The archæology of Rome, Part 7

by John Henry Parker

The great mass of the building under the corridors is of tufa, and was probably taken from that part of the second wall of Rome which passed under the south end of the Palatine close at hand; each block of tufa, being of large size and a ton in weight, was likely to be brought from the nearest point. It has been mentioned that there are piers of travertine at short intervals, as if the builders were afraid to trust the soft tufa to carry so great a weight[102]. These piers go right through the walls from top to bottom, to carry the weight of the upper gallery when full of people; tufa is too soft a material to be trusted for this purpose, and the brick facing did not add materially to the strength. It is faced with cut stone (travertine) on the exterior, and with brick on the interior. The work, as said before, was evidently carried on for a long time. Three periods may be perceived[103] in the stonework, with apparently an interval of some years between them. The upper storey is of a later date, of the time of Alexander Severus and Gordianus, and was evidently completed in great haste, of materials previously prepared, (as may be distinctly seen in the interior); this upper wall is built also in the most slovenly manner, with portions of cornices and of columns, or fragments of old tombs, built into it as mere pieces of stone[104]. On the interior of this wall large corbels remain distinctly visible, which could only be for the floor of the wooden gallery.

In the lower series of seats the vaults under them are not original, except those on the ground-floor; and in the corridors the large corbels for wooden floors and galleries still project from the face of the wall very distinctly[105]. The mixture of stone and brick in the construction is curious, and in several parts indicates the great repairs in the fifth and sixth centuries recorded by inscriptions found during the excavations.

There is a series of arches on the first floor within, some of them begun, and some completed, in stone, but the greater part have springing stones only upon the stone jambs, the arches afterwards being completed in brick, and brick vaults introduced in place of the original wooden floors and galleries; above, nearly all is brick, except the corridors and the outer facing. The construction of this part is very good throughout; the stones are in large oblong blocks, closely fitted together, originally held with iron clamps, fragments of which remain, as may be seen or felt in the interior of the building in apertures of the wall: the holes where other iron clamps have been, are left all over the face of the building, and in the corridors, always at the edges of the stones, where in rusting they have split the stone and fallen out. They were of this form

[106]. On the west side, where the outer wall is gone, the inner wall (now external) shews distinctly the flat pilasters of stone carried up nearly to the top, but left unfinished, and continued with brick afterwards.

Nothing is known with certainty of the architect of the work; an inscription found in the Catacomb of S. Agnes, in memory of Gaudentius, has given rise to the legend that he was the architect[107], and that he afterwards suffered as a martyr within its walls. Twelve thousand Jewish slaves are said to have been employed upon it during five years, and ten million Roman scudi expended upon it in the same time.

The fine tomb of one of the family of the Aterii found at Cento Celle, and now preserved in the Lateran Museum, is covered with panels of sculpture of numerous buildings packed closely together, of which there is reason to believe some are only designs, and were never executed. This makes it probable that it was the tomb of an architect, and one of the sculptures represents the Summa Sacra Via as he thought it ought to have been. One building is a triumphal arch, with a colossal figure under it, and an inscription on the cornice—ARCVS IN SACRA VIA SVMMA; another triumphal arch has the inscription ARCVS AD ISIS. Between these two is seen the Colosseum looking down upon it, represented as of two storeys only, and not quite the same as the existing building, but the figures under the arches are shewn as on the coin. Another sculpture on the same tomb represents the machine for raising large stones to the top of a high wall or building, described in Part III. of this work (Construction, p. 91). From the circumstance of this machine being represented upon the tomb, it seems most probable that the person here interred was the inventor, or had made some improvement in it, and that it was especially intended for the Colosseum, for which it certainly would have been very useful. The date of the tomb is of the first century[108]. Such a machine is mentioned by Vitruvius, and similar machines are still in use in some parts of Switzerland.

The numerous walls that intersect the space under the stage shew clearly that there could be no area in this theatre, that there is no open space excepting on the stage itself, and this was the boarded floor, called the arena, from the sand with which it was covered. The latter is quite a different thing from an area, and yet almost all the modern writers on the antiquities of Rome fall into this mistake. The passage cited in a previous page from Dio Cassius, who describes what he saw, is quite decisive that the arena was a boarded floor covered with sand.

A great number of large marble columns and capitals of the Composite order, rudely worked, as if on purpose to be seen from a great distance only, have rolled down from the edge of the upper gallery to the arena below, probably in an earthquake. They must have fallen before the substructures were filled up with earth, as many of them were found at the bottom on the old pavement, which they had damaged by falling upon it, and some have made holes through great walls, and were found lying with half the column on the inner side of the wall, and the other half on the outer one. Probably the cords for the awning were caught on the entablature of this colonnade as they passed, the length from top to bottom being too great to keep them tight. There must have been at least a hundred of these columns; possibly there were two colonnades, the second on the edge of one of the lower galleries, but they are work of the third century, not earlier, and as the upper gallery was added at that time, they must have belonged to that period.