Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Colosseum

Episode Date: July 18, 2022

In the year 70, the Roman Emperor Vespasian commissioned what would become the world’s largest amphitheater.  Approximately ten years later, it opened to great fanfare and 100 days of games.  No greater amphitheater has ever been built in the nearly 2000 years since its construction. Learn more about the Flavian Amphitheater, aka the Colosseum, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Darcy Adams Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Thor Thomsen   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Search Past Episodes at fathom.fm Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/ Everything Everywhere is an Airwave Media podcast." or "Everything Everywhere is part of the Airwave Media podcast network Please contact [e-mail] to advertise on Everything Everywhere. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the year 70, the Roman Emperor Vespasian commissioned what would become the world's largest amphitheater. Approximately 10 years later, it opened a great fanfare and 100 days of games. No greater amphitheater has ever been built in the nearly 2,000 years since its construction. Learn more about the Flavian Ampitheater, aka the Coliseum, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? throughline is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night.

And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the Thuline podcast from NPR. Before I go into how and why the Flavian amphitheater was built, I should probably explain what an amphitheater is. In the Greek world, a theater was a semi-circular venue with tiered seating, with all of the seats facing a central stage at the bottom. The Romans, as they did with many things, stole the idea from the Greeks. Theaters were where music, dancing, and dramatic performances took place. There are many well-preserved Roman and Greek theaters around the Mediterranean, and many of them are still actually used as theaters today. Amphitheater comes from the Greek

word amphi, which means on both sides or to surround, and theater. So if a theater is a semicircle, then an amphitheater would be a complete circle. An amphitheater served a totally different purpose than a theater. For starters, it was mostly a Roman innovation, not a Greek one, despite the Greek name. Empatheters were used for games in gladiatorial contests. They were the predecessors of modern-day sports arenas. So, with that, the story of the Colosseum really begins during the reign of Emperor Nero. Nero had nothing to do with the construction or planning of the Coliseum, but he did build the thing that came before it. The Domus Aria. If you remember back to the episode I did on the Domus Aria, it was a fantastically

large palace that Nero built for himself in the middle of Rome. After the great fire of Rome, Nero used the opportunity to raise a huge swath of land in the city to build his palace. Part of this palace was an enormous artificial lake, and standing alongside the lake was an enormous statue of Nero, known as the Colossus of Nero. When Nero died, the land where the Domus aria was located was simply too valuable to remain a palace, so it was torn down. The Colossus was kept, but the head was changed, so it was now a statue of the Roman sun god, Saul, and it became known as the Colossus Solus. The new emperor Vespasian decided to use this land to create a massive amphitheater that could

be used by everyone in Rome. This was totally a public relations maneuver by Vespasian to curry favor with the Roman people, after so much money and land was used on a building for a single person. This amphitheater was to be the largest in the world by a wide margin. Also, unlike most other amphitheaters, which were built on the outskirts of cities, this was to be built right in the center of Rome. A project like this would require a lot of money, and there wasn't a whole lot of money left over from Nero's spending. However, in the year 70, Rome had just finished the siege of Jerusalem, where they sacked and looted the Jewish temple. It was loot taken from Jerusalem, and in particular the Jewish temple, which paid for the Coliseum.

In fact, an inscription found at the Coliseum says, The Emperor Vespasian ordered this new amphitheater to be erected from his general share of the booty, end quote. It isn't known exactly when construction on the Coliseum began, but it's believed to have started between 70 and 72. Building a structure of this size was an enormous undertaking. Even building something like this today would require enormous investment, and that would be with machinery. the Romans had to do everything by hand. It's believed that it required somewhere between 60,000 to 100,000 workers to build the Coliseum. Given the conditions at the time, many, if not most of these workers would have been slaves.

However, there would also have been skilled craftsmen involved with the construction as well. One long-standing theory was that Jewish slaves captured during the sack of Jerusalem were used in the construction. And this might have happened, and it would have been consistent with Roman norms at the time, but there's no direct evidence to support it. The Coliseum is elliptical in shape. The exterior is 189 meters or 615 feet long by 156 meters or 510 feet wide. The interior arena is 83 meters or 272 feet long by 48 meters or 157 feet wide. There are roughly four different seating tiers.

The tier closest to the arena was reserved for senators, with a box on the north end reserved for the emperor and a box on the south end reserved for the Vestal Virgins. The next tier was reserved for the equities, which were the Roman equivalent of knights, and they were a rank below senators. Above that were two sections for Publibians. The closer tier was for more wealthy Publiens, and the upper tier was for the poor, and for women. On the top ring above the Coliseum were 240 wooden corbels which extended into the Coliseum. These are long gone, but you can still see the holes where they were once installed. These wooden poles had cloth attached to them which could be extended to serve as a sunshade when it was hot out.

The arena floor was also unlike anything which had been built before. The floor was made out of wood, and it was covered with sand. In fact, the English word arena comes from the Latin word herena, which means sand. Underneath the arena floor was a network of tunnels known as the Hypogeum. This was not part of the original design and was added by the Emperor Domitian a few years after it opened. The hypogeum was how the gladiators and animals came to the arena floor. There were smaller openings for people and smaller animals, and a large sloped opening where even elephants could come to the floor. These tunnels connected to the gladiator barracks

and pens for animals outside of the Coliseum. Supposedly, the arena could also be flooded such that mock naval battles could be held there as well. The total seating capacity of the Coliseum was somewhere between 50 to 87,000, depending on which estimates and sources used. use. There were 80 entrances to the Coliseum, 76 of which were used by the general public. Of the remaining four, one was exclusively used by the emperor, and the others were used by senators and other elites. These entrances were known as vomitoria. Many people have confused the meaning of the Roman vomitoria thinking that the Romans would vomit after their meals. This is false. Vomitoria comes from the Latin word to expel quickly. Hence, the exits were vomiting people out.

Vespasian didn't live long enough to see his construction finalized. It was his son and successor, the Emperor Titus, which opened the Coliseum in the year 80. As Titus and Vespasian were part of the Flavian dynasty, it is also known as the Flavian amphitheater. There were 100 consecutive days of games held to celebrate the opening of the Coliseum. The Coliseum was actively used for about 400 years. There were fires and earthquakes which damaged the Coliseum over time and repairs at were made periodically during this period. The last gladitorial fights took place in the year 425, and the last games that included in animals were known to have occurred in 525. It's been estimated

that as many as 400,000 people might have been killed inside the Coliseum throughout its history, including gladiatorial games, criminal executions, and Christian persecutions. With the fall of the Western Empire and the dramatically reduced significance of Rome as a city, this enormous thing was still sitting in the middle of Rome, even though it was no longer used for public events. A church was built inside the Coliseum, and the area under the seats was converted into homes and shops, and the interior was converted into a cemetery. In the 12th century, the Roman Franjapani clan took over ownership of the Coliseum and may have converted it into a fortress. In 1349, a large earthquake hit Rome and toppled half of the exterior wall. This is why

half of the exterior looks like it's missing today, and why it looks like there's a diagonal rip across it. One of the reasons why it fell in the earthquake was because the iron supports that attached many of the stones together had been removed over the years. It was about this time that we have the first evidence of it being referred to as the Colosseum. In the 12th century, it was known as the amphitheater of the Colossi, referring to the Colossus of Nero. The term Coliseum appeared about the year 1600. Another thing that began happening in the Middle Ages was the use of the Coliseum as a quarry. It was an easy source of Travertine limestone which made up most of the structure. People who needed stone found it more convenient to just take some from the Coliseum than to

buy it or quarry it themselves. This is why so much of the interior seating is missing and why all of the marble which clad the exterior is gone. In the 15th century, much of the stone which fell was taken to be used in other construction projects, including St. John's Lateran and the walls of the Vatican. In 1749, Pope Benedict XIV, recognizing the significance as a sacred Christian site, forbade the use of the Coliseum as a stone quarry. The Coliseum remains a place of significance for the Catholic Church today. Every Good Friday, the Pope traditionally leads the stations of the cross around the Coliseum. However, it should be noted that there is really no direct evidence of any Christian executions inside the Coliseum. There's ample evidence of Christians being

killed in Rome, but nothing pointing to the Coliseum being the place where it happened. That being said, there were so many executions that took place at the Coliseum, it would be surprising if no Christian executions didn't take place there. For the last 200 years, efforts have been made to preserve what remains of the Coliseum. Several times during the 19th and early 20th centuries, efforts were taken to support the remaining exterior wall facade. Several major restorations were taken in the last 30 years. One project went from 19th, 1993 to 2000, and another cleaning project went from 2013 to 2016. This later project was the first time the exterior of the Coliseum was cleaned in history.

As of today, only about a third of the original structure, both internal and external, is still there. Future plans, at least as of the time I am recording this, are for a new retractable wooden floor to be installed in the arena, and this would give visitors a feel for what the original Coliseum was like. Today the Coliseum is one of the top tourist attractions in Rome, and one of the most iconic ancient structures in the world. In 2019, the last full year of tourism before the pandemic, the Coliseum had 7.6 million visitors. And, yes, you can rent a Vespas scooter and drive around it, just like Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck did it in Roman Holiday. The ruins of the hypogeum have been open to the public since 2010, and there are now also nighttime tours of the Coliseum which are available. In 2007, the Coliseum was named one of the new Seven Wonders of the World.

If you haven't been to Rome or the Coliseum, it is an incredible experience. There are a few things in this world that are that old and that big, and that played such a central role in history. Everything Everywhere Daily is an Airwave Media podcast. The executive producer is Darcy Adams. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. I just wanted to extend a big thank you to everyone who is supporting the show over at patreon.com. I have show merchandise available there, including hoodies, t-shirts, and stickers.

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