Old Rome: A Handbook to the Ruins of the City and the Campagna

by Robert Burn

The French excavations conducted till the early part of this century, 1810-1814, showed the general character of the chambers and passages under the arena. They consist of one central passage which extends under the arena from end to end in the line of the major axis of the ellipse. Parallel to this there are four narrower rectilineal passages on each side connected with each other by archways and surrounding these are three curved passages following the elliptical curves of the sides of the amphitheatre. The material of which these walls were originally built was great blocks of travertine similar to those in the surrounding construction of the amphitheatre, but they have been patched and propped in many places with tufa stones and brick, and now present a strange miscellaneous mass of masonry. These underground passages are similar to those found under the arena at Pozzuoli and Capua. It would seem that they must have been necessary, in addition to the chambers under the staircases of the building, for keeping wild beasts in large numbers, or for marshalling and arranging the long processions which were sometimes exhibited in the arena, or for other unusual exhibitions requiring more room for preparation than could be otherwise afforded. In the amphitheatre at Verona the passages under the arena seem to have served the purpose of drains, as they are much less extensive than those under the Coliseum, and are apparently connected with the channels which conducted the rain-water from the upper part. The same is the case with those at Pola in Istria, but at Pozzuoli and at Capua the hypogæa are of a similar character to those in the Coliseum, and were evidently used in connection with the exhibitions on the arena.

The excavations of 1810-14 do not seem to have been carried deep enough to show the floor of the hypogæa, and among the principal new objects of antiquarian interest discovered by the recent operations have been some large blocks of travertine sunk in the floor of the passages, and pierced in their centre with large round holes. These holes have evidently been the sockets into which upright posts of some kind were fixed. In some of these sockets a metal lining still remains, and in one of them the remains of a wooden post are said to have been found. Many conjectures as to the purpose of these sockets have been hazarded. They have been imagined to be the points on which revolving doors turned, or the holes into which posts for chaining wild beasts were fixed, or the capstans for the purpose of winding the ropes attached to stage machines. The explanation which appears to me to be the most probable is that they were used for the erection of temporary wooden posts in the same way in which at the present time such movable posts are used in some of the doorways of large houses in Rome, to divide the doorway temporarily into two distinct passages, by attaching a rope to the posts. When long processions had to be marched across the arena it would be necessary, if they were marshalled below, to have the course of the entering processionists and of those returning kept apart by some such device as that of a rope stretched between posts of this kind.

A large wooden framework has been found in the central passage, blackened by long exposure to the water. This seems to have been a contrivance for making an inclined plane on which heavy machines could be dragged up from below.

Another discovery which has been made is that of two cryptoportici, one of which extends towards the Esquiline and the Thermæ of Titus, and the other opens out from under the eastern end of the longer axis of the Coliseum. A few graffiti of interest representing gladiatorial figures, and some fragments of inscriptions relating to restorations of the building, or to the munificence of those who indulged the public with amphitheatrical exhibitions, have also been found.

The mode in which the naval contests mentioned by Dion as having been exhibited in the Coliseum were conducted, cannot be stated with any certainty. They were given by Titus at the dedication of the building and probably before its completion, so that the space now occupied by the hypogæa may then have been filled with water previously to the construction of the dividing walls.

Perhaps no building of ancient Rome is so strikingly characteristic of the builder, and the age in which he lived as the Flavian amphitheatre. Vespasian is described by historians, and represented on coins, and in extant sculptures, as a thick-set, square-shouldered man, with a short neck, small eyes, strongly marked but coarse features wearing an expression of effort. He cared little for the elegancies of life, and was plebeian in his tastes, and regardless of appearances, but set a high value on manliness and obstinate, unflinching endurance.

During his reign the prevalent feeling in the Roman nation was that of a worn-out and repentant prodigal. Sick of the frivolity and wanton debauchery of the Neronian age, yet unable to return to the ascetic simplicity of primitive times, men adored, for want of a better idol, the blunt honesty and coarse strength of the Flavians. What if their emperor wished that his courtiers should smell of garlic rather than of perfumery, if in his contempt for speculative genius he dubbed the agitating philosophers of his day “barking curs.”[72] Yet he stood before them as a proof that the stern old vigour of the national character was not yet extinct, and that the profligate effeminacy of the previous generation had not yet rotted the Roman character to its core. The same massive power of endurance, yet ponderous and vulgar character, belongs to the architecture of the Coliseum. It exhibits a neglect, almost a contempt for elegance of proportion. The upper tiers are as heavy and solid as the lower. Its arcades are massive, practical, built to last for ages; the full, elaborate details of the Ionic and Corinthian orders, in which an artistic eye usually finds so much pleasure, are merely hinted at as superfluous.

Doubtless as we now see it, the ruin is far more effective than the complete building can ever have been. For when complete the appearance of the Coliseum must have been heavy and oppressive. The enormous unrelieved, flat surface of the upper wall must have seemed ready to topple over or to crush the arcade below. But now that earthquakes and barbarous hands have made such ghastly rents in its sides, the outline has become more varied, and the base more proportioned to the superstructure, so that although we can still recognise the flavour of a somewhat vulgar and material age, yet all that would have offended the eye has been removed, and the historical memories which cluster around its walls, of mighty emperors and blood-thirsty mobs, of screams of death or triumph, of gorgeous pageants and heroic martyrdoms, combine to render the Coliseum in its decay the most imposing ruin in the whole world.

Two architectural merits have been pointed out in the Coliseum, the impression of height and size conveyed by the tiers of arches rising one above another, and the graceful curves produced by the continuous lines of the entablatures as they cross the building. But what the Roman emperor under whose auspices this great building was raised would doubtless have valued more than any elegancies of design which could have been pointed out to him, is the perfect adaptation of the structure to its purposes. After the great catastrophe at Fidenæ where 20,000 persons were injured or killed by the breaking down of a wooden amphitheatre, solidity and safety were the principal requisites. Free ingress and egress for crowds of spectators, as well as for any great personages who might attend, was indispensable. A glance at the plan of the Coliseum will show how admirably each of these objects was attained. The extraordinary solidity of the building removed all possibility of the failure of any part to bear whatever weight might be heaped upon it, and the entrances, galleries and vomitoria were by the oval form of the building rendered so numerous that each seat in the whole cavea was accessible at once and without difficulty. A system of carefully arranged barriers in the passages would effectually prevent confusion and excessive crowding.

In endeavouring to adorn the great amphitheatre of the metropolis more richly than those of the provinces its architect defeated his own object. Some of the provincial amphitheatres, as that of Capua, though in other respects like the Coliseum, show a simpler and therefore more natural exterior. When the Doric order is retained in all the tiers, it harmonises far better with the rude strength of such an edifice than the Corinthian and Ionic orders of the Coliseum. At Verona and Pola a still further improvement is made by the rustication of the exterior. At Nismes, on the other hand, the faults of the Coliseum are aggravated by breaking the entablatures, and introducing pediments over each front; and in the small Amphitheatrum Castrense at Rome, where the Corinthian order is executed in brick, a lamentable illustration of Roman want of taste is exhibited.