Even today, in a world of skyscrapers, the Colosseum is hugely impressive. It stands as a glorious but troubling monument to Roman imperial power and cruelty. Inside it, behind those serried ranks of arches and columns, Romans for centuries cold-bloodedly killed literally thousands of people whom they saw as criminals, as well as professional fighters and animals.
'... the amphitheatre and its associated shows are the quintessential symbols of Roman culture.'
Indeed, it was the amphitheatre's reputation as a sacred spot where Christian martyrs had met their fate that saved the Colosseum from further depredations by Roman popes and aristocrats - anxious to use its once glistening stone for their palaces and churches. The cathedrals of St Peter and St John Lateran, the Palazzo Venezia and the Tiber's river defences, for example, all exploited the Colosseum as a convenient quarry.
As a result of this plunder, and also because of fires and earthquakes, two thirds of the original have been destroyed, so that the present Colosseum is only a shadow of its former self, a noble ruin.
The Colosseum was started in the aftermath of Nero's extravagance and the rebellion by the Jews in Palestine against Roman rule. Nero, after the great fire at Rome in AD 64, had built a huge pleasure palace for himself (the Golden House) right in the centre of the city. In 68, faced with military uprisings, he committed suicide, and the empire was engulfed in civil wars.
The eventual winner Vespasian (emperor 69-79) decided to shore up his shaky regime by building an amphitheatre, or pleasure palace for the people, out of the booty from the Jewish War - on the site of the lake in the gardens of Nero's palace. The Colosseum was a grand political gesture. Suitably for that great city, it was the largest amphitheatre in the Roman world, capable of holding some 50,000 spectators.
Eventually there were well over 250 amphitheatres in the Roman empire - so it is no surprise that the amphitheatre and its associated shows are the quintessential symbols of Roman culture.
The Coliseum, also known as "Amphitheatre Flavio", built on the order of the Imperator Vespasiano in the honour of the grandiosity of his empire, was inaugurated by his son, Tito, in 80 after Christ with celebrations 100 days long.
The name Coliseum probably comes from the big bronze statue of about 38 metres, known as the "Colosso" (giant), that Nerone wanted built on his image in the Domus Aurea. The work, representing the Imperator in the pants of the God Apollo, wanted to call back to the mind, with its extraordinary dimensions, the prestige and the fascination that another symbol of the Antiquity had had: the Colosso of Rhodes.
The statue was moved by the Imperator Adriano close to the Amphitheatre and afterwards modified in its lines in order to look like to various imperators on one hand, and then, on the other hand, with the addition of a "crown of sun rays", to the God Sun. However, it was only in the Middle Ages, with the oblivion of the imperial magnificence and of the aristocratic "gens", that the name Coliseum started to take the place, in the common diction, of the name of "Amphitheatre Flavio".
The Coliseum, projected by Rabirio or maybe Gaudenzio, was welcoming long combats between gladiators, executions and hunting spectacles. More or less 80000 spectators were following the combats that could go on from the sunrise to the sunset and also up to the deepest night when the gladiators were fighting illuminated by the light of the torches.
According to the chronicles of the time it looks like that the fights preferred by the public were the chaotic melange of tens of gladiators invented by the Imperator Claudio, called "sportule". All the religious celebrations, the recurrence and the military victories were celebrated, during the imperial era, with the combats of the gladiators. To defend the spectators from the ferocious animals they were installing a metallic fence, while during the most sunny days or the raining days, the public was protected by a big blue "velario" with yellow stars operated by a team of sailors of the fleet of Capo Miseno and of Ravenna.
In general, to the Coliseum are also associated the persecutions suffered by the Christian martyrs, also if, according to recent studies, there are not documented proofs demonstrating the effective existence of massacres and slaughters inside the walls of the Amphitheatre Flavio. In any case, in 313 after Christ, the Imperator Constantine proclaimed Christianity the official religion of the empire, obviously forbidding the executions of Christians but also the combats between gladiators and the hunting spectacles.
During the following centuries the Coliseum initially became a cemetery, and then a fortress called "Frangipane" and finally a sort of cava for the construction materials. The degradation of the structure due to fires, earthquakes and sacks was stopped by Pope Benedetto XIV who consecrated the Amphitheatre to the Via Crucis and forbade any ulterior spoliation.
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