CHIAVARI, Italy – It was this photo of the police
keeping an eye on Rome’s coliseum after the attacks on Paris that got me
thinking about what ISIS has done to national and global treasures.
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| Rome's Coliseum |
The footage of them destroying the 2,000 year-old
Arch of Triumph in the ancient city of Palmyra, Syria, the Buddhas of Bamiyam
in Afghanistan and so many others brought tears to my eyes. Treasures that have
been preserved for centuries were heartlessly blown up, and turned into clouds
of dust.
The very thought of it happening to the coliseum is
more than my heart can bear. Rome’s 2,000 year old coliseum is the greatest architectural and engineering strictures
ever built. Like the Buddhas and the Arch of Triumph in Syria, it is one of the wonders of the world.
In its prime between
50,000 and 80,000 spectators could be entertained by the performances that were
held there. In that long ago world of the Roman Empire, it was used by the
Caesars to celebrate their successes, their triumphs, and there were many for
it was Rome that ruled the world. At that time the Roman Empire included most
of Western Europe, including France and Spain, the Netherlands and England, Eastern
Europe, the Middle East and the whole of North Africa from Egypt to Morocco.
It took about seven or eight years to
build the coliseum, and when it was completed the Romans celebrated with 100
days of games. There were gladiatorial contests, mock sea battles, animal
hunts, executions, re-enactments of famous battles and dramas based on
Classical mythology.
However, there was one spectacle that was never seen
in Rome, and that was Christians being fed to the lions. While it may be a
story the tour guides at Rome’s Coliseum like to tell, it is just a story
recounted in Hollywood productions like Quo Vadis and Ben Hur. It never
happened in real life. We know this because in the actual history of ancient
Rome, there is not one word about it. Christians may have died in other arenas,
but never in Rome.
There were three main types of games that entertained
the ancient Romans, and they were presented like food menus are today, with a
primo, secondo and desert. To get things moving, the primo was usually a
spectacle of beast against beast. Groups
of wild animals that had not been fed for a while, would be set loose to hunt
each other down.
The secondo, or second act, involved a hunter, or
bestiaries as they were called, in a battle between man and beast. The men were
usually armed with a shield and a spear, but sometimes they were just given a
bow and arrows.
The hunters became famous for their daring deeds and
had their own fan clubs. The Roman poet Marcus Valerius Martialis, once wrote
this about his favorite hunter, Meleager, “he killed a boar, then a bear and
then a magnificent lion, and then, taking a long shot at a racing leopard, he
killed him too.” Meleager took first
prize in the games that day.
But there was more to come – the gladiators - the featured event of the program. With trumpets blaring and drums rolling, the
gladiators chosen for that day’s entertainment would take center stage. When
they were all assembled they would parade around the stadium accompanied by the
music of the trumpeters and drummers.
The British historian Michael Grant lists about a
dozen major categories of gladiators. Mostly they were criminals, murders,
robbers, arsonists, men convicted of treason, and prisoners of war that had not
been sold as slaves.
Some of the gladiators were heavily armed with a
large oblong shield to protect their bodies and a helmet with a visor to
protect their heads. On one leg, they wore leather or metal protection and they
carried a sword or lance for a weapon.
Other gladiators were lightly armed with a small
shield, leather protection on both legs and a curved scimitar for a weapon. There
was another, even less protected category that was equipped with a net for the
left hand and a long three-pronged harpoon for the right. The idea was to catch
the opponent in the net and then harpoon him. Sometimes a lasso was substituted
for the net.
Then there were those who wore chainmail and fought
on horseback like medieval knights, and those who fought from chariots, a trick
they learned from the British In the reliefs, mosaics and paintings from Roman
times we see gladiators fighting to the death. With shields raised, swords and
daggers drawn, fishnets and harpoons ready to strike, most ended up dead or
dying in the arena of the coliseum.
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That included female gladiators as well. At one
gladiatorial show that was held during the 1st century to celebrate
the Festival of Satturnalia, women, who had not been trained to use a sword did
battle against groups of dwarfs, giving and receiving wounds and even dying. Not every type of encounter was presented at
every game, each program was designed for the occasion.
One account, written about the games for the
inauguration of the Coliseum, says that 5,000 animals were slaughtered for that
event alone. And an eyewitness to the games staged by the Emperor Trajan to
celebrate the end of the Dacian wars in what is now modern Romania, wrote that
about 11,000 wild and tame animals died during that spectacle.
We look at the Coliseum today and wonder how such
brutality was not just tolerated, but celebrated. And maybe that is the real
purpose of preserving our past – to make us think about ourselves and what we
tolerate and celebrate.
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