Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. Press ESC to cancel. Skip to content Home Social studies What is the maximum capacity of spectators in the Colosseum? Social studies. Ben Davis March 9, What is the maximum capacity of spectators in the Colosseum? What was the seating capacity of the Roman Colosseum? What was so essential about the crowd of spectators in the Colosseum? Who could go to the Colosseum? Where did rich people sit in the Colosseum?
What did Colosseum look like originally? Why does the Colosseum look broken? Can you go inside the Colosseum? What happened to the Colosseum floor?
Did the Roman Colosseum have a floor? Why is the Colosseum floor not flat? Did the Romans truly flood the floor of the Roman Colosseum? What was most impressive about the Colosseum? Why was it called Colosseum? When was the Roman Colosseum last used? Like how, when and WHY it was built? What happened in there - to both humans and other animals?
And why it has holes in it? Find out here! But actually, I've peppered this page with quite a few more fun facts about the Roman Colosseum, like where we got the word "vomit" from , and how it was nearly turned into a wool factory The decadent, egotistic emperor Nero had built a gigantic villa for himself, called the Domus Aurea. It included an enormous man-made lake. After Nero committed suicide in 68 CE, the senate issued a Damnatio memoriae on him, meaning, let's condemn his memory and remove all traces of him.
A couple of years later, emperor Vespasian decided to remove Nero's lake and put an arena there, to entertain the people and make them focus on fun and forget the hated Nero. In doing so, Vespasian also showed the Romans he was a man of the people, unlike Nero who'd taken all that land just for himself.
Emperor Vespasia n and his son Titus had conquered Judea Jerusalem , and had brought back with them many spoils of war, including artefacts from the temple. They also brought back with them about , Jewish slaves. Many of these men were put to unpaid work doing the hard stuff like dragging quarried Travertine rock from Tivoli all the way to Rome. Other more skilled citizens of Rome, such as architects, artists and engineers, were paid to do the more artistic and specialized work.
Vespasian began work on the Colosseum in around 70 or 71 CE. He died in 79 CE and his son Titus became emperor. A few years later, the last emperor of the Flavian Dynasty, Titus' brother Domitian added the highest tier, and also the Hypogeum , or underground complex , where animals and fighters were held until showtime. One of the most basic facts about the Roman Colosseum - how big is it? The Colosseum was then, and still is today, the largest amphitheater in the world.
The amphitheater was made by one family, Vespasian and his sons Titus and Domitian of the Flavian Dynasty. Back to ego-maniac Nero - he'd also had a giant foot bronze statue made of himself. After Nero's death, Vespasian replaced the face and called it a sun-god statue. The statue was later moved with the help of 24 elephants by the Emperor Hadrian , in CE, to just next to the Amphitheater. There was never a clear rendering of it, so any depiction you see today, including on this page, are guesses as to how it looked.
But it was called a Colossus , and many scholars believe this is where the Flavian Amphitheater got its current nickname. When Titus inaugurated the amphitheater in 80 CE , he held days of activities.
In that time, over animals were killed , and according to some, of them were killed in a single day. Around people died as well. About 30 years later, the Emperor Trajan held days of games, in which thousands of people and animals were slaughtered. The animals came from all over the Roman empire. They were of a vast variety of species, from lions, tigers and bears , to horses, ostriches, rhinos and crocodiles. There was such a global demand for wild animals over the hundreds of years the Colosseum was in use, some animals disappeared entirely from their natural habitat, leading to eventual extinctions of some species.
The Colosseum could seat between 50, and 80, people. Entrance to the games was free. Spectators were given numbered pottery shards as tickets. These indicated the appropriate section and row, according to their social status. Women and slaves were at the very top.
There were 76 entrances for spectators, and they were numbered. You can still see the numbers today. Four other entrances were reserved for the emperor, and for other people of importance including patricians, visiting dignitaries, and Vestal Virgins. A retractable awning called the Velarium could be pulled almost entirely over the structure, providing cover and in case of rain or heat.
One of the stranger facts about the Roman Colosseum involves the Vomitoria. The word "Vomit" comes from Vomitorium - the verb meaning "to disgorge. The vomitoria were the passageways that ran along the entire building behind and and beneath the seating tiers, to help with the flow of spectators.
Because of the vomitoria , The Colosseum could be filled or emptied in 15 minutes. There were 36 trap doors in arena allowing for elaborate special effects. You can take a tour of the Colosseum underground , and you will see this trapdoor, along with the tunnels and more details about how things worked when there were games in the Colosseum. And, if you visit the Colosseum at night, you can see the arena floor, the trap door, the Hypogeum, and all the workings underneath, without the crowds!
Myth or Facts about the Roman Colosseum - were Christians fed to the lions? The construction of each awning, due to a misunderstanding by the sailmakers, did not include the typical Roman edge and panel reinforcement specified by me. Both for the strength and for visual effect this was a disappointment. Question for Goldman: How were the Vestal Virgins chosen? Probably the Vestals themselves would have suggested names of novices, but the Pontifax Maximus would have had to make the final decision.
The work of the Vestals was to tend the sacred fire of the hearth, symbolic of the home. They also had to prepare sacred ground grain for sacrificial rituals and to function as models of moral behavior, since they had to remain virgins for their 30 years of service.
After that time they could marry, but few did. For breaking their vow of devotion to the order, they could be buried alive. They lived in palatial quarters in the Forum behind the round Temple to Vesta where the sacred fire was kept. They had their own box at the Colosseum, and witnessed from their ring-side seats these abhorrent "games", along with the rest of the audience. Question for Goldman: How long was the Colosseum in use, and why did people stop using it?
The gladiatorial games, which became abhorrent to Christian conscience, disappeared in the year This was the last time there were gladiatorial games, although the staged animal hunts went on for another 50, 60 years. They really died out from lack of money to keep them going. It was an enormous expense to import animals from Africa. These poor beasts were deadly sick as they were transported across the sea, and then nursed back to health, but deliberately starved before they would go into the amphitheater to fight against each other or against gladiators.
Tremendous expense, and the money just gave out. And that's really, I think, why they died out: not so much from Christian conscience as from lack of funds to keep them going. Question for Goldman: Did you consider the fact that bullfights are scheduled at p. This would support the first theory of sails and beams.
And the bullfights do start late in the afternoon, and the cheap seats are the ones that are still out in the sun, and the expensive seats are the ones that are in the shade, just like they used to be in the ballparks in the United States. The bleachers were in the sun, out of cover, and the people who could afford it sat in the covered part of the stadium. Question for Goldman: The Colosseum is so enormous—is it know how they handled crowd control? The arch and area was indicated on a piece of broken pottery giving the proper deck and wedge-shaped section, assuring complete crowd control for entry and seating.
Then for exit, these same ramps and stairways would assure a quick and easy egress with no mixture of classes. Outside there would have been a barrier consisting of chains between bollards to keep people out before the opening. There were 80 arches in all, but the ones at the main axes were for the entrances of the gladiators, the emperors and magistrates and Vestal Virgins, and the one next to Ludus Magnus was the gate of death through which the corpses of men and animals were removed.
All very well organized. 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.
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