ROMAN AMPHITHEATER AT NISMES.
Nismes, anciently Nemausis, was formerly a flourishing colony of Romans, established by Augustus Cæsar, after the battle of Actium. Among its splendid monuments of antiquity, the amphitheater, being infinitely better preserved than those of Rome and Verona, is the finest monument of the kind now extant. It was built in the reign of Antonius Pius, who contributed a large sum of money toward its erection. It is of an oval figure, one thousand and eighty feet in circumference, sufficiently capacious to contain twenty thousand spectators. The architecture is of the Tuscan order, sixty feet high, composed of two open galleries, built one over another, consisting each of sixty arcades. The entrance into the arena was by four great gates, with porticos; and the seats, of which there were thirty-two rows, sufficient to contain some twenty-five thousand people, rising one above another, consisted of great blocks of stone, many of which still remain. Over the north gate, appear two bulls, in alto-relievo, extremely well executed, emblems which, according to the usage of the Romans, signified that the amphitheater was erected at the expense of the people. In other parts are heads, busts, and other sculptures in bass-relief.
This magnificent structure stands in the lower part of the city, and strikes the spectator with awe and veneration. The external architecture is almost entire in its whole circuit. It was fortified as a citadel by the Visigoths, in the beginning of the sixth century: they raised within it a castle, two towers of which are still extant, and surrounded it with a broad and deep moat, which was filled up in the thirteenth century. In all the subsequent wars to which the city of Nismes was exposed, it served as the last refuge of the citizens, and sustained a great number of successive attacks; so that its fine preservation is almost miraculous.
Silliman says of this amphitheater, that it gives a very exact idea of the Coliseum at Rome, though it is of course smaller. “It is built,” he adds, “of limestone in immense blocks, laid in courses with perfect regularity and without mortar. Mortise holes in the center of the upper surface of each block show that the Romans employed the same means still in use, to raise and handle large masses of stone. The accuracy of the masonry seems the more remarkable if we consider the elliptical form of the structure, making all the vertical joints converge to the foci of the ellipse. In one place we saw a line of light through a joint of this sort where the wall was at least four feet thick. The passages, of course, all expand outward also, and thus admit of a speedy evacuation of the amphitheater through its sixty vomitoriæ. The dimensions of this ellipse are four hundred and thirty-seven by three hundred and twenty-two feet. By walking deliberately around the structure, these dimensions are more readily realized than by a numerical statement: the circuit is a quarter of a mile. The cornice was decorated with carving and finished with a frieze; except in the portion corresponding to nine or ten arches, the capping and cornice are complete around the entire circuit. In the part where the cornice is deficient, the Saracens, more than eleven hundred years ago, erected two towers, which were destroyed by Charles Martel, and fire applied by him disfigured the amphitheater. As it was all of stone he could not destroy it, but the wood placed in its arches and corridors burned as in a furnace. He wished to destroy the building, which had often been used as a fortress in the numerous wars that followed the downfall of the Roman empire. He succeeded only in blackening it with smoke which remains to this day. The heat, however, caused some portions of the limestone to flake off; but very little progress was made toward the destruction of the amphitheater. The building is national property, and the French government has restored many of the arches, laid anew the pavements, and has taken precautions to guard against further dilapidation. The exterior of the building is, indeed, somewhat corroded by time, but had war and violence been restrained, this noble monument of antiquity would have remained, an architectural wonder to all future ages. Many of the rows of marble seats remain entire, and enable the observer perfectly to understand the whole arrangement. The emperor and his household entered by a lower and special corridor, and the vestal virgins by a corresponding opening on the opposite side. The senators and patricians entered higher up, while the plebeians, entering still higher, occupied the more elevated positions, and the slaves the uppermost of all. The police also had their appointed place.
“Projecting outward from the cornice at regular intervals were stones, pierced with holes six inches or more in diameter, through which passed poles to sustain the awning, the lower ends of the poles being sustained by corbel stones projecting from the wall below. The amphitheater had no other covering but the awning, and this, on occasions of the use of the building for public games, was stretched upon ropes crossing from side to side of the arena. This covering secured the spectators from sun and rain, while it permitted free ventilation. The gladiators entered on one side of the arena and the wild beasts on the other, and probably the same rule prevailed when gladiator was to contend with gladiator. Here man fought his fellow-man, or with the fierce wild beast, to pamper the cruel appetite for blood. Strange feelings of awe and grandeur are excited by seeing the vast space which was so often filled with human beings, and one’s mind runs wild with excitement when he sees in imagination, the lion’s eye glancing at the grating until he was enlarged to spring upon his victim. The weeds and grass now grow among the seats, and green-sward covers the once ensanguined arena. The little lizards leap from stone to stone, and their brief generations are now the sole tenants of these ancient piles.”[piles.”]