The contests, although bloody, always had a religious element to them along with many of the other events hosted at the Colosseum. Triumph or success in a fight was thought to be a combination of a good personal relationship with the Gods and manly virtue. The tradition of religious sacrifice can also be seen in their recreations of classical theatre, which often involved a human or animal sacrifice, where the victim was killed in various mythological ways.

Either with fire, animals or in combat. This leads us nicely onto the animal hunt, or venatio , another popular show which involved using exotic animals imported from Africa and the Middle East to stage elaborate hunts or battles.

Although today these types of performances sound revoltingly bloody and incredibly cruel, much of this violence is still present within our society. We are still entertained by a head to head battle, through one on one sports such as boxing or wrestling, as well as in team sports like football and hockey.

Just think of the recent Game of Thrones franchise. A global phenomenon, its international fan base became engrossed in the shows frequent use of violence and nudity, spending thousands of dollars on the production of gory battle scenes. Hopefully this article has given you some insight into the history and context of the Colosseum, and answered the question of why it was built, allowing you to appreciate its antiquity even more. It would be difficult to understand why the Colosseum was built without understanding when the Colosseum was built.

Like today, life for the common man was difficult. The Roman emperors understood this and needed to keep their people just happy enough to keep ongoing. They also knew that without an outlet for their frustration, the citizens of Rome would revolt. By setting up a welfare system and providing entertainment, people would be too distracted to start an uprising. In 72 AD after quelling a revolt in Jerusalem that yielded endless spoils and slaves, Vespasian Flavian commissioned an ambitious project to build the largest amphitheater known to man.

His goal, make his subjects happy so he could continue with expanding the Empire. Vespasian became Roman Emperor in 69 A. Vespasian was the fourth Emperor that year which makes it safe to say 69 A. What we do know is, it only took eight years to build and its construction was from travertine, tufa, brick and wood. It stands almost years old today and would likely look much better had it not been for the years of pillaging and treating it like a quarry for stone.

This is our most popular Colosseum tour due to the incredible access to non-public areas like the underground chambers. All admissions are included and it is lead by an English speaking licensed guided and Colosseum expert. Question for Roberts: If you got a chance to do this experiment again, would you do it differently? While there last year and with excellent help from the students on the course, I built to one-fifth scale, three different arrangements for furling the vela.

The major future refinement would be a pruning down of the supporting rig and having greater faith in the natural flexibility of the horizontal yard to withstand destructive bending forces. Having performed the calculations on this it is clear that much longer yards could be used in a full-size situation without the need for support other than at the masts. The students also tried to improve on the other system suspended across the amphitheater but despite careful modelling could not get it to work.

It would seem to be a blind alley if ancient materials are used. Question for Roberts: I believe that the Romans used the archways in the Colosseum to string parallel ropes across the top. The fabric would then be attached to the ropes using rings. This design would cover the entire building and would fit all of the descriptions. Could this have been the way?

The trouble is, we're working here with a circular building, and you could certainly support ropes from the tops of the arches. All of these ropes would You have panels of cloth which would have to be tapered in order to fit between these radials, these spokes of rope.

And you then have a problem that if you try to slide them back, because the inward end of the cloth is narrower than the wall end of the cloth, then you start drawing it back, it's not wide enough, in fact, to slide back along the ropes. The whole thing would start to pull in. This problem has been looked at. Whether we've used arches or whether we'd use masts, we'd run into the same problem, unfortunately, and there is no need, anyway, to cover the whole arena with a canvas because the walls are high and the sun moves around and where just a certain area of the arena is covered, it casts sufficient shadow for the people who are watching there.

Question for Goldman: Is the Colosseum ever used for events now, other than as a tourist attraction? When the Colosseum became a public monument, the Cross was moved to the side podium, the stations of the cross removed, the chapel closed, all the shrubbery, trees, and plants which were growing inside and splitting the walls removed, the solid floor of the arena excavated, and the substructure laid bare, as you see it today.

About 10 years ago there was an exhibition of modern technology on a narrow wooden walkway constructed over the long axis of the arena, and the cry of outrage was so loud, even though the show brought in a hundred thousand dollars the first week, that I doubt that such use will ever be repeated. The Pope still celebrates a memorial to the victims in a symbolic march around the exterior each year.

Question for Goldman: Was the Colosseum the original "sports stadium"? Were there other big gathering places? When the formal race-course was built with starting gates, permanent stone viewing stands, private boxes for the officials and a more private imperial box high up in the palace area on the Palatine for the royal family, the Circus Maximus could eventually accommodate , spectators at one sitting, more than 5 times the number that could be accommodated in the Colosseum.

Nero built an enormous Circus next to the Vatican Hill where St. Peter was martyred, and the obelisk from Nero's Circus was eventually moved to where it now stands in the embracing arms of the piazza in front of St. Domitian, Vespasian's younger son, built a smaller race-course, probably for foot-races, in the area known today as the Piazza Navona in Rome, and the shape of the Piazza echoes the shape of the race-course.

Question for Roberts: There may be a combination of both ideas. Use the booms to suspend the canvas as in the first experiment to give retractable characteristics, then stretch ropes across to the opposite boom to extend the canvas to the desired distance, depending on the weather, wind, etc.

It would be a nice way of controlling the booms in that position—there's no argument about that—by linking the ends of them with ones opposite with a rope that goes across. So you have the center of a spider's web, I suppose, at the middle, and what we found, the argument that would go against that is that we found that it was very convenient to be able to rotate the booms in towards the walls where the masts were supported in order to be able to work on the booms themselves.

Now, that facility wouldn't be possible if we had rope linking across the arena from the ends of each of these booms. It's a facility for maintenance that would be essential, because everything, all the material that was used, would need constant maintenance. It's just like working a ship. With a ship, you are always checking ropes, checking for wear, and you need to be able to get at the stuff.

Now the other way we can do it, the way we found to do it, was just swing these booms in until we could reach them, and I think that's probably what was done in antiquity. So I don't really like the idea of linking them across, just in order to try to extend the canvas. We can make the booms more than long enough, because the trees are long enough for this. And you don't have to have very thick wood towards the end of the boom, the inner end of the boom, because it's a good thing there to be thinner, because you're losing weight all the time; it's strong enough for the job.

You could have very long booms and have them able to cast more than sufficient shadow over the arena. So I'm not totally happy about joining down the middle. It looks attractive at first glance, I must admit. Question for Roberts: How complicated was the rigging that you did for the bullring roof compared to rigging that sailors of that time would have done? What was combined was the rig needed to support the yard, which was suspended like the sprit of a Roman sprit-sail rig, and the awnings furling lines or brails in evidence on the Roman square-sail rig.

All gear would have been familiar to any Roman sailor who might have come to haunt us. Question for Goldman: What type of wood were the masts made of, and where were these trees found? And Rainer Graefe has made studies of the height that these trees have grown, and in his book, Velu Erunt, "There Will Be Sails" —and that's a good title, because that inducement was added on the graffiti "billboards" that were put up announcing that there were going to be gladiatorial games.

In his book, "There Will Be Sails," Graefe describes how he studied the heights that trees grow to so that he could figure out how long the booms could be. They were usually conifer trees. Question for Goldman: Do you think the blood and gore shows that took place in the Colosseum have any parallels to today's extreme sports, or violent talk shows?

There seems to be an appeal in human nature something we try to hide under the carpet, but surely there to the violent aspect of human activity. Look at the number of murder mysteries written and presented in the public media in film and television. One of the statistics in the Newsweek book on the Colosseum says that a young person will have witnessed 27, violent deaths on television and in film by the time he or she is an adult. Look at the slowdowns on the opposite side of the expressways when there is an accident.

People are fascinated by death, and the ancient Romans had this terrible flaw in their character that they made the killing of captives, criminals, slaves, or anyone who bucked the system, a source of entertainment.

Look at the popularity today of the Demolition Derbies, the fights in the hockey games, the wrestling match absurdities. Question for Goldman: What was the most populated event that took place in the Colosseum? By the way, the games went on all day, so this business of the cast shadow in late afternoon does not apply, because the games did begin early in the morning; people stayed the whole day—there were criminals, condemned criminals who were put to death in the morning.

There were animals that were brought in, exotic beasts both to be paraded around and then to fight against each other or hunted, caught, and killed. Then there were the gladiatorial games in the afternoon, where teams of men who had been trained in a particular kind of warfare—these had been men who had been captured in war who were then put into training camps to refine their war skills in the particular way in which they fought from the countries they came from or to learn new skills—they were teamed up against each other to fight.

And then the climax of the day, and I think the most popular event, would be when the most famous gladiator who fought in one style was pitted against another gladiator who fought in a different style.

For instance, there was a style of costuming where the gladiator was completely armored, covered, protected who fought against the almost nude Retarius, the man who fought only with a net and trident. And to have these unequal gladiators fight against each other would have been the climactic event, and these gladiators became so popular, they were like the screen stars—the women swooned over them.

The popularity of them extended to the gambling, the betting that was put on on one or the other winning. The popularity made them the idols of the day. They had short, happy lives. Question for Goldman: Which of the solutions shown in the program to cover the Colosseum is best supported by archaeological evidence? Whether the horizontal timbers to support the "sails" were there, as described by Graefe, is not so documented, and my own opinion is that that system would have been cumbersome, difficult to install, expensive although for the emperors, nothing was too expensive , and would not have covered the most important members of the audience, the nobles who sat down front, closest to the arena, except when the cast shadow gave shade, as it does today in the modern bull-ring when the sun is lower on the horizon.

Greafe's extensive work on all amphitheaters has to be considered with respect, and he is best of all authorities to document the feature on the cast shadow and on the length of timbers from trees. My own theory is that the rope oculus system is more practical, although we did not have time in the film to see the longer sails retracted, as the literary evidence implies, for the poets write about days when the winds are so strong that the "sails cannot be put out.

One of my Italian architect friends in Rome reminds me that in a building in use for over years, there might have been many different versions of the awning changed to suit the times. Question for Goldman: How long did it take to build the Colosseum and how much did it cost?

It was probably begun about A. Titus only ruled two years and Vespasian's second son Domitian is said to have added the bronze shields at the top and the substructures after which there never could have been mock naval games for dressing rooms, dens for animals, storage for sets and scenery, elevators and ramps.

No one will ever know how much in cash was poured into the project, but it was money well-spent, since it assured the popularity of the ruling family, and the royal treasury had not bottom. Vespasian had a limitless work force, having brought back from the Jewish War an estimated , slaves, probably put to work in the quarries at Tivoli, for there were , cartloads of travertine estimated alone for the exterior. There is evidence of skilled work done in stone yards for pieces brought already cut and finished to be installed, as is done today in modern construction projects.

Question for Goldman: How did the elevators work that brought animals from the underground passageways? If you think of the stage props and how the scenery goes up and down, there are weights on one side that are made heavier by stones or bags of sand, and they were made so heavy that they raise the box, if you imagine the elevator as a box or cage, that would contain the animal on the other side. A simple system of weights and pulleys. Question for Roberts: One post on top, like on the show—both theories—then another post toward the bottom; wood span between the two posts like a bridge.

Canvas is strung between the posts on top, furled to the posts on the bottom, and fastened along the way. This way, the rich are shaded; the poor are, too, but they get a crummy view because of the downward slope of the support posts and fabric.

That's okay, though; they're poor. Around , Vespasian returned to the Roman people the lush land near the center of the city, where Nero had built an enormous palace for himself after a great fire ripped through Rome in A. On the site of that Golden Palace, he decreed, would be built a new amphitheater where the public could enjoy gladiatorial combats and other forms of entertainment.

After nearly a decade of construction—a relatively quick time period for a project of such a grand scale—Titus officially dedicated the Colosseum in A.

Measuring some by feet by meters , the Colosseum was the largest amphitheater in the Roman world. Unlike many earlier amphitheaters, which had been dug into hillsides to provide adequate support, the Colosseum was a freestanding structure made of stone and concrete.

The distinctive exterior had three stories of arched entrances—a total of around 80—supported by semi-circular columns. Each story contained columns of a different order or style : At the bottom were columns of the relatively simple Doric order, followed by Ionic and topped by the ornate Corinthian order.

Located just near the main entrance to the Colosseum was the Arch of Constantine, built in A. Inside, the Colosseum had seating for more than 50, spectators, who may have been arranged according to social ranking but were most likely packed into the space like sardines in a can judging by evidence from the seating at other Roman amphitheaters.

Awnings were unfurled from the top story in order to protect the audience from the hot Roman sun as they watched gladiatorial combats, hunts, wild animal fights and larger combats such as mock naval engagements for which the arena was flooded with water put on at great expense. The vast majority of the combatants who fought in front of Colosseum audiences in Ancient Rome were men though there were some female gladiators.

Gladiators were generally slaves, condemned criminals or prisoners of war. The Colosseum saw some four centuries of active use, until the struggles of the Western Roman Empire and the gradual change in public tastes put an end to gladiatorial combats and other large public entertainments by the 6th century A.