the editoris tribunal, a special seat which has now disappeared.

The Vestal Virgins were the only women allowed in the official seats, and if the em¬press attended the games, she sat with them. Women were not encouraged, however, to at¬tend the amphitheater, and could sit only in the upper tiers with the plebs. In later times they were allowed to fight and were some¬times pitted against each other as gladiators; but this, like the woman matador of today, was not usual.

How the Vestal Virgins, who were so care¬fully protected against the harder facts of life, were expected to endure the games, I do not know, and I have read that it was sometimes necessary to move them to the higher parts of the Colosseum where they could not see so much. From the first moment until the last, when a ghastly figure dressed as Charon, or a denizen of the underworld, appeared and tapped with a wooden mallet the heads of those not yet dead, the enter¬tainment can hardly have been fit for their eyes, and that these cloistered women were required to be officially present indicates one of the great differences between the pagan and the Christian world.

The gladiators paraded in carriages on a day of the games, just as modern bullfighters do. Arriving at the Colosseum, they lined up and took part in the paseo to the sound of music, and marched around the arena, with attend¬ants following, bearing their weapons. When they reached a point opposite the royal box, they would fling up their right hands and give their famous cry: Hail Caesar, we about to die salutes you!

The weapons were then inspected, and any that had been tampered with were thrown out. Sometimes the duelists were selected by lot; sometimes experts in the use of differ¬ent weapons would be matched against each other, a swordsman against a man with a net and a trident, and so forth.

At a signal from the emperor a series of life and death duels began, while the band of trumpets, horns, flutes, and a hydraulic organ, struck up and added to the noise of excited thousands, and the shouts of the instructors, who urged on the fighters with bloodthirsty incitements and, if they were not really trying, used a whip on them.

The most merciful combats were those in which the beaten gladiator had the right to appeal for his life. If he had fought well; the crowd might save him from death, as they leaned forward with their thumbs up, a sign meaning Mitte! (Let him go), but if they wished to see him die, the thumbs would be turned down Jugula! (Kill him!); and the master of the world, glancing around to inter¬pret the wishes of the multitude, would give the signal of life or death.

No mercy, however, was possible in the com¬bats known as the fight to the death, in which a company of gladiators fought until only one survived; and even more horrible than this were the noon interludes, before the serious contests began, when a crowd of miserable robbers, highwaymen, murderers, and oth¬ers condemned to death, were driven into the arena and given weapons with which they were compelled to kill each other.

The deaths of Christians in the arena in Nero's time, and later, were of this character, but as the Christians could not be expected to slay one another, wild beasts were let loose to do the killing. It is extraordinary to contrast the gravity and dignity of Roman life at its best with the hideous degradation of mind exhib¬ited in the public amusements of Rome.

One of the most vivid impressions of the Col¬osseum is the account by Dion Cassius of an occasion when the crazy young Emperor Commodus, who wanted to be worshipped as the royal Hercules, appeared as a bestiarius in the arena. Dion Cassius was present in his official capacity as a senator, dressed in his robes and wearing a laurel wreath. He de¬scribes the young emperor, dressed as Mer¬cury, shooting bears with his bow and arrow as he darted about the galleries of the amphi¬theater. Then, descending into the arena, Commodius slew a tiger, a sea lion, and an el-ephant.

At intervals during these exploits the senators, ashamed to see the son of Mar¬cus Aurelius lowering the imperial dignity, were nevertheless obliged to give certain rit¬ual shouts or acclamations: You are the mas¬ter!; You are always victorious! Then, says Dion Cassius, the emperor advanced to¬wards the senatorial benches holding up the head of an animal he had just killed, and, with his dripping sword held aloft, he shook his head without saying one word, as if by that action he intended to threaten us in the same manner as he had served the beast.

Many of the senators were convulsed with laughter, but, as this might have cost them their lives, Dion Cassius says he quietly pulled some of the laurel leaves from his crown and chewed them and advised those sitting near me to do the same.

Reading these ancient authors I had an idea that many of them disliked the games, but accepted them as a national insti¬tution and one that had the blessing of the head of the state. The Emperor Tiberius dis¬liked them and made no secret of it, and so did Marcus Aurelius, who caused great offence by talking and dictating letters while he was seated in the royal box: but it was not until Christian times that opposition could make any real headway and the games gradually fell into disuse.

The last games were probably a mere memory of the past, for Cassiodorus says that the wild beasts imported by Theod¬oric in 519 were a novelty to his contemporar¬ies. The games held by Anicius Maximus in 523 are the last to be recorded. If the bones of horses and bulls discovered by professors in the Colosseum in 1878 belong to this occa¬sion, it would appear that in later times it had become a bullring.

And so it became in the Middle Ages, with oc¬casional plays and pageants. Then, with trees and weeds gaining upon it, robbers and hermits took up residence there, while witches and sorcerers made it the headquar¬ters of the Black Art. It was here on a dark night that Benvenuto Cellini experienced his celebrated encounter with devils. With a Si¬cilian priest and a young boy from his studio, he went to the Colosseum to hold a séance. A magic circle was drawn, the proper incanta-tions were made, and perfumes burnt; then, visible to the priest and the terrified boy, but not apparently to Cellini, the amphitheater became filled with demons.

A million warlike men surrounded them, said the frightened lad, and his terror was shared by the priest, who trembled like a reed. Cellini says he also was afraid, but told them that all they saw was smoke and shadows. The boy shouted The whole Colosseum is on fire, and the fire is upon us!, and refused to look again. Even¬tually they left as Matin bells were ringing, and on the way home the boy reported that a couple of the demons were still following them, sometimes frisking ahead or capering on the rooftops.

Centuries later the Georgians and Victori¬ans claimed this same site to be the most romantic ruin in Rome. Upon the ancient stage stained with the blood of innumerable men and beasts our great grandmothers put up their easels and sketched a shepherd and his goats near a broken marble pedestal. By that time trees and shrubs were growing where senators had once sat in official digni¬ty, and hermits in the upper circles now added a touch of romance.

A botanist wrote a book on the flora of the Colosseum, noting 266 species, which investi¬gators later increased to 420. It became the fashion to see the Colosseum by moonlight. Leaving the candlelight and the card tables, the ices and the after dinner sweetmeats, satin and velvet would crowd into carrozze and go by the light of a full moon to the fallen giant.

It is not possible to express the solemn gran¬deur of it, wrote Lady Knight in 1795. The moon entered the broken part and struck full upon that which is most perfect, and as by that light no small parts were seen, you could almost believe that it was whole and filled with spectators.

Here, later, Byron heard the owl's long cry. Dickens and Dr. Arnold, and a hundred more, added their tributes to a scene of mel¬ancholy that had no equal in the world. Then, as soon as Rome became the capital of Italy, the Colosseum was weeded by archaeologists and the 420 varieties were heartlessly torn from their crevices.

So it stands today, still arousing wonder and incredulity: a colossus in stone with a gash in its side from which thousands of tons of travertine crashed in the middle Ages. If all the stones which once filled that gigantic gap could fly back to their original positions, the Palazzo Venezia, the Palazzo Farnese and the Palazzo delia Cancelleria, and many more, would suddenly disintegrate and vanish.