The archæology of Rome, Part 7

by John Henry Parker

“He made, during the time that he was edile, the greatest work that ever was made by human hands, not for temporary use only, but destined for eternity also[27]. This was a theatre; the scena of it was triple in height. There were three hundred and sixty columns in that building, of which six were brought from Hymettus, not without reproach at the sumptuousness of a citizen. The lowest part of the scena was of marble, the middle part of glass, an unheard-of luxury in that kind of work; the highest part of gilt wood. The columns were at least thirty-eight feet high; the images between the columns were three thousand in number; the cavea itself held eighty thousand people.”

Scena usually means the stage for the actors to perform upon, but how could this be triple, and three storeys high? To what other site in Rome, excepting this great amphitheatre, which held 80,000 people, could all this possibly apply?

This was in the time of Sylla; the site is not mentioned. Dio mentions[28] a great flood in the time of Julius Cæsar, A.U.C. 694 (B.C. 59), extending as far as the great wooden theatre. The clivus Scauri descends from that part of the Cœlian Hill on which the Claudium was afterwards built, to the level of the road or street that leads from the Circus Maximus to the Colosseum. All this was under water at the time of the great flood in 1871.

The name of cavea is said by Lipsius[29] to be applied to the amphitheatre by several classical authors. He cites Ammianus Marcellinus[30], Prudentius[31], and others, as using that name for it; but they probably meant not only the hollow where the seats were placed, but also the hollow space under the arena, with the dens for the wild beasts, to which that name was also applied. Statius[32] uses the word cavea for the cages for lions, with doors round them, the closing of which frightened the lions. Livy mentions iron cages (caveas), but Claudian says that the animals were shut into wooden houses[33]; probably the cages in which they were brought from the vivaria were of iron, but wooden cages (pegmata) were sufficient to place upon the lifts, and send the animals up to the trap-doors[34].

Long before this time wild beasts had been brought into Rome for exhibition, in the year 502 of Rome[35] (B.C. 251). Lucius Cæcilius Metellus, the pro-consul, when he had conquered Sicily from the Carthaginians, brought into Rome 142 elephants taken from them, which he exhibited in the Circus Maximus. The custom of sending culprits to execution by being torn to pieces by wild beasts is very ancient in the East, as the well-known history of Daniel and the lions clearly shews. The invention of circuses and amphitheatres for the exhibition of hunts is attributed to the Athenians by Cassiodorus[36]; but it is generally thought to be a Roman invention, although the name is Greek. Livy[37] records that in the year 568 of Rome (B.C. 217), Marcus Fulvius Nobilior, after the war with the Ætolians, exhibited for the first time “the athletes, and the hunting of lions and panthers.”

In the year 586 of Rome (B.C. 227), Livy[38] also relates that “P. Cornelius Scipio Nasica and P. Lentulus, the Ædiles Curules, exhibited 63 African wild beasts, 40 bears and elephants.” Martial, who was a contemporary of Vespasian and Titus, Domitian and Trajan, has numerous epigrams on the subject of scenes that took place in the Amphitheatre of the Cæsars, by which he obviously means the Colosseum; a large part of his first book, de Spectaculis, relates to such scenes on this spot[39]. On one occasion, he mentions that a representation of Rhodope (a mountain in Thrace), where Orpheus sang, with the rocks and woods, was given upon the stage. It is evident from this, and from many other passages in the classical authors, that the stage, called the Arena, was on the level of the podium, and visible to the people in every part of the great theatre; and not at the bottom of a pit twenty feet deep, where only a small number could have seen it, although some persons maintain this opinion.

We are told by Suetonius again[40] in the life of Julius Cæsar, that—

“these spectacles were exhibited in the Circus Maximus, in the circuit of the Euripus, with races of bigæ, and quadrigæ[41], and horses, with the young nobles for riders or drivers. Hunting of wild beasts for five days, and sham fights, castles being made over the metæ; a stadium or stage was made in the Campus Martius for the athletes, and naval fights in the smaller codeta[42],” (which was in the Trastevere, and probably on the site on which Augustus afterwards made his great Naumachia,) “and in the lake then dug out, biremes, and triremes, and quadriremes[43] of the Tyrian and Ægyptian fleets, in great number, fought together. The whole population of Rome was attracted by those exhibitions, so that the streets and houses were quite empty; and from the pressure of the crowd several persons were crushed to death, including two senators.”

These attractive exhibitions obviously required a building especially prepared and calculated for them, which Augustus proposed to provide, but left for his successors to carry out the plan. It is probable that in the time of Nero the great work was commenced on the site of that of Scaurus[44], and making use of his substructures, was carried on gradually, and eventually completed in this colossal building.

We are told that Nero made a Gymnasium and Naumachia in connection with his great palace, or golden house, and no vestiges of any such buildings have been found[45], unless both were combined in the great building called the Colosseum from its colossal size. The amphitheatre at Capua, being also a very large one, is said to have been called a Colosseum, but on rather doubtful authority. It is, however, certain that the name had nothing to do with the Colossus of Nero. It is evident that Nero made a great reservoir of water on this spot, which was supplied from his aqueduct on the Cœlian[46]. The specus, or channel for this water, remains in the wall of the Claudium, on the northern side, opposite the Palatine; and at the north-east corner of that part of the Cœlian Hill on which the Claudium stood, are remains of a piscina of the time of Nero, obviously intended for the filtering-place before the water went across into the Colosseum. At a short interval only, about a hundred yards to the south of this, is another piscina of the time of Alexander Severus, when the upper storey was added, and the whole building repaired after the great fire. It is quite possible that Nero made a large oval reservoir on this spot, adjoining to his palace, supplied by an aqueduct, similar to the great oval reservoir on the Palatine, near the house of Augustus, excavated in 1872. The Romans were fond of the oval form for a sheet of water; the basin of the fountain of Domitian, also on the Palatine, is oval; and the remains of the fountain of Juturna in the Forum Romanum shew the same form[47]. The long canals for the vessels to float in, which are ten feet deep, about the same width, and the same height above the original pavements, are not so early as the time of Nero; they are of the third century, with many later repairs.