Dan Snow's History Hit - Gladiators: The Colosseum

Episode Date: November 11, 2024

Join Dan on an adventure in Rome as he traces the true history of the gladiators. He begins his story in 64 AD with the great fire of Rome that left the city in ruin. From the ashes rose a new Emperor and his dreams for a gargantuan amphitheatre, unlike anything the Empire had ever seen. With the help of leading experts, Dan explores the building of the Colosseum, the biggest stage in the Roman world, and the ingenuity and cruelty of the entertainment that took place there during the inaugural 100 days of games in 80AD.This is episode 1 of a 4-part mini-series 'Gladiators'.Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal PatmoreEnjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign up HERE for 50% off for 3 months using code ‘DANSNOW’.We'd love to hear from you - what do you want to hear an episode on? You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

64 AD. Rome was burning. A great fire swept through the city, destroying a third of it. Scholars trawled through the ashes of the forum, while mothers and fathers wept in the ruins of their family homes. The city was a shadow of its former self. The city was a shadow of its former self. To add insult to injury, what was going to rise from the ashes was an opulent golden palace. Not for the people, but for the emperor. The Domus Aurea, built for the Emperor Nero. With its lavish gardens and palatial halls, it would take up something like a third of the city's footprint. Rumours swirled as to whether Nero had started the fire himself as part of a

land grab. It's no surprise that by the time he died four years later, he was probably the most hated emperor yet. With his suicide, Rome was thrown into further chaos and misery. Three emperors temporarily filled the position, none of them presenting a lasting solution. It looked like Rome's grip on its empire might loosen with each change of emperor. But then a new emperor emerged, a new emperor emerged. Vespasian. A man of humble beginnings, whose judgment and self-discipline marked him out as a potential ruler. He vowed to restore Rome to its former glory. He wanted to create something new, something extraordinary that would show the people of Rome that the empire was as proud and indomitable as ever before. It would be an arena on a scale unlike anything seen before or since.

A stadium 50 metres into the sky that could hold up to 50,000 spectators. A place where people from the furthest reaches of the Empire would travel for days just to stand in its shadow. Where the greatest fighters would compete for adoration and freedom. Where Rome could demonstrate its dominion over its enemies and subordinates. It would sit at the heart of the city, purposefully on top of the foundations of what would have been Nero's palace. It was the Colosseum of Rome. You're listening to Dan Snow's History Hit,

and for this miniseries I'm taking you with me to Rome, the eternal city to explore the ancient streets that whisper tales of great emperors, gladiators, poets and soldiers. I'm here to trace the true story of the gladiators, their brutal journey from the training schools to the mighty Colosseum itself. We'll delve into the ingenuity and the cruelty that defined ancient Roman entertainment, the weapons, the blood sports,

and the fierce power plays that unfolded from the emperor's box. And since the new Ridley Scott movie, Gladiator 2, is out this month, we thought you might need us to bust some myths on how the gladiatorial games really went down too. This is the story of glory in the Roman Empire. Who had it and who would do anything for it? You're listening to episode one, The Colosseum. The early autumn sun is bathing the city of Rome in a golden light. There's an energy here today and that's the same energy that's drawn people here for millennia. The city, cradled between its seven legendary hills that have witnessed a lot of history.

The rise and fall of an empire, birth of legends the shaping of the western world only in rome do you find michelangelo renaissance masterpieces alongside imperial sites like the forum the pantheon the coliseum and you get mad baroque wonders like the Trevi Fountain. All of it just a stone's throw away really from the HQ of the Catholic faith. Basilicas like St Peter's, St Paul's. Every corner of this city is a bewitching blend of art and faith and the echoes of a distant past. You cannot walk through the streets here without feeling the weight of that history. And I say that everywhere, but it's truer nowhere more than Rome. The people that walked these streets, inhabited these palaces and worshipped these temples,

shaped the world as we know it today. Rome slowly gained in power over five centuries, around about 500 BC. Initially as a monarchy, then a republic governed by senators, building wealth through trading wine and olive oil and doing a bit of fighting as well by about 27 BC it become one mighty empire ruled by a Caesar an emperor and it would rapidly go on to rule over an imperium an empire which included around a third of the population of the world at the time. That had its ups and downs over two, two and a half,

three centuries before finally, and I know I'm stepping on a lot of historical landmines here, folks, as a mixture of external enemies, internal schisms, all sorts of problems really led it into decline. And Rome, much its former empire in the west, was conquered in about the 5th century AD by people previously regarded as barbarians. For around four centuries within that story, the Colosseum stood at the heart of Roman life. It is a marvel of engineering, completed in around eight years. It was a feat of astonishing ambition.

It was designed by merging two semicircular theatres into one massive amphitheatre, the largest in the Roman world. Gleaming white from limestone, it was once adorned with brightly painted details. They were colourful. There were statues of Roman and Greek gods. There was Zeus. There was Jupiter and Hercules, Venus, all standing proudly in their arches in the middle stories, casting their gaze over the crowds below. In the Colosseum men fought animals, they fought each other,

the crowd roared them on. For the Romans it was a straight old amphitheatre. It only became the Colosseum in the medieval period because of a colossal statue of the Emperor Nero that had once stood nearby. As spectators queued to get in clutching their tickets they'd have passed by the feet of the gigantic statue on the other side. The huge fountain, tumbling layers of water. I'm standing in front of it right now looking up at it and I'm alongside what seem like millions of tourists and I know that everyone that comes here is just struck by the magnificence of the Colosseum. Similar emotions, I'm sure,

to how our Roman forebears would have felt. And that, of course, was just the point. The Colosseum, it wasn't just built as a venue for gladiatorial games. It had an important political purpose. What doesn't, folks? Vespasian, the emperor who began it in around 70, 72 or so AD, thought this enormous building would help to cement his dynasty at the apex of the Roman world. Now I'm going to stroll over to the forum, I'm so happy I can say that sentence,

to meet Dr Sushma Malik, an expert in Roman history, to discover more about the origins of the Colosseum and the state of the empire in which it was built. Shushma, we're sitting on the Palatine Hill. We're looking down over Rome, over the Forum. This is the view the Caesars had. Yeah, it's quite spectacular, isn't it? It's an amazing place to be, to get a sense of Rome. I mean, the Forum, yeah, it's the place, isn't it? It's an amazing place to be to get a sense of Rome.

I mean, the Forum, yeah, it's the place of the Caesars, but it's also Republican, and then there are all these layers of history that talk about sort of the different kinds of cities that Rome is and has been. And up here, there's a nice little breeze. This is where Augustus chose to make his home. Yep, that's right.

And most of the emperors followed the tradition. Yeah, a lot of the emperors followed that. It's a good place. It's up out of the city. It's like you say, has a nice breeze. So in 70 AD, what's the state of the empire? Give me a quick audit. So in 70 AD, I mean, we talk about the imperial period and we talk about emperors, but actually most of the Roman Empire was acquired before the emperors, so when Rome was still a republic. So Rome has been expanding. It went south to North Africa.

It went east into Greece and modern-day Turkey. It's got, by this point, as far as the Middle East. And then also under Claudius, it went west to Britain as well. So it's the really big empire that we recognise from all the endless maps. It's near enough its territorial peak, not quite, but near enough. Yeah, it's getting there. But the 60s have been a nightmare. Yeah, the 60s are difficult because we have, at the beginning, the Budokan Revolt in 62 is one of the things that the Emperor Nero has to deal with.

I mean, Britain isn't necessarily the heart of the Roman Empire, but it's still something that needs to be sorted out but actually when we get into the mid 60s if we're talking in Rome there's the fire that happens in 64 there have been fires in Rome before of course but this was huge this was a very big big fire and it was devastating for quite a lot of the city so that was a problem again that Nero then had to deal with afterwards and he poured lots of money into it with a big building program that helped to rebuild the city as well as his own palace which gets remembered very well in the histories of the period. Now Shashma I know you're the world's leading expert on Nero if you would just sum up, Nero, does he deserve his shocking reputation?

So Nero was the last of the Julio-Claudian emperors. He ruled from 54 to 68 AD. He's in our history books, as it were, sort of painted as the opposite of the Emperor Augustus. He's very young. He's only 16 when he becomes emperor. He's characterised as being under the thumb of his mother and some powerful advisors. So he gets characterised as being under the thumb of his mother and some powerful advisers. So he gets characterised as a sort of inexperienced person who politically is naive and then politically difficult when we get into his later emperorship. So he is someone who isn't necessarily the automatic choice of someone who would rule but finds himself in this position and does things that some would say were popular with the people, was perhaps a bit difficult for the senate on various occasions but ultimately he was criticised because he was far too interested

in luxury, he was far too interested in his own pursuits, he was far too interested in the theatre and far too interested in chariot racing for the likes of Roman senators. He's a showman, not a fighter. It seems so, yes. In 68, he's declared a public enemy by the Senate and takes his own life. And then there is the Year of the Four Emperors.

Yeah, so the Year of the Four Emperors is 69 AD and that follows Nero's death. And what we have then is what the Senate thought was going to be quite a good succession. So when they decide to declare Nero a public enemy, they do have a plan. And the plan is supposed to be the rule of an emperor named Galba, who is the opposite of Nero in many ways. He's older, he's got a good military experience, he's got, you know, the support of his own legion behind him. But unfortunately, Galba is not particularly popular with the imperial bodyguard, as we sort of call them, the Praetorian Guard in Rome. Our sources say he doesn't pay them

enough, he doesn't give them enough gifts. So he is deposed. And then we have the Empress Otho and Vitellius afterwards and then eventually the general named Vespasian wins out again with the support of the army, with the support of his legions in Egypt and he becomes the first emperor of what we call the Flavian dynasty. So Vespasian is going to be a pretty important figure in Roman history, right? Because he was a soldier. In my part of the world he's famous for being the man who helped subdue

what is now southern England, perhaps even conquered the Isle of Wight. But he was born outside royal circles, was he? Was he an aristocrat? So he became a senator. He is someone who, like you say, didn't come from a traditional sort of aristocratic background, but was rising in the political elite under the reign of Nero. He fell out of favour with Nero it seems and that's why he was sent to Judea. So there was a war going on with Judea in the late 60s AD and he went there but he is someone who has both military experience and some political experience as well but he's not perhaps what we would imagine as a natural successor to found the next dynasty but then it's not clear who a natural successor maybe would have been we're in new territory but then part of what Vespasian can do

is sort of put his stamp on things he can instigate a building program he can talk about a rejuvenation right so we've had the last the Julo-Claudians we've had this horrifically traumatic period and now we're coming into the reign of a new dynasty and that's not easy to see as a transitional point so part of the way that he made that transition work was through things like buildings so he launches big building projects what's he doing there is it about actually trying to please the people of rome sort of strengthen his grip on power is it about his own prestige what's going on So part of what Vespasian is probably doing is, well, finishing some of the building projects that Nero had started. So Nero, of course, is rebuilding Rome when he died. He needs to think about kind of what he wants Rome to look like himself, but also he has the money

behind it. So that war in Judea, the spoils of that war, which includes selling prisoners of war into enslavement, that is part of what paid for, a big part actually, of what paid for this building programme that Vespasian put into place that then gave the people a different perhaps sense of the space in Rome. So the Lake of Nero's Golden Palace was the place where the Colosseum was built. He's allowing the public back into what had been well a place where Nero had been planning his slightly grandiose imperial projects. Yeah and there's probably a case to be made that Nero

would have opened parts of his house to the public as well to have sort of spectacles there but this is giving it I guess symbolically back into the public hands but we shouldn't really overlook the fact that the Colosseum or the amphitheatre is also an immensely political space so it's somewhere the emperor can be seen it's somewhere that people can go and shout at the emperor petitioning the emperor where they can have visibility but also you know contact with the imperial family so it has a range of functions as a space. Vespasian decides he's going to build an amphitheatre but unlike any other amphitheatre in the world this is a ginormous scale what's he doing there? So he's putting his

sort of stamp on that space reappropriating that Neronian space there's a whole set of things that go along with the idea of the opening of the Colosseum. Games can be thrown, spectacles can be thrown, the reenactments of battles that people haven't seen before. And it's also a place where the empire can sort of be on show as well. So there's sorts of animals that you could get because Rome has an empire and you can go into the centre of Rome, into the Colosseum and see them. So it brings the empire to the Roman population.

It does. The really big games do. I'm not saying on a daily basis, but the big games. What's at stake here? Vespasian has witnessed his three predecessors meet terrible ends in a very short amount of time. Is there a sense that you need to keep Rome satisfied, happy, overawed, calm? Otherwise, well, his life, that of his dynasty could be in danger. So one of the things that Vespasian was able to do that's really important to understanding kind of the relationship, I think, between emperors and the people in Rome is that he could show himself to be a good benefactor. So benefaction was a huge way that the emperor interacted not only with the people in Rome but also with the wider provinces. So for Vespasian it's going to be

and is a very big part. He needs to show himself as worthy if you like of that to found a new dynasty to be a successor of some of the Judeo-Claudians. How unusual was it? I mean were there other amphitheatres in Rome? Not at the time the flavian amphitheater that we call the coliseum was built there had been temporary wooden structures and then a stone one was built um but it was destroyed in the fire of 64 so also it's something that vespasian could do it's another entertainment space we have theaters and we have the circus maximus but this is rome's um amphitheater we're sitting here on top of the Palatine. The Colosseum is so remarkable from here. It really does dominate the landscape.

It was an incredibly ambitious thing to do by Vespasian, wasn't it? So part of what emperors do is build things that are bigger and better than their predecessors. So someone like Vespasian is thinking about making something that's spectacular, that's more beautiful than the previous dynasty had. But it is significant perhaps that no one else builds an amphitheatre quite like Vespasian did. So the bar was now so high it could not be heightened.

Yeah, and it lasted as well. I mean, you can sit here now and yes, there's ruins, but there's also quite a considerable, when you think of what's happened in Rome in the intervening centuries millennia there's still quite a lot of it that has survived. It's difficult to comprehend the scale of the task it's only getting up close that you realise just how enormous and complicated the Colosseum is but the Romans were ingenious builders. With 80 archways on that iconic external wall, the arena is made up of roughly 100,000 cubic meters of travertine stone and over 300 tons of iron clamps to hold it all together. Its foundations plunge 40 feet into the earth, into the site of a drained lake. They rely heavily on a substance of the

Romans' own devising, concrete. Even their method for lifting the enormous stone blocks onto the higher levels was a feat of engineering in itself. I met Dr Simon Elliott, a leading Roman historian, at the Colosseum, to find out just how they did it. at the Colosseum to find out just how they did it. Why is it such an amazing building? The Colosseum is unique, in a sense, because it's twice the size, probably, as any other amphitheatre in the Roman world. 65,000 people.

Dan, it is immense. What technological hacks allowed them to build on this scale? Well, it's a great example of the Romans nicking ideas from other people and one of the ideas they nicked was the Vossoir arch so you have your spring line, your Vossoirs, the curved sections of the arch, the keystone locking everything together in the middle and it's such a clever technique for building because you can stack archers on top of archers on top of archers and so if you look at the Colosseum, the Colosseum is basically a series of archers. The really interesting thing, actually, is that in terms of building techniques,

they've used lots of different building designs from around the Roman world all together in one place. So you can see representations of columns between the archers, but on the bottom, they're the most basic kind of column, which is the Doric column, just with the flat plinths. And then the second row of Vossoirs, the columns in the middle, they are Ionian columns with a beautiful scrawling at the top. But then, on the third level of Vosoir archers, the columns in the middle are Corinthian columns with a really fancy tops. So you go basic, all right, amazing.

So it's all about showing sort of every aspect of the Roman world. And particularly then those arches, as well as being very strong and light, they let the light in and the air, I mean, it doesn't get too stuffy in there. I think in actual fact, the key thing here, Dan, is actually letting the air in because actually, if you think about it, effectively, it's a stone bowl in the middle of a country that's not cold. So for the majority of year, it's actually going to be just like it is today with the blazing sunshine. It's going to be exceptionally, exceptionally hot in there. So you want every means you can of letting air in. And of course the archers, classic. So not only do the archers make the Colosseum, they also cool the Colosseum.

How do they make it so high? Are we talking cranes or scaffolding or great ramps of earth? Bit of both. So the Romans used two kinds of earth bit of both so the romans use two kinds of crane when they're building so they use an a-frame crane which is exactly what you find engineers using around the world today but also these are tread wheel crane the tread wheels powered by a tread wheel literally a tread wheel in the middle which is um powered by slaves like a hamster wheel exactly right the slaves treading on a wheel the beauty of the tread wheel crane is it's scalable so you can make it as big as you want within reason so for the majority of the coliseum you'll be able to get to the top probably using a tread

wheel crane if you had something which was too big then what they would do is use scaffolding so smaller a-frame medium to large tread wheel very large scaffolding you can always mount cranes on that scaffolding presumably as well you can dan but personally i wouldn't want to work on one of them is it really the same in many ways in function and form as a modern stadium? Absolutely, yeah. So let's take, for example, the Olympic Stadium in Rome itself. So the Olympic Stadium, home to Roma and Lazio. In the Olympic Stadium, you have a roof. And the Colosseum had a roof. The Colosseum did have a roof.

It had sails, vela, sails. So it has banks of seating, and it has the arena where the football's played. It has exactly the same banks of seating, and it has the arena, in this's played. It has exactly the same banks of seating and it has the arena in this case where people killed each other. And getting in and out? In a modern arena like the Olympic Stadium you have big gates you get in and out of the stadium the Roman Colosseum is exactly the same. Of course in the Colosseum they were called vomitorium because you vomited people in and out that's where our world vomit

comes from today. I love that the vomitorium. The vomited people in and out that's where our world vomit comes from today i love that the vomitorium the way that we get people in and out of stadiums through the banks of seats it's coming that's a roman idea do you know how much this would have cost and do roman emperors a bit like the sort of american congress they did they just write their own checks i mean is there any way in which there's actually linked amount of gold in the imperial treasury well firstly the roman treasury is called the fiscus and that's the emperor's Fiscus treasury, so the emperor is in charge of the treasury. That treasury pays for every public aspect of Roman life. It could play for building public buildings, it could pay for the games themselves, it certainly pays for the military, which is usually what the emperor needs to keep him in power. So the Fiscus

treasury is central to the Roman emperor's success. However, there's a double blind here for the spectators in the Colosseum because the fiscous treasury is filled with money from tax. The people who pay the tax are the people, like the people of Rome. So they're paying the taxes for the emperor to spend the money they give the emperor to show off to them. Is there a sense in which, though, if a successful military campaign or you loot an enemy's capital, does money flow in?

Do emperors tend to spend big money after those kind of fiscal events? An emperor would spend bigger and bigger and bigger the more he needed to secure himself in power. So often you get a series of games taking place when an emperor takes power. So he can show off, I'm the new guy, I'm the rich guy, I can actually really look after you. takes power so he can show off on the new guy i'm the rich guy i can actually really look after you and also if he has a military defeat again distracting the masses or if there's a major event like a plague or an economic crash he's distracting the masses you listen to dan snow's history hit the best is yet to come. Stick with us. from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes,

who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Vespasian wanted the Colosseum built in a mere ten years.

That would require an astonishing amount of manpower. But for the Romans, that wouldn't be a problem. In the first century, the Roman population was roughly 50 million, spread across the empire. It's believed that 10 to 20 percent of that were slaves. That's 5 to 10 million individuals. Slavery was an intrinsic part of Roman society. Slaves were at the bottom of society, then freed men who were freed slaves, then free men who had never been slaves and then aristocrats. So it's an absolutely normal part of Roman society. In the Roman world, probably one in 10 people is a slave, right? If it gets any more than one in ten, it becomes a bit problematic because the Romans were terrified of slave revolts. So everyone's

heard of Spartacus, but the Spartacan slave revolt was the third servile war or revolt. So the Romans were terrified of slave revolts. So about one in ten is the norm. Where are these slaves coming from? So it depends what kind of slave you're talking about, Dan about one in ten is the norm. Where do these slaves come in from? So it depends what kind of slave you're talking about Dan. So in a Roman household your kids could be taught by a grammarian who might be a slave from the Greek speaking world. If you're talking about working in the Metalla, mines and quarries, they could be prisoners of war.

So they're coming from the far north of Britain, what we call today Scotland, or from the far north of Germany, north of the Rhine or Danube, or they could be coming from the eastern frontier, they could be Parthians, or they could be coming from south of the African frontier, they could be Berbers. Basically, they're people who are beyond the fringes of the Roman world who are captured in conflict. And would it work a little bit like the Elizabethan slave traders going into West Africa? Would you not just capture them directly with Roman arms, but would you buy them off trans-Saharan networks and things like that as well? Absolutely. It's interesting that Britain in the Roman world was famous for a variety of exports before the Roman conquest, one of which

was slaves. So Britain's part of this Roman trading network before it's incorporated formally into the empire? Absolutely. And part of the trade are slaves. Absolutely normal. Remember when Caesar conquered Gaul, he famously killed a million and enslaved a million. So you can imagine a million enslaved Gauls suddenly start flooding the slave markets in Italy. At the end of the Cimbrian Wars in the 120s and 110s BC, again, the Cimbrians were Germans. The slave markets in Rome were flooded with German slaves. So this is millions of people being captured and then sold as slaves. Obviously, there were loads of different kinds of slaves. Is it possible to say what a slave's life was like? So being a slave is not a good thing. You don't exist in terms of your own

agency. You have no power over your own future. That being said, in the Roman world, a slave could earn money and a slave could be manumitted. So they could be freed and they'd get free for two reasons. One is they would buy their freedom from earning money or two, because their master decided that he'd free them for good service. So you could be freed. And once you were manumitted, you became a freed man. Now, a freed man could do everything in Roman society. So in the Roman world, a freed man, a freed slave could become fabulously rich. So the father of the Emperor Pertinax, the son of a slave who became the Roman emperor, his father was a multimillionaire running a logging business in the Po Valley who had started life as a slave. Now the interesting thing for these freed men is they were Roman citizens, they could vote, they could do most things that Roman citizens could do but they could not stand for public office. Now for a Roman

citizen standing for public office was a way of showing how successful you'd been and the freed men, that's a lot of people by the way, couldn't do that. So what they did was monumentalise their success in life through their funerary monuments. So if you go to Pompeii and you go through the Herculaneum gate, there's row after row as the road goes towards Herculaneum of monuments, funerary monuments, mausoleums, tombstones and things. Most of them are actually from freedmen, freed slaves, to show how successful they've been in life because they couldn't have the inscriptions around the forum saying, oh, I've been this magistrate or that because they weren't allowed to stand for any magistracy.

The slaves were unable to buy their freedom. I mean, presumably some conditions would have been horrific. Life would have been nasty, brutish and short. Certain kinds of slaves had terrible, terrible, terrible lives. So within the Roman criminal justice system, one of the punishments was to be condemned or enslaved to work in the metalla, which are mines and quarries, for the rest of your life. Which means you go in the hole

and you don't come out. So to what extent can we say that Roman imperial might was built on the back of this slave labor? I presume the iron offer weapons being quarried in mines like that. So I mean, it's without that slave class, Rome wouldn't have been what it was, what it became. In our world, we rely without thinking on technology to do things for us. It's just there and it just happens. I want to make an espresso in the morning, I put the pot in, and I press a button, and I've got a coffee,

because the machine's doing the work for me. And I go in a car, which is computerised, a train, which is computerised, or a plane, which is computerised. And I don't think about it. It just happens. It's exactly the same in the Roman world, switching out technology for slaves.

It just happens. So I wake up in the same in the Roman world, switching out technology for slaves. It just happens. So I wake up in the morning in my fine townhouse and it's clean because the slaves have cleaned it. It just happens. I have an amazing dinner cooked in the Kalina kitchen of my townhouse by the slaves and it just happens. I don't think about it. They are the modern equivalent in a Roman context of our technology. And I guess Rome can swell to a million people because fresh water can be brought in, sewage can be pumped out, all because of aqueducts and sewers built by slaves. Absolutely, yeah. So they're built by slaves. So you might ask yourself the question, what's in it for me as a slave to build an aqueduct supplying water to Rome well because you have a terrible life anyway it's because of what happens to you if you misbehave as a slave so you could end up in

the arena or you could get sent down the Metalla interestingly crucifixion in the Roman world was an execution specifically designed only for slaves, only for slaves. So when Christ was crucified, it was deliberately portraying him as a slave. The Romans were showing him as the bottom of society. So you could end up with the most brutal death of many kinds of brutal death, which is a crucifixion. And if you go on the far side of the Esquiline Hill, outside the Serbian land wars, there's a specific area, which in the early imperial period was where the bodies of crucified slaves were chucked in burial pits, which all had to be dug up about a century later when the city expanded, and they had to dig up the burial pits for crucified slaves. Would a lot of the workers

on the Colosseum been slaves? I would have thought nine-tenths of them. And what do you think that experience was like? Would they try and look after them because they were quite skilled or were they quite disposable? Well, firstly, they are disposable. And there's a never-ending flow of slaves when you need them. You know, you need 10,000 men to help build the Colosseum. Well, that's 10,000 slaves.

As many as you want. It's all scalable. And it's absolutely normal. So if the button's pressed by the emperor, I need 10,000 slaves to build the new amphitheatre, then you get them. Do you have any idea how many people might have died constructing the Colosseum? No, but it would be thousands and thousands and thousands.

And the really poignant thing is, these are people who live lives in the same way we live lives today, and there's no record of them. So it's a really important point I always make, Dan, when going around any roman amphitheater which is glorified in modern culture through movies like gladiator most people think it's fun but it's not it's a terrible place it's a place of industrial scale public murder effectively that's just what happens in the arena but the people building it are dying all the time as well, and they don't matter. Slavery is central to the story of the Colosseum. From the labourers who no doubt keeled over in the heat building it, to the victims of the spectacular show deaths. But slaves also played another role in the Colosseum.

They were, often, the gladiators, owned by the gladiator schools. Most were killed in battle, died of wounds, or lived a life of indentured servitude to the owner of the school. But the few who were resilient and strong enough to make it to the top, lucky and skillful enough to keep winning, well, they had an opportunity to gain their freedom, granted by the Emperor. Now, I've come into central Rome, standing quite literally in the shadow of the Colosseum, it is towering above me now, this spectacular building, and I'm under street level, around me apartment blocks, restaurants, bars that have built up over the centuries.

But there's an excavated plot that I'm standing in, I'm about three or four metres below ground level now, it's the Ludus Magnus, which is the gladiator training school. Now like modern football clubs, there's a training ground for these glad gladiators and this one was next to the Colosseum it would have been a compound I've got storerooms behind me and in the middle here I can see a giant well I've got half an oval shape this the training arena the rest of it amazingly extends under all these new buildings so can you imagine what an archaeological site that is waiting to be excavated so this is where the gladiators lived it's where they trained it's where they fought their practice bouts and there was a tunnel connecting this place to the coliseum itself which is probably about 50 or 60 meters away just on the other side of what is now modern road i've come here to meet alexander

mariotti who is an expert in all things ancient rome but particularly gladiators, to see what my life would be like if I was a gladiator. Alex Mariotti, good to see you man. Good to see you Dan, thank you for being here. Well, you don't have to thank me, it's a sunny day, we're looking at the Colosseum, it's wild! I have to pinch myself every time I come to this city. We could be back in time 2,000 years ago. So these gladiators that we'd be about to go and watch today,

what's their journey to this arena? Say they come from Britain, say they've come from Ireland, Scotland, parts outside the empire, they've been traded in. How are they getting here? Well, first of all, what a journey. I mean, you're talking about three months' worth of journey to get here.

We often forget just how vast the Roman world was and the lengths people traversed to actually get to Rome. First of all, I think, what a culture shock to come from the huts and towns of britannia and then see rome i always loved that line in gladio when he said i didn't think men could build such things i think that's so true when you look at the architecture rome was alien to most people but the roman empire was filled with agents with talent scouts who were looking for these people they're going to the slave markets they're

going to the to the mines they're really to the mines, they're really searching out these gladiators because they had a necessity for them. That gladiator then is sold to school and so your agent will come out and he'll bring the head of the gladiator school a series of possible candidates. There's an inspection, a medical if you will, and then they'll buy the gladiator. The gladiator then has to swear an oath. Oaths are very common things in antiquity. You swear to the gods, to the Roman state, that you promise to maintain the rules of the ludus. Because effectively, just like in the army, you're being trained.

Your freedom is nulled. And then from then, you're given some very grueling training which would last about two years that's about amount of time it'll take to make a gladiator so they've arrived in rome they're in a training school yeah in the ludus where we've been ourselves so the ludus magnus has various schools but i think of them as clubs or teams i mean they had their factions they had their fans so you had the fans of the ludus dacius you had the fans of the ludus magnus they would often have a rivalry between them they'll'll meet up. But that's also part of the games. You know, how exciting, last time our guy lost, can't wait for the rematch. Oh, I bet this

time he's going to get him, you know. And they become celebrities. They were celebrities. I mean, really, after the Emperor, they're not just the most desired men sexually of the Empire, but they're also the most loved and adored and after the Emperor who could command a crowd of 80,000 people to cheer your name and that's why you get emperors who want to be gladiators I mean what does that say that the most powerful wealthy pampered and lavish lifestyle person in the world wants to be the gladiator that doesn't make sense if he's the poor slave was thrown the arena to die if the gladiator was just a nobody that was thrown into the arena you wouldn't have the wealthiest man in the world wanting to be him but he does want to be in the same way that you get people

who are politicians or celebrities who wish they were sports stars it's not that different so that emperor being communist for example used to fight in the arena caligula, Hadrian, yeah they fought in the arena they displayed themselves because they want to be... I feel bad for Commodus because one he's very young when he becomes emperor but more than that you can just kind of feel that he was born into royalty he's a bit Prince Harry in a way he didn't really want to be part of it and he kind of does everything to be the opposite he wants to be a sports star he wants to be a gladiator but but he can't, he's the emperor of Rome. And yet he'd rather be a gladiator than head of 60 million people. And yet some of these gladiators who are celebrities and fashion icons, sex

symbols, they're still owned by somebody else. I always find it a little disconcerting. Where the freedman, slave, prisoners of war. When you were in the Ludus, whatever you were outside was irrelevant. You became the raw recruit, and it is your duty to listen to the doctore, the trainer, and be forged into a gladiator. There's an investment being made in you that has to be recouped. If they fight their way to the end of their career, can they get manumission? Can they become free?

Indeed, yes. In fact, as a slave, what would be more motivation than to win your freedom? So you could win your freedom. So that was an incentive to get them to going. As a freedman, well, yes, there's the money. But then once your career was over, you had various options. You could become a gladiator

trainer. You could retire to the provinces. I always think it's funny when you see footballers go to sort of lower leagues, right? Gladiators do the same thing. So, you know, you're known in Rome. You're the winner of the FA Cup final of, you know, 82 AD. You've still got a name for yourself. You can go to the lower provinces. You can go to the North Africa circuit where they know you.

So you're a bit past your prime, but people are still excited because you're the Ronaldo of the Coliseum. How do we know the names of these gladiators? Do you come across them in writing? Are their names preserved in stone, carved into a building somewhere? It's a great question. Various ways. The sources mention them, like Verus and Priscus.

He's mentioned in the poem of Marshall. They are the gladiators that battle for the opening of the Colosseum. But actually what helps us a lot is epigraphic evidence. Tombstones, inscriptions. So we learn a lot about them. And of course one of the biggest treasure troves of information is Pompeii I mean Pompeii it's such a hard site because there's such a tragedy to the situation that led

to the destruction and the death of so many people but at the same time it's been a blessing for us because all we know about the Roman world and the Mount we know about gladiators comes from Pompeii the walls literally tell stories and they tell us that gladiators don't die this whole know about gladiators comes from Pompeii. The walls literally tell stories and they tell us that gladiators don't die. This whole thing about gladiators not dying isn't a theory. The walls of Pompeii will tell you that in 36 fights six people lost their lives and more than likely that came about through injury. So it's not a bloodbath? It's not a bloodbath, no, and it wouldn't be entertaining as a bloodbath. Romans saw enough blood and guts and gore to last them a lifetime. It was pageantry. It was skill. Even though death loomed because

you could die from an injury, and that's true of boxing and wrestling, but someone still does it. What courage there is to watch somebody who knows death is staring over, about to cut the thread at any moment, but they don't care. They laugh at it and they keep going forward. You listen to Dan Snow's history. There's more coming up. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries.

The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, kings and popes who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. 78 AD. Two years from completion, the Colosseum already towers over the surrounding buildings.

But then tragedy strikes. Emperor Vespasian dies, his vision for Rome, and this monumental arena passes to his son Titus. For the first time in the empire's history, the throne is inherited from a father by a biological son. A powerful bond of blood, it was now the next era of the Flavian dynasty. Titus, determined to honour his father's dream to restore Rome's glory, vowed to finish the Colosseum. He promises not just a spectacle, but a triumph of grandeur, a statement heard in every corner of the empire. In 80 AD, he announced 100 days of games to

celebrate the opening of the Colosseum. Thousands of executions, exotic animals, and of course the best gladiators from all over the Roman world. In a city accustomed to just a few days of games, this was more than a festival. It was a declaration of Rome's power, ambition and resilience. A show unlike anything Rome had ever seen. the sun beat down not unlike today and the crowds surged through the streets of Rome they were clutching their shards of pottery with their numbers on them these are their tickets the biggest event the city had ever seen the opening of the Colosseum. An architectural marvel unlike anything they'd ever seen.

Among the spectators that day was Marshall, the poet, whose writing gives us the most complete account of a gladiator fight that we have. I can imagine his sandals scraping on the cobblestones, the occasional stop to chatter with the people around him, the feeling of anticipation, the excitement, and already thinking about the words that would etch the Coliseum into the annals of history. Inside the vast arena, the vista stretched out before him, rows upon rows of stone seats filled with tens of thousands of spectators, all eyes fixed on the sand below. It was here that Titus, Rome's new emperor, decided to inaugurate the Colosseum with the ultimate spectacle, a fight between the two most celebrated gladiators of the

age. Marshal would have taken his seat, perhaps with a scroll tucked under his arm. A stelus at the ready. Statues of gods stood proudly in the arches, their stony eyes gazing down as if they too rega for the spectacle to begin. The emperor took his seat in the imperial box, his face a mask of controlled excitement, knowing that this day, this event, well, it could well define his reign. The day had already been filled with brutal contests, animals fighting each other, bloodthirsty hunts through fake forests, executions of criminals and men fighting beasts.

One Roman historian recorded that 5,000 animals were killed during the 100-day festival. It's believed that Colosseum employees sprayed perfumes to try and mask the smell of blood. But the big event was the gladiator match in the afternoon, and on this day it was between two of Rome's most famous fighters, Priscus and Verus. As the sun began to sink towards the horizon, the crowd hushed as they entered the arena. Even from his seat up in the stands, Marshall would have seen their muscles taut beneath their armour, their faces set with grim determination. Men who knew this fight could be the performance of their lives.

There could only be one winner. The two men took their places, weapons at the ready. They circle each other like predators. Blow after blow they strike, the fight dragged on, the sun dipping low, and neither man showed any willingness to surrender.

They fought like men proud of skill they'd honed over years of training and to maintain their record of victories. Exhaustion set in, their movements slowed. They struggled to keep their weapons up, but their determination didn't waver. Every eye in the arena was now fixed on Titus. The emperor, known for pragmatism and relative benevolence, rose from his seat. The Colosseum fell silent. He would make a decision.

One that would define the day and help shape the legacy of the Colosseum itself. The crowd waited in anticipation. The two gladiators stood before the emperor, sweating, exhausted. Then, in a gesture that could well have shocked the entire arena, Titus stood up, looked at both men, and proclaimed that today there would be two winners. It was an unprecedented decision. And not only that, he ordered that they should both be given the wooden sword, the rudis, a symbol that gladiators had been released from the blood-soaked sands of the arena. Titus had given them both their freedom.

Marshall captured this moment as the crowd's cheers would have echoed through the vast amphitheatre. The poet immortalised the day the Coliseum opened with not one, but two champions, and the Emperor's name forever linked to an act of grace that no one had expected. It's late afternoon here in Rome. The sun is setting on the Colosseum and I love standing here on the north east side of the coliseum because the sun's beams slice through the arches it looks like the sun is coming from within the building this is what it would have looked like to those spectators who were attending the games here at this time of day 2 000 years ago perhaps they'd have been leaving the coliseum they'd have

a day 2,000 years ago. Perhaps they'd have been leaving the Colosseum, they'd have spent the day watching the games put on by some emperor. Spectacular gladiatorial contests that cemented the reputation of the Colosseum as the greatest amphitheatre in the empire but also shored up imperial power and prestige with the all-important populace of the capital. You can imagine people leaving here after an event like that with much the same feeling as when we leave a football match today or a gig that we've loved. A sense of elation, a sense of belonging and pride. The very real sense that you're just a small part of something much, much bigger.

I bet they've never been so proud or so conscious of being a Roman citizen. It's all part of a confidence trick by the Roman emperors. Keep the masses happy because if the masses were happy then they were less likely to revolt against the fact that they've got very little wealth and the very small majority of people at the top of the Roman society have got a lot of wealth and it's what we call today bread and circuses. Well the opening ceremony really set the bar high and Titus and eventually his brother and his successor Domitian knew they had to keep upping the ante to keep the excitement growing, to keep the sensation real. The Colosseum had become the setting for the greatest show on earth.

Join me for the next episode as I go behind the scenes and discover how the Romans pulled off spectacles that would astonish us even today. From elevators and pulley systems that changed the arena from a lush African jungle

to Greek temples and spat out wild animals at a moment's notice to, well, some accounts suggest anyway, to maritime extravaganzas. Gallons of water pumped in, naval battles recreated in front of astonished crowds. If I could see one thing in history, friends, it would be that.

Also, I'm going to head to Glad Age School, see if I'm cut out to go into the ring, and my producer, Marianna follows what it would have been like to attend the games as a fan of mine, naturally a role she's very suited to play you don't want to miss it make sure to follow on your podcast player

to get it on Wednesday see you next time Thank you. you