Coliseum

also Colosseum, one of the famous buildings of ancient Rome. It is also called the Flavian Amphitheater. It was begun by the Emperor Vespasian and finished by Domitian. It is an immense stone structure, oval in shape, surrounding a central arena in which wild beast shows, games, and gladiatoral contests were held. The vast structure covered six acres. It rested on four-score arches. The walls rose 140 feet. They were encrusted with marble and ornamented with four successive orders of columns. Within, marble seats covered with cushions rose tier after tier, capable of seating 80,000 spectators. The dens of the wild beasts were in the basement. The Coliseum was opened to the public during the reign of Titus. Five thousand lions and other wild beasts were slain in the arena during opening games which lasted one hundred days. It is said that during the persecutions of the Christians, entire families were forced into the arena. Wild beasts, purposely left without food for several days, were then introduced, that the spectators might witness the cruel sport of seeing them chase and devour human beings, as cats do mice. Many of the marble seats have been removed for building material, and a portion of the walls has fallen, but enough still remains to give an idea of former magnificence. See Rome; Amphitheater

The following admirable description of the amphitheatre and its sports is from Gibbon: "The hunting, or exhibition of wild beasts, was conducted with a magnificence suitable to a people who styled themselves the masters of the world; nor was the edifice appropriated to that entertainment less expressive of Roman greatness. Posterity admires, and will long admire, the awful remains of the amphitheatre of Titus, which so well deserved the epithet of colossal. It was a building of an elliptic figure, five hundred and sixty-four feet in length, and four hundred and sixty-seven in breadth, founded on fourscore arches, and rising, with four successive orders of architecture, to the height of one hundred and forty feet. The outside of the edifice was encrusted with marble, and decorated with statues. The slops of the vast concave which formed the inside were filled and surrounded with sixty or eighty rows of seats of marble, likewise covered with cushions, and capable of receiving with ease above fourscore thousand spectators. Sixty-four vomitories (for by that name the doors were very aptly distinguished) poured forth the immense multitude; and the entrances, passages, and staircases, were contrived with such exquisite skill, that each person, whether of the senatorial, the equestrian, or the plebian order, arrived at his destined place without trouble or confusion. Nothing was omitted which in any respect could be subservient to the convenience or pleasure of the spectators. They were protected from the sun and rain by an ample canopy occasionally drawn over their heads. The air was continually refreshed by the playing of fountains, and profusely impregnated by the grateful scent of aromatics. In the centre of the edifice the arena, or stage, was strewed with the finest sand, and successively assumed the most different forms. At one moment it seemed to rise out of the earth like the garden of the Hesperides, and was afterwards broken into the rocks and caverns of Thrace. The subterraneous pipes conveyed an inexhaustible supply of water; and what had just before appeared a level plain might be suddenly converted into a wide lake, covered with armed vessels and replenished with the monsters of the deep. In the decorations of these scenes, the Roman emperors displayed their wealth and liberality; and we read on various occasions, that the whole furniture of the amphitheatre consisted either of silver, or of gold, or of amber. The poet who describes the games of Carinus, in the character of a shepherd attracted to the capital by the fame of their magnificence, affirms that the nets designed as a defence against the wild beasts were of gold wire; that the porticoes were gilded, and that the belt or circle which divided the several ranks of the spectators from each other, was studded with a precious mosaic of beautiful stones.