Gladiators were organizedin ludi (schools), directed by a lanista – a word of Etruscan origin – who had the power of life and death over his men. The ludi – something halfway between barrack and prison – had the same basic layout all over the empire: gladiators were lodged in small cells around the yard where they trained. At the beginning …
The origin of the gladiatorial games(in Latin munus, pl. munera, or “offered”) is still a matter of debate. Many think that they descend from the Etruscan custom of making human sacrifices to celebrate the death of a nobleman, in order to appease the spirit of the dead. The Roman historian Livy, on the contrary, stated that the …
“Whatever is viewed in the Circus and the Amphitheater, that, Caesar, the wealth of your water has afforded you. So no more of Fucinus and the lake of direful Nero; let this be the only sea fight known to posterity.” Martial, On the Spectacles (XXVIII) The naumachiaewere reproductions of famous naval battles and were staged in …
Thousands of animalswere necessary for the games: when the Colosseum was inaugurated, 9.000 animals were killed, and Suetonius affirms that 5.000 wild beasts were presented to the audience in one single day. Even if these figures are exaggerated, nevertheless in North Africa lions and elephants disappeared, hunted for centuries in order to provide for the games. …
Staged huntswere a parody of reality inspired by the Roman taste for fake and imitation, but there were other shows that were even more fantastic, peculiar of the Roman feeling for nature. In the silvae, painters, technicians and stage architects reconstructed a false scenery in the arena, with trees and bushes made to resemble a forest …
In the year 73 BCa group of thirty or maybe seventy gladiators from the school of Lentulus, in Capua, near Naples, revolted and fled on the Vesuvius. They chose as leaders Spartacus, Crissus and Enomaos. Spartacus was a gladiator, from Thrace; little is known of him; the historian Appianus says he was a Roman soldier, …
The Golden House(that is the meaning of Domus Aurea), located between the Esquiline and Palatine Hills, was one of Nero‘s most extravagant projects. As everybody knows, two-thirds of the city of Rome were destroyed by a great fire in 64 AD. Nero used most of this land as a site for his new palace. It was not so …
Rome has been hitby many earthquakes during the centuries.This list was compiled by Roberto Luciani (Underground Rome): Abandoning the stones – by Sergej Krivonogov
Recent studieshave discovered that from as early as the IV century materials were taken away from the Colosseum, and that some drains were obstructed by the end of the same century. At the beginning of the V century the water/drainage system, at least in the south western sector, had stopped working, as the lead piping and fountains …
What is leftof the marble decorations of the Colosseum? We know that the materials were plundered and re-used in many buildings of the city.In the amphitheatre the marble elements were: – the columns in the portico in summa cavea– the barriers of the entrances in the cavea– decorations around the arena and along the corridors around the …
