The site was a drained lake in the gardens of Nero. His colossal statue used to stand upon the little pile of earth on the other side of the street. Twelve thousand captive Jews were overworked to their death in building the mighty monument to the destroyer of Jerusalem. After describing the dedicatory pageant and its items of battles between cranes and pigmies, and of gladiators with women, and a sea-fight for which the arena was converted into a mimic lake, the historian adds: “When all was over, Titus himself was seen to weep, perhaps from fatigue, possibly from vexation and disgust.”
If the last-named emotions had any share in the reactionary hysteria characterized as “effeminate” by his best friends, his successors did not profit by the lesson. Hadrian slaughtered, on a birth-day frolic in the Coliseum, one thousand wild beasts, not to mention less valuable human beings. The prudent Augustus forbade the entrance of the noble classes into the arena as combatants, and to avoid a hustle of death, decreed that not more than sixty pairs of gladiators should be engaged at one time in the fashionable butchery. Commodus had no such scruples on the subject of caste or humanity. His imperial form bound about with a lion’s skin, his locks bedusted with gold, he fought repeatedly upon the bloody sands, killing his man—he being both emperor and beast—in every encounter. Ignatius—reputed to have been one of the children blessed by Our Lord—uttered here his last confession of faith:
“I am as the grain of the field, and must be ground by the teeth of the lions, that I may become bread fit for His table.”
The Christians sought the deserted Coliseum by stealth, that night, to gather the few bones the lions had left. Some of these, his friends, may have been among the one hundred and fifteen “obstinates” drawn up upon the earth scarcely dried from the blood of Ignatius, a line of steady targets for the arrows of skilled bowmen—a kind of archery practice in high favor with Roman clubs just then.
The life-blood that followed the arrow-thrust was a safe and rapid stream to float the soul into harbor. One hour of heaven were worth all the smiting, and thrusting, and tearing, and theirs have been centuries of bliss. But our hearts ached with pain and sympathy inexpressible in the Coliseum, on that Christmas-Day. There is poetic beauty and profound spiritual significance in the churchly fable that Gregory the Great pressed fresh blood from a handful of earth taken from the floor of the amphitheatre.
“While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand;
When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall—
And when Rome falls—the world!”
Thus runs the ancient prophecy.
Plundering cardinals and thrifty popes had never heard the saying, or were strangely indifferent to the fate of their empire and globe for four hundred years of spoliation and desecration. Cardinal Farnese built his palace out of the marble casings. It is amazing even to those who have inspected the massive walls cemented by mortar as hard as the stones it binds together, that the four thousand men appointed to tear down and bear off in twelve hours the materials needed for the Farnese palace, did not demolish or impair the solidity of the whole structure. After abortive attempts on the part of sundry popes to utilize the building by turning the corridors into bazaars and establishing manufactories of woolen goods and saltpetre in the central space, the place was left to quiet decay and religious rites. Clement XI. consecrated it to the memory of the faithful disciples who perished there “for Christ’s sake.” Stations were appointed in the arcades, the black cross was set up and indulgences granted to all believers who would say a prayer at its foot for the rest of the martyrs’ souls. Masses were said every Friday afternoon, each station visited in turn with chant and prayer, and then a sermon preached by a Capuchin friar. Vines thickened and trees shot upward from tier and battlement, night-birds hooted in the upper shades, thieves and lazzaroni prowled below. Dirt and miasma marked the sacred precincts for their own. We can but be grateful that the march of improvement, begun when the Italian troops entered Rome in 1870 through the breach near the Porta Pia, has reached the Coliseum, cleansing and strengthening, although not beautifying it.