PARKER'S FLAVIAN AMPHITHEATRE.•
QF all the remains of the ancient world, the Colosseum at Rome is at once the most perfect and the most striking. It was for ages looked upon as the visible embodiment of Rome's power and grandeur. Bede, writing in the eighth century, says of it :—" As long as the Colosseum stands, Rome also stands ; when the Colosseum shall fall, Rome, too, will fall ; when Rome shall fall, the world will fall with it." In his time the vast structure ap- pears to have been almost uninjured. Its solid strength had defied a succession of destructive barbarian invasions. It was in the middle-ages that it suffered most damage. More than once it was shaken by an earthquake, but it was by the hand of man rather than by natural causes that it was gradually reduced to its present condition. During the rough and rude period of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when the most unsentimental utilitarianism seemed almost a necessity, it was repeatedly used as a fortress by Popes and anti-Popes. In the four- teenth century, according to Mr. Parker, it was agreed among the great Italian families that the ruins should be considered common property, and treated as a quarry for building purposes. The Colosseum thus furnished materials for the Farnese, Borghese, and other palaces. Pope Sixtus V. thought of turning it into a cloth-manufactory, but he did not live to carry out his idea. Not till the beginning of the present century was it treated with the reverence due to such an imposing relic of antiquity. The walls and the vaults were weeded, under French direction in 1812, of the shrubs and plants, which had so loosened the fabric as to threaten its actual downfall. This process was repeated in 1870 by the order of Signor Rosa, and at the same time excavations were made on a great scale. Of these we have an account in the present volume, which, like its prede- cessor recently noticed in these columns, is furnished with admir- able illustrations, exhibiting under every aspect this most aston- ishing structure.
It should be noted that the name " Colosseum," to us so familiar, was not that by which the ancients usually spoke of it. It was the "Amphitheatre,"—that is, a double theatre, in the form of an ellipse, and it was the recognised and established type of all such buildings, which in the Imperial period were indefinitely multi- plied, no Roman town of any pretensions being considered com-
oxronder :Pri:Aft7;.1117:11:neal: Amphitheatre; or, at Rome. By J. H. Parker, C.B. plate without its amphitheatre. How it came to be called " Colosseum " and when the name became generally prevalent, is not quite clear. The usual explanation was that it was so called because the colossal statue of Nero, 120 ft. in height, and set up, according to Suetonius, in that Emperor's Golden House, stood in close proximity to it, or as Roman antiquaries have said, on the basement. This, Mr. Parker says (preface, viii,), is impossible, but he adds that a colossal statue of the Emperor Gordian, of half the size, stood in this position. However, he seems to be of opinion that the new name merely pointed to the gigantic dimensions of the building, which, in its extreme limits, embraced a circuit of rather more than 1,800 feet, and rose to a height of 165 feat and was, according to the Regionary Catalogue, capable of containing 87,000 spectators. There seems to be no reason for thinking the number to he greatly exaggerated. According to Mr. Parker, the building was called indifferently Diagram or Amphitheatrum, the two words being at the time quite interchangeable ; if so, it is not easy to see why Suetonius (Life of Augustus, 29) says in the same sentence that Cornelius Balbus built a theatrum and Statilius Taurus an amphitheatrum. However, Mr. Parker seems to have rather a strong case, and we can quite imagine that although strictly there was a difference in meaning between these two words, yet in practice they may have come to be interchanged, and theatrum used loosely for any place of public entertainment. His theory about the Colosseum depends, as will be seen, on the correctness of this view. It was really, at least as to the sub- structures, he thinks, more ancient than has been supposed. That there was a great building on the site before the time of the Flavian Emperors is clear to his mind, from evidence furnished by excavations made in 1874 and 1875. The tradition was that the entire fabric was built in ten years by Vespasian and Titus, and dedicated by the latter in A.D. 80. Suetonius would certainly lead us to suppose that it was the work of Vespasian, but he dismisses the matter in a brief sentence, only adding that Augustus had contemplated such a work. There seem, however, to be grounds for thinking that a building of the kind existed in Nero's time, possibly in connection with his Golden House, though about this our information is very indistinct and imperfect. Mr. Parker's idea is that Nero began building the Amphitheatre, which Vespasian continued, on substructures already in existence ; and these he believes to have been laid in the time of Sulla, by Sulla's stepson, Marcus AllniliUS Scaurus. We are thus carried back to the year 58 B.C., and so the date of the founding of the Colos- seum will be 130 years earlier than has been usually supposed. Mr. Parker mainly bases his belief on a passage in Pliny's Natural History (xxxvi., 64), in which he describes what he calls " the in- sane work of Samna." This was a theatrum, the area of which could contain 80,000 spectators ; and its general dimensions and character, as given us by Pliny, make it certain, in Mr. Parker's view, that it was on the site of the Colosseum, and also that the old tufa walls, which have been recently brought to light, belonged to it. The upper part of the building was probably meant to be temporary, but the substructures seemed intended to last for ever, and we may admit that in the absence of information as to its site, there is a reasonable probability in the theory which identifies it with the Flavian Amphitheatre. Mr. Parker observes, by way of strengthening his position, that there is no other Rite in Rome where 80,000 people could be assembled for a show, except that of the Colos- seum and the Circus Maximus, which last is never spoken of in connection with a theatre or amphitheatre. Here, perhaps, he is too positive. The objection that Pliny persistently calls Scaurus's building a theatrum does not, as we have seen, trouble him. It is interesting to know that this Scaurus was said to have spent as much as £2,000,000 on his insane work, an outlay which very materially reducedtiie immense fortune which he had inherited from his father, a man who had risen from -poverty to the rank of a first-class millionaire by means of sundry pickings in connection with the Jugurthan war. His mother, too, the famous Ctecilia Metella, who as a widow became Sulla's wife, amassed huge wealth by buying up at the public auctions the property of the victims of the Marian and Sullen proscriptions. Scaurus's out- rageous extravagance, according to Pliny in the passage already referred to (which Mr. Parker gives us at full length), was the beginning of a wholesale demoralisation ; and Sulla, he thinks, was almost guilty of a greater crime in giving such a man so much power than in his dreadful and merciless massacres. One of the most remarkable features of the "insane work" was the quantity of marble from Flymattas, there 1-wing 350 columns of that material. This indeed was splendour on a hitherto unheard-of scale, as but recently Lucius Craasus had been censured by public
opinion for possessing six marble columns of very moderate dimensions. Along with the growth of luxury, the appetite fer wild-beast shows, in which the Romans had indulged themselves more or less from the time of the Punic wars, became immensely strengthened, and at last systematically gratified itself in the horrible gladiatorial exhibitions. The great Flavian Amphi- theatre marks a period when the tastes of the people were so hopelessly debased, that we feel it is almost wrong to admire Rome's outward grandeur.
In reading Mr. Parker's book, we are continually impressed by the mechanical skill and knowledge which the Colosseum attests. The amusements there exhibited required every variety of ma- chine, and we are reminded, as Mr. Parker suggests, of the elaborate apparatus employed in London theatres. Many of the great shows resembled our pantomimes. Suetonius tells us of an elephant being made to walk on ropes with a Roman cavalier en his back. One unfortunate man came to grief in trying to fly down from the top of the building, and in falling dead at Nero's feet he sprinkled the Emperor with his blood. The spectators, as is well known, were covered by an awning (uelarium), con- trivances for the support of which are still to be seen in rows of corbels, some ten feet below the summit. On these corbels poles rested, and as this support would have been insufficient, there were similar contrivances at the bottom of the galleries, in insert of the podium, or basement. How so immense an awning could have been kept up has always been a difficulty, but it seems that it covered only the spectators, and not the entire building, the central space being left open to the sky, and the beasts and gladiators exposed to the weather. From some of Martial's epigrams we get incidental information about the shows of the Colosseum, and he tells us that on one occasion Mount Rhodope, with its rocks and woods, was represented on the stage, in the fashion, we suppose, of modern pantomime. No wonder that a country lad described his sensations in a glowing style after a visit to the great metropolis. Calpurnius, very possibly a poet of the latter part of the first century, describes such a visit, and makes the boy talk of carnivorous monsters of the forest, of sea-monsters, seals and hippopotami, &c. According to Mr. Parker, Sadler's Wells Theatre in 1820 almost rivalled the Colosseum, and from a sheet of water under the stage, sea-monsters (including, no doubt, the sea-serpent) were introduced by means of trap-doors. The delight which the people of Rome experienced from these shows was something extraordinary, and to this taste Caligula and Nero shamelessly pandered. There was nothing to pay, and the people would actually take their seats at midnight for next day's exhibi- tion. Several persons, as we gather from Tacitus (Annals, xvi., 5), in their anxiety to retain their seats, were seized with fatal illness. It is hardly to be wondered at, under such circum- stances, that these shows, instead of being, as they had been, a rare and exceptional popular recreation, became a permanent in- stitution, and that in the Imperial age the amphitheatre was the chief and finest building in a town of any size.
Mr. Parker tells us a good deal about the sham naval fights, which seem to have been a conspicuous element in the Colosseum shows. Two canals on either side of a great central passage were plainly revealed by excavations in 1875. The interval between them could be flooded, and the result was two sheets of water extending the whole length of the floor, each about three hundred feet long and fifty feet wide. The vessels employed in these battles were rates, or rowing-boats, and the fun probably consisted in an attempt on the part of the crew of one vessel to board the other. It seems they fought with swords, and that many were killed, just as in the gladiatorial shows. The mad Heliogabalus once indulged in the freak of filling the canals with wine. The remains of these canals are shown us in plate 1, and they may fairly be reckoned among the most interesting of recent dis- coveries. The relics, too, of a wooden framework were f wind en the floor of the central passage, and were apparently raft of a cradle for a vessel. This is exhibited in plate 7, and in ?Lae 26 we have a representation of a Roman galley ona launching-cradle, drawn from a restoration conjecturally made by M. Viollet-le-Pue before the finding of the relics just mentioned. The restoration was particularly ingenious, and this recent discovery shows that it was substantially correct.
If Mr. Parker's theory is right, the Colosseum was really begun more than half a century B.C. ; the work was then contiuned by Nero more than a century afterwards, and it may be said to have been completed by Vespasian and Titus. His reasons for con- necting it with Scaurus's work are not, to our minds, decisive, but as to the substructures having been built at an earlier period than that of the Flavian Emperors his opinion ought to be of value.
If so much is admitted, he would, no doubt, say that the
inherent probability of his view is very great. It is, at feast, not unlikely that the foundations of Scaurus's stupen- dous edifice, which seemed, according to Pliny, destined for eternity, may have been subsequently utilised for a like pur- pose. But Mr. Packer has not the art of presenting his views very clearly, and now and then he apparently contradicts himself. For example, he tells us on page 4 that " the great work was commenced in the time of Nero, on the site of that of Scaurus," and yet on page 1 we read that there " is no evidence to prove that it was commenced even under Nero." In fact, his account is very con- fused and inartistic, though we think we generally understand its drift and meaning. There are perpetual repetitions, which he certainly might have and ought to have avoided, and there is a want of consecutiveness, which is very tiresome and embarrassing. Nero's great palace, or Golden House, which seems, from Sue- tonius's account, to have been surrounded by a sort of park, with .90agnet, or ponds, in which naval fights were exhibited, must have covered the site of the Colosseum. Martial says expressly (I., ii., 5), that these stagna were " where now stands the Amphi- theatre's venerable structure" (venerabilis moles), and by this he means, no doubt, the work of Vespasian and Titus. So that we may fairly infer, with Mr. Parker, that there was at least begun in Nero's time, in connection, perhaps, with this palace of his, which stretched, we are told, from the Palatine to the Esquiline, an amphitheatre on a great scale. On such a matter as the bricks of Nero (Nero's brickwork, it seems, was the best the world has ever produced) he is a high authority. So, too, about the tufa walls and the substructures, and the period to which they belong, his opinion is entitled to the utmost respect. We see that he thinks that the amphi- theatre at Pompeii, which has been commonly assigned to the age of Augustus, was built in Sulla's time, and that it suggested to Scaurus his own gigantic undertaking. The fact that it has no signs of contrivance for naval fights is perhaps in favour of Mr. Parker's flea.. The amphitheatres at Capua and Puteoli have canals for water, like those in the Colosseum. The naval fight, therefore, would seem to have been a regular part of the entertainment, even in provintial towns. It is to be noted that the amphitheatre at Capua is the exact counterpart of that at Rome, and one must have been a copy from the other. Mr. Parker explains to us that the arena and area were by no means the same, as used to be supposed, and that thee-difference has been clearly shown by recent excava- tion. The first was a movable boarded floor, sprinkled with sand, and it was on this, not on the area, which was beneath it, that the martyrdoms of the early Christians took place. It could be re- moved and iteplaned at pleasure by the Emperor's order. Under- neath it were the chambers for the wild beasts, which, when wanted, were hoisted up in lifts (pegmata). Of this we have a erasjeetirral restoration in plate 16. It mutt have been startling to see 100 lions leap simultaneously on the arena, as happened, we are told, in the time of the Emperor Commodes. All we have to add is that we wish Mr. Parker had arranged his matter better, and revised the passages quoted hr his notes mote carefully. Some of them are sorely mangled. Quintilian is made to say (page 53) that the dead bodies were carried out with pomp from the arena, which be hardly meant by per pompam. However, any one who will examine the beautiful plates, with the explanations, will get a good notion of what the Colosseum and its arrangements were like.
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