This document was written when I was in middle school. I have little or no authority on this topic. Make of this what you will.
You’re in a mass of animals rushing to get in. You hear thousands of beasts grunting about the battle today. You look up and are in awe with the things that humans can construct. You walk up the many flights of steps and come out into your seating area. It’s going to be packed today. The bloodthirsty crowd keeps coming in like water poured in a glass. The large Velarium shadows you from the searing sun. You see the pompa coming in and cheer along with the crowd. The gladiators raise their swords and recite “Morituri te salutamus!” The fight today consists of two retiarii and two samnites against two veteran myrmillos. It starts. The retiarii set up flanking the myrmillos and the saminites prowl around the veterans. The retiarii throw their nets at their “enemies”. One of the nets misses its target but the other one hits right on. The tangled gladiator thrashes around in his net. The thrower goes to him and stabs the prey with a trident in the heart. You hear a cranking of metal and a trap door is opened releasing a tiger. The animal instantly jumps on the last retiariurs, mauling his throat out. One of the samnites slashes the back of the exotic animal, enraging it. The beast turns around slashing at the warrior, ripping open the human’s stomach. The myrmillo screams as his sword skewers the tiger’s head. Then he turns at the only other gladiator left with rage in his eyes. You can feel the electricity of the crowd’s excitement over crimson stained sand surging through the air. The samnite throws down his weapon and shield and sticks his finger up. The myrmillo walks over to him and waits for Domitian to decide whether to have mercy or not. You jump up to scream “Mitte!” and thrust your arm up with your thumb down. The crowd does this with you and Domitian spares the samnite. This is the Colloseum.
The Colloseum, how was it built? How was it used? You wonder about this when you leave the arena after the battles. You go to the library and find out. You read all of the information and decide to figure out which ones are better and which ones are worse.
The Colloseum’s construction began in 72 AD under Emperor Vespasian. It was constructed in Nero’s playground. Before Vespasian, Nero had been the Emperor and he had built a country villa in the middle of Rome for himself called the Golden House. The timing of his villa couldn’t have been more convenient for him because a huge fire had just struck Rome burning down many structures. You pause to wonder if Nero started the fire to make the Golden House. You nod your head and think that he did. This palace he built was the most extensive one built by any Roman emperor. In the palace was an enormous lake with buildings surrounding it. Those buildings were intended to look like cities. There was a garden like a miniature park with wild and tame animals that roamed free. The dining rooms were roofed with ivory panels and when they were moved back they released a rain of scent or petals from roses. In the entrance to the palace stood a statue of Nero 120 feet high and is one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. When Nero committed suicide, Vespasian took rule and took on the task of building a proper amphitheatre for Rome.
The amphitheatre was to be built on Nero’s precious lake in his palace. This was symbolic to the hatred of Nero’s rule. The statue in the entrance to the Golden House was to remain and was to be remodeled into the sun god Helios by adding a crown of rays to the top of its head. This statue gave the later name of The Colloseum to the Flavian Amphitheatre because of its size.
The first step to build this masterpiece was to drain Nero’s lake. The next step was to prepare the ground and lay the foundation. The foundation had to be perfectly level in order to support the massive weight of the Colloseum. The Colloseum had to have a very strong foundation because it wasn’t going to be in the earth like the Pompeian amphitheatre, but totally freestanding. The material used to construct the Colloseum was concrete. The method for building the base was to lay down a layer of the mortar and press in a layer of gravel. This continued until it was 40 feet deep and 170 feet wide.
The first layer to the Colloseum was underground to hide it from the spectators. It was made up of complex chambers. When the Colloseum was finished this area was used to release the animals and gladiators into the arena. There were many cages consisting of lions, bears, tigers, elephants, and other exotic beasts. There were also elevators to transport them to the arena’s floor. The above ground layers were made of travertine piers and tufa walls. Travertine is a kind of limestone that is very strong and attractive, having a fine creamy white texture. Tufa is a stone formed of compressed volcanic ash. The entire Colloseum consists of over three and a half million tons of stone.
In 79 A.D. Vespasian died and his rule went to Titus his first son. Titus ruled for twenty-six months. During his short rule he continued the construction and inaugurated the unfinished Colloseum. Then rule passed to his brother, Domitian. He continued construction but was a very disliked ruler. He became increasingly insecure and paranoid, murdering and exiling many people in high places. Eventually his wife and other people of authority decided to kill him and they did.
During the reigns of Titus and Domitan the Colloseum was completed. The finished work had four total above ground stories. The first story was 34 feet high, the second 38 feet high, the third 38 feet high, and the last one 45 feet. In the end the total height was 156 feet. The construction ended in 81 A.D. The opening games started under Titus and lasted 100 days. The Colloseum was unfinished when the opening games happened, but the seats were there and the structure could hold thousands. Many animals were slain, like elephants, lions, panthers, tigers, and many, many more. Some days 5,000 of them were killed. I think that Animal Rights activists wouldn?t have liked the Colloseum. There were thousands of fighters and criminals killed too. Titus sometimes flooded the amphitheatre and had large naval battles. This was an excellent time for this festival because Rome had just suffered another great fire. During the games a gigantic awning was raised to protect the crowd from the sun. This awning was called the Velarium.
The types of gladiators were the Samnite, Thracian, Myrmillo, Retiarius, Equites, and Abate. The Samnite carried a sword and a shield like one that Roman legionaries had. They also had an armored right arm and left leg. The Thracian had a short curved sword and a small round shield. Myrmillos had a breastplate, metal rings guarding his sword arm, a heavy shield in their right, and a sword in their left. Retiarius had a net to throw, a trident, and a dagger. Equites rode horses and Abates grappled blindfolded.
Before the entertainment started at the arena bread was thrown out to the “mob”.1 The mob were the people who weren’t rich and the rich were scared if they didn’t have food they would riot or rebel because many of them were poor and hungry. Just leaving them like that combined with the electricity of the fights would be like throwing a match on gasoline. This was happening during the pompa, which was something like the modern day parade of athletes. They usually had jugglers, acrobats, and others. They kept to the time made by the musicians playing trumpets, flutes, drums, and some times a large hydraulic organ. Some people today think that the organ was played during the fighting like background music in movies. At the climax of the pompa the performers left and the gladiators raised their swords and recited, “Morituri te salutamus!” or “We who are about to die salute you!” Then they started the fighting. The fights were savage and the crowd, like modern day boxing, yelled out as the fight commenced. The shouted phrases were: “Verbra!”, “Habet!”, “Hoc habet!”, and “Ure!”. Those mean respectively: “Strike!”, “A hit!”, “Now he’s done for!”, and “Burn him up!”.
The fights had many outcomes. If the gladiators fought well and neither of them died it would be called a draw. When one gladiator went down he had the option of raising a finger to appeal for mercy. Then the emperor had to decide by using the crowd’s majority. Having the thumb down or waving a handkerchief and saying “Mitte!” (“Spare him!”) meant for mercy. Having the thumb to their heart or putting it up saying “Lugula!” (“Cut his throat!”) meant for death. Another outcome was that the combatants killed another combatant outright. The last outcome was that if one of the fighters played dead. Not many were able to do this outcome because men dressed like the Etruscan demon Charun came out with red-hot irons and applied them to the fallen bodies. Fakers that were exposed this way instantly had their throat cut. Young boys then cleaned the bloodstains from the sand and men dressed as the god Mercury, the transporter of the dead, came out and whisked away the corpses.
There were other events that happened in the Colloseum such as naval battles, which had the whole Colloseum flooded except for the top seating. Fish were put into the water, such as sharks, for more thrills. There were battles between men and animals in which animals were brought out from the bottom of the arena and fought. Also there were many criminals that were slain and allegedly there were Christians that were slain too but there is no proof to that accusation. These gladiatorial events and other deaths in the arena went on from 80 A.D. to 523 A.D. That’s 433 years of the arena in Rome.
The Roman Colloseum (non-fiction) was 96 pages and gave me much of this information. It had diagrams of the Colloseum and the items used to build it. It also had descriptions of the different gladiators and many excerpts from Roman writings. I thought that the strongest feature of the book was that it had the writing excerpts and had a lot of information into those pages and to make it entertaining.
The Colloseum (non-fiction) was 172 pages long and had basically the same information as The Roman Colloseum. However this book had many pictures and paintings of the Colloseum and pictures of some propaganda that the emperors used to promote it such as minted coins that had pictures of the Colloseum on it. This book didn’t have any descriptions of different gladiators and that was surprising because of its length. But it had detail that the other book didn’t have from which I learned a lot about what happened during the beastly fights. Also in this book was a lot about what happened to the Colloseum after the Roman Empire fell. It was run over with plants and it had been mined by people for rocks. Also it was vandalized a lot for the marble that was on all of the walls.
Devil’s Sea Atlantis (fiction) had about 40 pages worth of gladiatorial fighting and I thought that it was interesting to see how the author wrote about the fights. The fights were accurate to what happened during a game in the Colloseum. This book helped me write about how the arena was used during the Roman Empire. There were also descriptions of the gladiators and some strategies that some of the gladiators used like the retarius throwing their nets at the large, bulky, and weighed down gladiators and then move in for the kill.
The Gladiator was the movie I watched. It was interesting and gave me some of the same information about what happened during a gladiatorial event like the fiction book I read. The pictures of the Colloseum right next to the people in the movie gave me a vision of how big it was compared to people, although I’ve been to the Colloseum and noted the size there. I find it impressive that such an enormous structure could be build nearly 2000 years ago. The movie is accurate in how the battles happened and accurate in how Commodus sometimes fought in the games. However he wasn’t killed by a fight in the arena but was killed by some of his friends because he was going insane. These facts about Commodus came from The Colloseum.
I think that The Colloseum was the most informative source of information I used. The fictional sources were mainly for sources of entertainment. The Roman Colloseum was too shallow in the information it had. For example, “The last stages of the great amphitheatre’s construction occurred in A.D. 81.” The Roman Colloseum comes in second for its helpfulness because the fiction books were mainly sources of entertainment and The Colloseum was much more in detail. Here is an example of the detail: “The last steps to complete the Colloseum were in A.D. 81 under the last months of Titus and the first ones of Domitians. The final constructions were the colonnade and wooden seating in the upper level, and some decorative touches.” The two books had much of the same information, but The Colloseum went deeper than The Roman Colloseum. Devil?s Sea Atlantis comes in third because it described the different gladiators and what they did and gave their names. The Gladiator comes in last because it was a pure source of entertainment and gave no description or names except in the visual sense.
Don Nardo, The Roman Colloseum. San Deigo: Lucent Books, Inc., 1998. 96 Pages.
Peter Quennell, The Colloseum. S. Arthur Dembner, 1971. 172 Pages.
Greg Donegan, Devil’s Sea Atlantis. New York: The Berkley Publishing Group, 2001.
The Gladiator