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The archæology of Rome, Part 7 cover

The archæology of Rome, Part 7

Chapter 30: Description of Plate VI.
By John Henry Parker
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The author reports on late 19th-century excavations that revealed extensive substructures beneath the arena, showing earlier origins than commonly supposed and multiple construction phases from Scaurus and Nero to the Flavian emperors. The work describes underground features such as a movable boarded arena with corbels, animal cages with vertical lifts and trapdoors, canals and reservoirs for staged naval displays, and wide passages for scenery, and examines reused timber and stone, masonry of tufa, brick, and concrete, plus coins and graffiti as documentary evidence. It also traces repairs from earthquakes and argues the amphitheatre evolved over more than a century rather than being completed in ten years.

THE COLOSSEUM.
PLATE VI.

INTERIOR, AT THE SOUTH-EAST END.
With the early Walls of Tufa.

THE COLOSSEUM IN 1874.

INTERIOR S.E. END WITH THE EARLY WALLS

Description of Plate VI.

INTERIOR, AT THE SOUTH-EAST END.
With the early Walls of Tufa.

In this view the grooves in the walls are clearly seen on both sides of the passage between them, and the arches of the dens behind the outer wall. The lions, or other wild animals about that size, passed from the dens through an opening in the wall into the cages provided for them in this passage. The cages were placed upon lifts, and when the word was given by the emperor, were all pulled up at once to the arena, or floor of boards, with trap-doors in it all along over this passage. We are told by Herodian (as has been shewn in the text, p. 26) that on one occasion a hundred lions leaped on to the stage or arena at the same time, and appeared to the spectators in the gallery to “leap out of the earth;” the sand with which the floor was covered over would have that appearance when the trap-doors, and lifts, and the tops of the cages along with them, were opened from below. In the passage is a long series (one behind the place for each cage and lift) of sockets seen in the pavement, apparently each for a capstan to wind the twenty-one feet of cord upon, when the cage was pulled up to the top, and the trap-doors opened.