Book Description

Excerpt from The Flavian Amphitheatre, Commonly Called the Colosseum at Rome: Its History and Substructures Compared With Other Amphitheatres The great excavations carried on in this colossal building in the years 1874 and 1875, have thrown an entirely new light on its history. These were made under the level of the ground, at the foot of the podium, which is the same as that of the original arena; this large level space had been indifferently called the ground, the floor, the stage, the area, or the arena; no one had any idea that the original pavement would be found 21 ft. below that level, and that the intervening space was filled with walls and passages, dens for wild beasts, places for lifts to send up men, and dogs, and animals: and canals for water, and several other contrivances for the use of the performers on the stage above, for practically the arena was the stage on which the performances took place. These excavations have enabled us to ascertain that this had been a boarded floor covered with sand, or arena (whence its name), and that this floor could be moved and replaced in a short time, at the word of the Emperor. The evidence of this is brought out clearly in the present work. Large corbels, or brackets, are provided for placing the boards upon when removed, and keeping them out of sight of the people in the galleries; they project from the wall below the podium, in the passage over the dens. We had all of us hitherto been taught that this enormous structure had been all built in ten years by the Flavian emperors; this is the uniform modern history, but no ancient author says so. It is only one of the so-called "Roman Traditions," which (as I am obliged to repeat continually) are nothing but the conjectures of learned men during the last three centuries, especially Panvinius and his school in the seventeenth. In the present instance it is evident that so far from having been all built in ten years, it was more than a century about from first to last; it was begun in the time of Sylla the Dictator, by his step-son Scaurus, and is described by Pliny in his "Natural History" by the name of the insane work of Scaurus, who was called insane because he spent such an enormous fortune upon the work, (equal to more than two millions sterling of modern money). About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.