Essay Examples - History Essays

Pliny the Elder, in his Historia Naturalis, pinpoints the genesis of the amphitheatre design at the spectacles of C. Scribonius Curio in 52BC, though this event is more likely to account for the origin of the word 'amphitheatre' (a neologism with an intended Greek ring to it, meaning 'double theatre') than its architectural origin. The amphitheatre was generally elliptical in shape, the intention of which is discussed by Wiedemann:

A circular building implies the equality of all spectators, an ellipse makes most of the spectators face two specific points on the circumference, thus enabling attention to be drawn to the box of the presiding magistrate.

The relation between the mass of the crowd and those sitting in authority while attending a spectacle at the amphitheatre is of interest and will be discussed below. Early amphitheatres were able to contain more or less the whole community of a small town (such as Pompeii). Later ones were much larger: the Colosseum had seating capacity for 54,760.

The function of the amphitheatre in Roman society is complex. It seems that permanent stone amphitheatres originated from temporary wooden structures erected to accommodate spectators at occasional public funerals and spectacles. The chief eventual use of amphitheatres - to house a non-official but officially regulated annual cycle of spectacles, including particularly the munera, or gladiatorial combat, and venationes, or the coursing of wild beasts - grew from these two types of event.

It is often presumed that the Roman association of gladiatorial combat - ritualised fighting between criminals and prisoners of war - with funeral rites looked back to Homeric episodes such as the sacrifices of Trojan prisoners at the funeral of Patroclus.

The financing of spectacles and the staging of ostentatious funerals by rich individuals (and also the holding of 'triumphs', or ritual processions celebrating military victories) were activities calculated to win prestige and political support (even as a species of electoral bribery or ambitus) among the people. (The importance of the munera can be gauged from such anecdotes as that of the riots among the population of Pollentia in Liguria when the family of a principal centurion refused to provide a munus in connection with the centurion's funeral.) Lasting monuments would serve as a reminder of that prestige well into the future (since '[p]ermanent buildings would indicate permanent political control').

Largely, then, the amphitheatre was used for events that were not official (i.e. not required by the state) but dependent on the initiative of private individuals. However these events were sufficiently prominent in Roman life to 'blur the distinction between public and private'. Augustus and subsequent emperors placed ever stricter restrictions on the holding of the munera, limiting them eventually to ten days at the end of the year, and it was common for officials to be refused permission to construct public buildings, as both of these activities might be seen as challenges to the authority of the imperial family.

By connection with this curious boundary testing between public and private in the amphitheatre, it is noteworthy noted that the amphitheatre was a place in which the Roman citizen attending a spectacle could expect to influence public life. Due to the expected attendance of the emperor at gladiatorial matches (emperors who stayed away, such as Tiberius, became unpopular as a result; tyrants such as Tiberius' successor Caligula won favour through his patronage of the games; Titus was criticised for being overly interested in the munera) the amphitheatre was one of the few city spaces in Roman life in which the people could communicate directly with their leader and exploit his ambiguous position as both their chief and servant.

The mass of citizens felt safe in making their opinions known: Cicero reports that in 59BC the crowd booed Caesar's supporters and cheered his opponents at a gladiatorial contest voicing their opinions in a way that would be dangerous in most other settings. The Roman crowd made demands 'not bound by legal niceties' in the arena: they might ask for the manumission of a slave belonging to someone even if he were not the editor of a spectacle (a demand that Tiberius once acquiesced to). The emperor could, in turn, communicate with the people. He did so in a conventionalised fashion by means of placards that were paraded around the arena, or, if he were particularly displeased at being treated insolently, a herald.

The central function of the amphitheatre was, of course, the staging of gladiatorial and bestial combats. From among the many meanings attached to these sports I would like to isolate two. Firstly the sports became channels through which the Roman public was reminded of their Empire's military success and plundering abroad. Secondly they made of the gladiator an important character type within society, publicly probing his position on the edge of crime, infamy and, indeed, death.

Gladiatorial spectacles at the amphitheatre would typically include venationes in the morning and executions of criminals before the afternoon munera. Such spectacles were extremely expensive and the public destruction of wealth demonstrated not only the power of the individual who organised them but, more generally, the dominion of the Empire over its conquered provinces. Exotic beasts, symbolizing the lands in which they were captured, were brought to Rome as novelties and made to perform Roman acts. An elephant was on one occasion made to kneel before the emperor at a spectacle, demonstrating its province's allegiance.

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Gladiators too were often drawn from foreign campaigns and from the ranks of criminals. They were tainted with infamia - considered unworthy of trust, not given the status of citizen and condemned as perditi homines, the lowest of men. Problematic, though, was that their virtus - courage in facing death - was central to the Roman idea of what it meant to be Roman. In this way the gladiator was a paradox: both far outside Rome and at its heart. Furthermore he was always on the edge of death. Yet just as he could escape death, he could also, through courageous and successful performance in the arena, be given his freedom and be accepted back into society.

This symbolic situation of gladiatorial combat at various 'edges' of Roman life is reflected in the positioning of Roman amphitheatres, generally at the edge of town. Wiedemann rejects various other arguments for such a location before endorsing this possibility. Welch notes that amphitheatres were often attached to fortresses and used by soldiers to celebrate festivals, placing the military firmly at the centre of Roman life. Bomgardner reinforces this link by mentioning that proximity to an amphitheatre was desirable for a proposed temple of Hercules.

References and works consulted

Baldwin Smith, E. (1956), Architectural Symbolism of Imperial Rome and the Middle Ages (Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press)

Bomgardner, D. (2000), The Story of the Roman Amphitheatre (London, Routledge)

Cicero, Ad Atticum

Ericsson, C.H. (1980), Roman architecture expressed in sketches by Francesco di Giorgio Martini; Studies in Imperial Roman and Early Christian Architecture, in Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum 66 (Helsinki, Societas Scientarium Fennica)

Historia Augusta

Golvin, J-C. (1988), L' amphithéâtre romain: essai sur la théorisation de sa forme et de ses fonctions, 2 vols, II: Planches (Paris, Boccard)

Meuleau, M. (1965), Le monde et son histoire, 5 vols, II: Le monde antique, pp.184-195 (Paris, Bordas)

Pareti, L., Brezzi, P., Petech, L. (1965), History of mankind: cultural and scientific development, 6 vols, II.ii: The Ancient World, pp.471-508 and 543-556 (London, Allen and Unwin)

Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis

Speake, G. (ed.) (1994), Dictionary of Ancient History (Cambridge Mass., Blackwell)

Tertullian, De Spectaculis

Ward-Perkins (1977), Roman Architecture (NY, Abrams)

Welch, K. (1994), 'The Roman arena in late-Republican Italy: a new interpretation', in Journal of Roman Archaeology 7 (Ann Arbor, Cushing-Malloy)

Wiedemann, T. (1992), Emperors and Gladiators (London/NY, Routledge)

Wikipedia, Bomgardner (2000), p.37, Welch (1994), p.60

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