Italy Will Rebuild Colosseum’s Floor
smithsonianmag.com
smithsonianmag.com
I have conflicted feelings about it if we’re discussing the same show. On one hand, many of the contestants are survival experts who relish the challenge, and get regular medical checkups etc. OTOH, they routinely discuss their financial motivations. It feels different from the (morally reprehensible) bum fights of the early internet but I could see the argument for rough equivalence.
Despicable group of humans who went on to do such quality things as stealing body parts of dead babies to try smuggle them into the US.
The best of those shows don't even have a crew on the island - there are statically positioned cameras and the players operate others themselves.
(Spoilers)
* The skill gap between best/worst contestants is portrayed as minimal. In reality, some contestants came in with years of lived experience thriving in the exact environment of the show (like the victor, who had spent years living in Siberia with people native to the region), or are literally paid professionals (like the army survival instructor, who tapped out because he was so successfully surviving he was bored, and didn't need the money), while others come from difficult backgrounds and have picked up wilderness skills only as a hobby or by necessity. When you find out just how large the skill gap was, and how some of these contestants basically never had a chance, it feels completely exploitive and effectively rigged.
* Contestants give "camera confessions" in classic reality TV style, but these take a very dark turn as the show progresses. Going from "Excited to overcome the mental challenge of isolation", to starving, choking through tears "If I can hang on just a few more days I might be able to win the prize money for my family and give them the life I never had" in just a few episodes. If people are out there doing this for pride or because they enjoy the experience, so be it, but it's another thing entirely to dangle a large monetary prize in front of them. It just feels really sick to be watching people who are incredibly vulnerable and literally dying open up about their traumas and making it very clear they are only sticking it out for the cash. Begging to be allowed to stay when they are clearly underweight and at risk for cardiac issues.
* The final episode makes it seem like the 2 remaining contestants are both just hanging by a thread, a literal starvation contest, which would be sad enough. But if you do some research afterward, you find out that while the 2nd place contestant had lost a dangerous amount of weight and was eating rabbit entrails, the winner had 100s of lbs of food stored (including moose and plenty of fish) and had not lost any weight. Hell, the last (gigantic) fish he caught they apparently brought back and used to feed the production camp.
* All this said, the winner of Season 6, Jordan Jonas, is a very interesting (and apparently humble, good natured) guy, and I have enjoyed reading his commentary on the show on reddit and his blog. The show portrays him as lucky in some respects, probably to make him seem more like the other contestants, but he was in fact using a great deal of very specific techniques and knowledge, like how to build an structurally sound/ideal shelter, track/bait/hunt large game, ice fish, or build structures to keep stored food away from other predators. He himself admits the show obviously created a false narrative around his chances to win.
I think the ideal situation would just be to use a tiered prize structure. Where the longer you last the more money you get, but not so much that you're incentivized to stay after it becomes hopeless/dangerous. A 500K 1st prize could easily be split into 150/100/75/50/50/25/25/25 for places 1-8. That way you're always competing for about 25K more, but you're not desperate to hang out or get sent home with nothing.
I would expect the opposite. Nobody wants to see a pro baseball team crush a high school team, they want to see an evenly matched slugfest. The notion of a "fair fight" is deeply ingrained in people.
It sounds remarkably exploitative and horrible.
These are adults and are free to decide for themselves regarding whether to participate, but I am happy to have your summary, so that I don't have to support the production with viewership.
(or rather the UN’s 1957 treaty, since the 1930 one excluded men aged 18-49).
How is voluntary, compensated participation in a TV game show comparable to slavery?
In fact, it is exactly this, with a higher prize, and on TV. The family father who is hiding his frostbites on his feet from the doctor, accepting to be voluntarily handicapped for life (or dead right there) in hope his children will survive, he’s not free to work. Plus you don’t organize hobos to fight just for the show. You can get hurt in military or in oil, but at least you are being useful to something. Being a gladiator to willing die on the TV arena, 1500 years after the Romans quit doing it, we can’t let that happen.
I don't remember the numbers, but even the non winners are paid fairly well.
The critical assumption...
And reading about how most of these outdoor reality shows are "really" made, it's mostly forced drama long enough for the shot, then surrounded by medics and outdoors experts the minute they need help.
That said, as things like coastlines and rivers changed, settlement patterns evolved, and the post-Imperial city of Rome changed size and political importance, parts of the city that had been inhabited in ancient times did empty out and came to be dominated by abandoned ruins, some of which were quarried for their marble, others left to be buried by sediment and detritus.
I think a more apt comparison here is something like what happened to Detroit, but more so and over a longer period. A good overview using the example of the Forum can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Forum#Medieval
Or "infamy". Between gladiator and slave fights to death, executions, and martyrs, it's not more glorious than a concentration camp would be...
Look at structures such as the Great Wall of China, which according to Wikipedia[1] estimates say hundreds of thousands, up to a million perished during the construction. I’ve never been, but I doubt there is a lot of “wow we were so awful for building this” going on in the tourists centers. Maybe I’m wrong. Potentially the Cultural Revolution had that impact.
Also, their raids will conflict massive damage to local populations (pillaging, plundering and rape).
So, yeah..... you make it like it was some kind of 'chivalrous' game between nobles/elites, while it was not at all.
Locals didn't see it as merely "replacing some elite with another" any more than the Nazi Germany winning the war and establishing someone as the "President of the US" would be seen as that.
Sure, in the end life goes on, but there are many aspects that change, and domestic versus invading elites are seldom the same...
That's if we exclude the mass slaughters at the time, or the treatment of local ethnicities as second class citizens...
Well, the weren't awful to begin with.
Whether succesful or not in the end, they built it to avoid Mongol and Manchu raids and invasions, and thus for saving their cities and their lives.
So, people perished are more like "people perished in acts of fortification / defense preparations" than "people killed willy nilly for the entertainment of the emperor and the viewers in the arena".
This doesn't take away from your larger point, which stands regardless of whether ten thousand or a hundred thousand or a million died.
[1] I think I'll remove those two references from the article, the revision is currently https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Great_Wall_of_Chi...
People die fighting wars.
Now you would have it much worse if you were a slave at a silver mine, that would have been the worst fate for a slave - it would be a certain death sentence.
Also slaves in a city were much better off in general than slaves working on farms.
That's life expectancy with high infant mortality included. Life expectancy for those who made it to age 10 was around 50.
Not really: Numbers like that are low because high levels of infant mortality brought the average down. If you lived past that age, going into your 50's was pretty much the norm. So the gladiators were still dying 20+ years before "normal"
In short, if other Romans had to pass one high-mortality period in their childhood, gladiators survive high childhood mortality only to be thrust into another period of high mortality. Twice the hurdle to overcome in order to have a shot at a reasonable lifespan.
Taking infant mortality into account. Life expectancy at 25 would be much higher (e.g. if you've made it to 25, you'd be statistically expected to make it to 50-60 or so).
"However, when infant mortality is factored out, life expectancy is doubled to the late-50s. If a Roman survived infancy to their mid-teens, they could, on average, expect near six decades of life"
In general, child mortality ignored, life expenctacy hasn't changed that much through the millenia. Modern sanitary practices and quality of life (running water, etc.) and to a much lesser degree modern medicine gave us around 15-20 years more.
I recently read a paper on excavation of two burial sites in Southeast Moravia, one of the centers of the Great Moravia realm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Moravia). One of those burial sites spanned 9th-10th century, while the other was about 2 centuries younger.
The age profiles of the dead were rather different. The earlier cemetery had only a few remains over 37, while for the latter, the drop-off age was about 48. It seems that the more stable conditions of the High Middle Ages (including some improvement in agriculture) gave people about an extra decade to live.
Of course, this was Central Europe, very underdeveloped in comparison with the ancient civilizations in the Mediterranean.
Gladiators rarely fought to the death.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Theatre_of_Orange
I wondered if emperor Augustus could imagine his statue would overlook such an event centuries later.
So what exactly put an end to these inhumane shows? Did the arena become destroyed in a fire or was sacked and plundered, or did the populace lose its taste for gore and grow a conscience or something in that direction? Or was it that these shows went on for the full life of the Roman Empire and yet no following generation and municipality picked it up again and or didn't know how to operate the thing when the empire fell.
(Which was pretty much at the end of the Roman Empire and the city was sacked a few years later.)
Like with GPS and the internet, innovations from the military sector slowly spread to civil society. By 397, trousers, in all their odiousness, were becoming so common that brother-emperors Honorius and Arcadius (of the Western and Eastern empires, respectively) issued an official trouser ban. The ban is cited in a code named for their father, Theodosianus, which read: “Within the venerable City no person should be allowed to appropriate to himself the use of boots or trousers. But if any man should attempt to contravene this sanction, We command that in accordance with the sentence of the Illustrious Prefect, the offender shall be stripped of all his resources and delivered into perpetual exile.”
“What the ban basically does is that it bans civilians from wearing a military outfit in the capital,” says Elm, “so one could see it as an indirect way to make it easy to distinguish civilians from military men at a time where tension was high.” Four years prior, Emperor Valens had been killed in battle within Roman borders, and a third of the army had been wiped out. So banning trousers could have been a way to make sure that the capital was easier to police, and that fighters were kept out.
The ban could also be read as the desperate attempt of late-period emperors to cling to a sense of Roman identity at a time where the empire had become a melting pot of traditions, after hundreds of years of expansion and cultural appropriation. Long hair and flashy jewels soon joined boots and pants as forbidden fashion.
“Barbarian influence on fashion was something that emperors wanted to control, but then their own bodyguards, which presumably they trusted, were barbarians,” says Elm. “So rather than anti-barbarian, they were mostly anti-barbarian-identity.” Restoring concepts such as “purity” and “identity” is not uncommon in fading empires—authoritarian ways to make rulers feel in control at home in the face of external weakness.
Indeed. The Roman empire was not really "anti-barbarian" (except in its final throes): the Roman Emperorl considered himself to be the ruler of the whole world and all people in it, so the "us vs them" mentality was weaker than we may think. For instance, whenever Rome conquered some province, it usually granted citizenship to the local ruling class, so as to foster assimilation. Also, for a really long time barbarians were accepted at the "frontier" (limes) and sent to provinces that needed manpower, or to the army (which allowed them to become citizens, once discharged). Things only started to get out of hand after the battle of Adrianopolis (378), when the limes became unguarded and basically all Goths, displaced by the Huns, swarmed across the empire.
Greek culture was much more insular. Greek poleis really considered themselves to be superior to anyone who did not speak their language (which is what "barbarian" actually means). And, while they did invest in colonies, they were never really interested in conquering territories where other cultures were already present. Needless to say, this kind of attitude does not lead to burgeoning territorial acquisition.
Romans were much more aggressive and warmongering, but they also showed some degree of acceptance of the cultures they assimilated. They allowed provinces to keep some of their pre-existing laws. They were fine with people worshipping their non-Roman gods, as long as they also recognized the divinity of the emperor. And, as I said, they routinely employed barbarians at all levels of their society (not just for slavery, as it is sometimes assumed).
> "they are now your subjects"
Nope, they were always the subjects of the emperor. That's the point of calling yourself an emperor. And it's not limited to Rome: the Persian and Chinese emperors also claimed their power to be universal.
[1] That was also true in Republican era. There's even a running joke in the Asterix comics series, where the chief of the Gallic village recurringly says that Caesar offered him a seat in the Senate if he surrendered.
More seriously, possibly early culture wars, trousers being an un-Roman, foreign innovation.
The collapse of Byzantine rule in Italy led the pope to ask the Carolingians for protection from the Lombards, and the pope got control of (most of) the ex-Exarchate of Ravenna in return, renamed the Papal States. The Republic of Venice gained independence from the Byzantine Empire at roughly the same time, and grew into one of the most dominant powers of the Middle Ages, eventually managing to conquer the Byzantine Empire in the Fourth Crusade. Other parts of Northern Italy also developed large, powerful merchant republic city-states throughout the Middle Ages: Amalfi, Genoa, Pisa, Ancona, Gaeta, Ragusa (although that was actually on what is now Croatian coastline).
I will point out that, throughout the Middle Ages, the largest, richest, and most powerful cities in Western Europe would have been these Italian city-states. They absolutely would have been able to fund that size of show--after all, these are the cities that patronized the arts and eventually the Italian Renaissance.
This influence of the city's bishop (aka pope, still elected in an utterly informal process by the citizenry for much of the middle ages) reliably prevented the development of stable power structures in the city, because papal succession was so important outside that whenever an imbalance between roman "families of power" was developing the weaker sides were immediately supported by outsiders (the stronger side would not be open to outside influence). Outsiders like the seemingly endless succession of German kings that went to Rome with an army hoping to get emperor status in exchange for helping the next pope into his job, but also by many others (e.g. Normans in what is now southern Italy).
Imagine what the District of Columbia would be like if elections routinely involved violence, war between US states wasn't unheard of and (kind of like the inverse of the US Senate) nobody outside of DC had a vote for the presidency.
Perhaps collectively? The Colosseum killed what, order 1k ppl/yr? Peak slave trade through Genoa and Venice each seems to be mid-to-low order 1k ppl/yr?[1] And that's with women and children being common. Even Venice had a population an order of magnitude down from peak Rome - they'd all fit in the Circus Maximus. And its total slave population was two orders down, at a few thousand, majority women. So I don't quite see those cities individually being able to even afford the dead, let alone the rest of it. There looks a gap of maybe one or two orders of magnitude?
[1] https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D8610XH4 /The Black Sea Slave Population/
Some games would continue after that into the 5th century, anyway. Still, it was on the way out before the Empire fell in the West. The origins of gladiatorial combat are disputed, but it's tied to the military and religious rites of the Roman people specifically, and long predated the imperial era. It probably ties back into the human sacrifice themes common to the Indo-European religions. It was a practice alien to most of the peoples in the empire, and was used as a means of asserting imperial authority.
In the 3rd/4th century, we have the empire under strain economically which gives real-world pressure to curtail the games. Demographics are shifting and there are a lot of culturally non-Roman citizens in the empire, including emperors. At the same time, Christianity was on the rise. It erased the ancient religious justifications, and created new religious objections. Once Christianity becomes cemented as the state religion it was pretty much done -- Christian martyrs being thrown to the lions in the Colosseum was an old meme even then.
(a) "history as generally accepted" (positively) or
(b) "history as generally accepted" (but negatively, when implying that the generally accepted version doesn't tell the real story).
Others (and the Circus Maximus before it was taken over by the Frangipani) were simply saved from getting used as a quarry by getting incorporated in-place as structural elements for new, well, shacks, as documented by the many, many square holes hewn into the formerly flat stone surfaces. Square holes for holding wooden beams I suppose. The (still in use!) appartment on top of the Theatre of Marcellus give an idea of how that went. In this case, they are the outcome of a slow fortress->palace->middle class residential transition.
You might want to check out the Hardcore History podcast by Dan Carlin, episode "Painfotainment". It has some ideas as to why that happened.
There are arguments on both sides. We don't generally repaint Ancient Greek marble statues, for example.
This may sound childish but I'm dead serious.
They wouldn't even have to do all of it, just one third would at least show us what we think it used to look like!
It’s quite different from patching up however we can something that was left to rot for centuries.
That’s what makes the Pantheon so amazing. It’s easy to forget it’s that old when you’re standing inside, because the structure is still so sound!
But the answer is pretty easy: we don't restore these things because we're never sure if we're doing it right. Think of it as giving everyone the raw data and letting them fill in.
I'm not sure the "potential value" of having ruins is really higher than just redoing a nice building at some point...
Wow. You might want to check history again, or you have a very broad(to the point of meaningless) definition of civilisation.
Anyway, some other point: I for one enjoy certain old ruins much more, than most modern buildings. And even though I would like to see them in their former glory, I know that in most cases this would be increadibly hard, or just impossible, unless you just want a cheap movie requisite.
Which is a long way of saying "You think it has low value as it stands, and high value as something else, but you don't have the wallet to buy it from the guys currently holding it" which is a long way of saying "People's tastes differ and you're in the minority".
But if you really think about it most nice monuments visited by tourists in any city, like churches, temples are actually buildinga mostly well restored and currently used in some way.
Colosseum is just a bunch of ugly ruins. Visiting Colosseum was one the most underwhelming experience of my life and I've travelled quite a bit. just build something nice Instead
This is pretty much the same thing on a societal level. Also consider that movies & videogames you mention would have no idea of what to put in them if things like this hadn't been preserved. If the Colosseum had been fully demolished after the fall of the Roman empire, no CGI would have been able to recreate it for your enjoyment in the latest AAA game.
Get it ? Coleseum - Linoleum :)
And those Pyramids, those things are showing their age, right ?
Don't even get me started on the Parthenon.
But I've become a lot more accepting of the practise the more I've learnt. I don't know much about the Colosseum's history, but I'm sure over the many years it was in operation parts of it would have been being rebuilt and extended. Arguably in most cases the original monument was destroyed long before anybody in modern society touched it.
I also started to realise that without a huge amount of restoration most of my favourite historical places would be almost unrecognisable. For example, if you look at Stone Henge before and after the restoration work you'll see what I mean.
It's also true that without occasional upkeep and maintenance many of these monument wouldn't survive long given the number of visitors they attract each year. So if we need to do some amount of restoration anyway, why not also restore what was lost before modern times?
I think so long as we are respectful and honour the character of what was built before we arrived it's probably fine to do our best to restore what we believe was once there. After all in most cases we're simply continuing what would be a long history of modifications and restorations. If it wasn't for those modifications and restorations we wouldn't be able to enjoy these sites in the first place so we probably have some duty to continue that work for future generations.
Imagine trying to understand the culture of NASCAR a thousand years from now by looking at some rusted out car frames in a case.
The best part of floating museums like the USS Bowfin is actually standing there inside the cramped corridor, everything around you (at least appearing) ready for service... you can almost imagine you are there.
Obviously it works for Italy and huge number of people so why not?
Prices in Italy are balanced and not even that bad. The ticket to the colosseum is 16€ and includes the entire park nearby. 16€ for the main attraction in one of the most visited countries in the world is pretty reasonable.
What about Egypt? Could you elaborate?
One of the guides also mentioned how excavations and restorations always take forever so that they’re employed forever.
Note: I was in Cairo as part of an official delegation (i.e., my country paid for my travel, and the sponsor organization in Egypt paid for my bed + board). At that time, I couldn't have afforded either.
Indonesia has a similar policy—higher prices for foreign tourists—but when I visited Borobudur and Prambanan I was pleasantly surprised to see that the higher price I paid did buy me extra amenities: a separate entrance point and some refreshments. Sure, the Indonesians came out better from that deal, but at least I didn't feel ripped off.
The few friends who could afford an AirAsia ticket were annoyed by the high entrance fee that many South East Asian attractions charge to foreigners, regardless of whether you’re from Vietnam or Iceland.
When the price difference is preposterous I skip the attraction altogether as a matter of principle. The Yogyakarta attractions you mentioned are the perfect example with the 25 USD entrance fee for Prambanan vs 5 USD for locals.
Because even though tourism is important, I never had this impression.
That’s a shame. Simulated gladiator shows would be a HUGE draw.
Right now, the Colosseum isn’t much to look at, just a bunch of rubble. But imagine if they had actors recreate some of the battles they had there. Maybe throw in some holographic lions. Every young boy around the world would be demanding to visit Rome.
I would argue the recreated Globe Theater in London is a better tourist attraction than the Colosseum, on account of it being a more immersive experience.
It has around 15 floors, looks amazing, it appears well built based on what I could tell.
It’s going to house hundreds if not thousands of humans, will be perfectly equipped to handle climatization, waste disposal, cleanliness. This is an amazing feat, and one that I personally did not really give proper thought.
Basically what I’m arguing is that any modern office building is so much more impressive than the colliseum was, maybe even at inception. More specifically, to answer your question directed at OP, I’m hard pressed not to find anything modern that’s less impressive than the Colosseum.
I’m interested in what you find so special about the bunch of rubble that warrants lack of intervention?
Edit: really I had no idea this would bring me to negative points. Would love someone explaining what I’m missing in these downvotes.
- the Colosseum is a remarkable building for its time, only a handful of large buildings of that age are still standing
- even by modern standards, the remaining architecture is striking IMO
- objectively, 7 million people per year visit the Colosseum, making it one of the most popular sites in the world. So even if you don't think it's special on at least some metrics, you're wrong by definition.
Why would it be such a struggle to assume good faith even with the unedited original? It was a politely expressed confusion over why the Colosseum received so much attention. No guideline transgression, just an opinion.
I downvoted you and I'll give some insight as to why.
- "I’m hard pressed not to find anything modern that’s less impressive than the Colosseum". Yeah, if we judge the colosseum by today's standards, it's not impressive. What's impressive is that it is 2000 years old.
- "I’m interested in what you find so special about the bunch of rubble that warrants lack of intervention?" It isn't a pile of rubble. It's a full standing building in reasonable shape. There are plenty of piles of rubble that are 2000 years old and they simply don't get much attention, because they are piles of rubble.
- When you go to the colosseum, you get a sense of what life was like 2000 years ago in one of the greatest empires the world has ever known, and the one upon which Western Civilization is built. The historical value is probably more remarkable than the technical achievement.
- There are very few structures of this scale that are this old and in reasonable shape.
- I've been to the colosseum and it isn't even my favorite ancient building in Rome. That honor goes to the Pantheon, which I think is a far more impressive technical achievement. I've also been to Petra, the Pyramids, Hagia Sophia and the temples at Luxor and I personally like all of those better. But that doesn't make the colosseum bad or meaningless.
- The 15 floor office building in your neighborhood is unlikely to last 2000 years without much maintenance. It is certainly not a huge achievement for it's day. It probably has little cultural value compared to other buildings in your city.
I try to use downvotes sparingly, only for posts that have violated the guidelines, particularly when the post is mean or dismissive.
If it's an opinion I disagree with, I might reply, but I won't otherwise downvote
It's my opinion (and feel free to disagree with me) that saying that your local 15 floor office building that was built a year ago is more impressive than the Colosseum doesn't add much to the conversation.
To my mind, his question surfaced some good observations from others on what actually is impressive about the Colosseum versus a modern quotidian office building, and deeper insights about historical versus modern accomplishments. Unfortunately, he may be discouraged from raising such an interesting contrast in future
Also the complex system of elevators and trap doors it had below the fake stage floor is more complex than any broadway stage today. Granted the stage floor has not survived, but plenty of the under-the-floor mechanisms are still there.
Rome on the other hand is an amazing city, one of the top in the world if not a bit crowded.
And real ones would be a HUGER draw!
I bet UFC would pay them top dollar to rent it out for a night.
[1] https://www.rerumromanarum.com/2016/08/olimpiadi-di-roma-196... (in Italian, but it has pictures)
as someone who has actually visited the Colosseum I can tell you that it’s so much more than a “bunch of rubble”.
I agree with you. I happen to live in a country with castles here and there, and I would love for a more interactive experience when I go there.
Also, having visited Rome and the Colloseum multiple times, I’m always more impressed at other buildings or some hidden corner than by this particular attraction.
The Colloseum, reworked in its original spirit and form, used as an entertainment arena, would be heaps more entertaining than it is now.