Rome's Colosseum opens its underground for the first time
cnn.com
cnn.com
> It is not only the first time in 2,000 years that the area -- described as the "heart" of the building -- has been open; since the underground levels, or "hypogea," were where gladiators and animals waited before going into combat, this is the first time in the monument's history that the public has ever been allowed in.
"A small portion of the hypogea was opened to the public in 2016."
I've visited twice, and on the more recent occasion we found one of the few tours that offered this as part of the tour.
Perhaps we should avoid looking at historical events with the current judgement and ideology.
It was a different world then and execution were pretty normal (so was slavery for example, which US have kept till 1863)
Also, slavery is alive and well today. Just because it’s not called slavery does not make it okay. We are still killing people in mass - it’s just that it’s conveniently hidden from the “civilized” world
You don't want to consider it an historical relique? That's ok, but then don't bother to visit countries that have been aggressive since inception
No, there are things that Romans did better than us today, even looking at them with current lenses, but that are hard to replicate in our times given the complexity of our society, the conflicts, the political systems, and, last but not least, the vastly better education and influence the general population has.
We should learn from past mistakes though.
If we apply basic statistic, deaths/years of activity, in the Colosseum died ~1 thousand humans every year.
It's more or less the number of people shot and killed by the U.S. police every year.
That's what we should do better because, of course, we're not sending people to fight to death or against lions anymore.
To me, that looks like a solved problem.
and existed 2 thousand years ago, one would think that we learned something during the looooong period that separate us from ancient Romans, don't you think?
Wanna look at history with modern eyes?
Why don't we look at modern times with history eyes as well?
I'm looking at history through the eyes of basic arithmetic and logic, a skill mastered by the Greeks well before Rome was founded. Comparing 400,000 deaths among a city of 1,000,000 to 400,000 deaths in a country of 320,000,000 is ridiculous, regardless of each respective groups' motivations and moral context.
I highly doubt Roman methods of law enforcement killed fewer per capita people than modern methods. Not to mention things like crucifying slaves.
That's where you are wrong.
Roman empire was as globalized as ours today, if not more, given the means of transport of their times.
> This wasn't entertainment broadcast to the entire empire, it was a single arena with a little more than 50,000 seats
2 thousands year ago.
still there.
a building in Miami collapsed few days ago. Built in 20th century.
Maybe it isn't simply "an arena with little more than 50,000 seats" but a marvel of human history...
Anyway, shows went on for days, sometimes weeks, all day long, so that anyone could attend them.
So counting the seats in the Colosseum is not the right way to measure how popular the shows were.
> 400,000 deaths among a city of 1,000,000
in 4 hundred years (actually the games lasted for a thousands year, but the peak period is shorter).
mostly slaves brought back to Rome from countries defeated in war.
I've specifically talked about police killings because police is supposed to protect people, not kill them.
What will future historian think of that in your opinion?
If you wanna talk about fatalities in ancient history, you should also take into account the general mortality rate.
Of course in a battle arena people died, but it was probably much less dangerous to fight in the Colosseum than living in Caledonia, on the other side of the Hadrian's wall.
We shouldn't argue of what we don't know. It's an exercise in futility.
«the only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history»
edit: to make it clearer why counting bodies is misleading: gladiators became freemen after 6 years on average, 15-20 fights in total. They earned a lot of money and were popular figures, some of them were immensely popular (think about Spartacus). As free men many of them had enough saved to become owners and trainers and earned a respected position in the society. It wasn't uncommon for a gladiator to stay on the job after becoming a free man because it was an highly rewarding activity. They knew their fate, but they decided to keep fighting anyway.
Now fast forward to 2021 and think about Mike Tyson going back on the ring at the age of 54, even though it could kill him. Would you consider the people watching the match savages because they are paying to watch 2 men punching each other in the face?
I'm surprised that doesn't even have down votes.
Besides that, it isn't necessary to drag the USA into every bad situation that has ever occurred.
If that was not a great similitude is this a good one instead:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_of_U.S._Marines_urinat...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_priso...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_post-invasio...
This are pretty much modern and new example, instead of paying so much attention to what happened 2000 years ago you should consider to fight in order to avoid this things to happen again. Instead of doing some empty consideration on pretty old facts.
Can you at least admit that we, as a species, have grown, because we no longer employ grand scale death pits?
Someone can be offended by both historical atrocities AND the Qatar situation. The first we cannot change, the second we can still have some influence on. I would argue this is something we do more because something like the colosseum exists to remind us, not less.
The simple remark that started this was just someone expressing wonder over how many people must have died there, purely for the entertainment of the masses.
The point that zzzpaz appears to make is that we should be ambiguous to anything that happened in the past, because at the time those things were commonplace.
Surely there is some better word that covers both the amazement about countless colosseum deaths and feeling resentment towards modern day atrocities, but I can't think of one. The fact that these things are not really connected is actually the point I am trying to make.
I agree that there is no reason to judge the past with their "moral lens". Of course the people in ancient Rome (in total) thought it was okay to kill people in the Coliseum - they were the ones doing it and watching it.
Please don't put word in my mouth as I never said what you just mentioned.
If you want speak about history you need to consider the era that we are referring to. So yes, in the ancient time these things were commonplace (Romans, Greeks, Egyptian and Babylonian), in the contemporary era these are not.
You can't use modern time logic to fight against ancient times. Otherwise next time we can spend the afternoon to speak about the code of Hammurabi and how stupid these laws were.
A good start is to learn about the historic periods and understand how to put things into perspective before being offended by random fact far away
I didn't, I specifically wrote "appears to" to prevent doing that.
But where do you get this idea from that nobody is allowed to have any kind of opinion on past events, when that opinion is colored by modern day standards? This is not an objective historical essay we are writing here, it's just random comments on the internet.
Nobody is "fighting" anything, the Romans are long gone. Also, nobody is "offended" by what they did. As I admitted in another reply, that was not the correct word to use.
It is a bit confusing to me what the point is that you are trying to make, if it is not what I assumed it was.
Is not required to have an opinion on past events based on nowadays standards. Historian do that all the time, they look at the history with objectiveness especially when is far away to avoid to get trigger by random deaths that happen all the time (even nowadays).
So if you want understand the history the worst thing to do is to cry because someone died. You need to understand events and why these things happened and then maybe you can learn something.
I don't think is complicated to understand, but apparently seems to be the case.
If nobody is offended then why are we here discussing about how many people have died in the colosseum? Just enjoy the fact that now you can see more as compared as what we were able to see before.
Maybe you never been there, so just pay a visit and see the magnificence of it. After all, is still around after 2000 years and pretty well conserved.
You appear to argue that there is only one valid attitude when it comes to historic artefacts; trying to understand everything, without any kind of emotional reaction.
That's not what I did when I was there. I'm not a historian nor a student of history. I prefer to be in awe.
You can from your individual point of view of course. But not to argue on historical facts.
> You appear to argue that there is only one valid attitude when it comes to historic artefacts; trying to understand everything, without any kind of emotional reaction.
Unfortunately that's not me, this is how history is analysed to many extend.
Your view of the history is subjective and by definition could be wrong.
Is not that you can't empathize with deaths that occured in the past, is just that you can't portrait your view as historical fact, is just your opinion as valid as anyone else. Since we can't commit to 7 billion different opinions, we've to use fact and logic to analyze history otherwise it will just be a mess.
Roman empire was not a place where people died only. Was a liberal empire, pretty cosmopolitan, high level of personal freedom (was ok to be gay for example) and it has shaped the entire ancient Europe with streets and reliques that some are still in use today (look at the Roman roman aqueducts).
On the other hands they used to enslave and kill people, like any other country and empire has done before and after that.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_anthropogen...
> 10000 people and 30000 animals in the first 100 days. I would guess that millions of lives were lost there.
Nobody was analyzing or defining history here. It was not a judgment on Roman moral code. It was just an observation of the remarkable death rate of one specific geographical area. "Millions" was probably hyperbole, but as far as I know, rigid historical accuracy is not a requirement for posting here.
And modern day ideology does not even play a part in it. I would guess many a Roman could experience a similar sense of amazement, if they ever stopped to think about it.
Well, while is true that many people died in the colosseum (so in the entire history of our planet) what's the point? If was not to analyze or judge their behavior?
If you look at the OP reply on one of my comments you'd see that his intention indeed was to judge their behavior with our lens. Which is wrong. That's it.
Agree to disagree then. Seems like a perfectly reasonable observation to me.
If that's not even enough to give you another metric the Iraqi war killed 460.000 civilians in less than 20 years and it's pretty recent.
> It serves to remind us of a more primitive past and of how far we've come.
This is what you fail to understand as well, they were not primitive by any means. Despite this games the society in Rome during the Roman empire was liberal (go read a book about it), we've killed and we continue to kill much more after the Roman empire and nowadays. The examples above should be enough for you to understand
> We are also specifically dealing with a historic artefact that symbolizes these killings.
It does not symbolize these killings only and was not solely built to host gladiator games. The Colosseum had multiple purposes. There were kind of games with wild animals (lions or African animals) vs man (similar to what nowadays people do in Spain during the Bullfighting) and was also used to stage battles, drama, composition, natural environment simulation and so on.
If your historical sources are Hollywood movies and TV series, of course you are missing something out.
It was a place or entertainment, similar to what today is a Cinema or a theater (indeed it's real name is Flavian Amphitheater)
You keep comparing the colosseum killings to events that transpired over large geographical areas, for different purposes than entertainment. As me and others here have pointed out repeatedly, what makes it special (to us, not to you apparently) is the fact that all those killings happened on a single location.
You cannot measure how primitive a culture is by the amount of people they kill.
To me (and, I would argue, most people), the monument symbolizes specifically those often pointless killings and nothing else. That is what it is famous for.
Unfortunately, your replies regularly border on the insulting. You keep pointing out how the arguments you present are things I "fail to understand" or prove my lack of knowledge of historical events, often telling me to "go read a book", like I'm some rambling child. Meanwhile, you have not told me anything I did not already know.
I'm done with this discussion, as it does not appear to go anywhere. Good luck with your opinions, I'll hold to mine.
I see, so enslaving, torturing, raping Africans and native American was not entertainment right? Was really required to kill 98% of the indigenous population. I understand, that makes sense indeed given your point of view.
> You cannot measure how primitive a culture is by the amount of people they kill.
Oh no? Then what's the metric let's see. You define what's primitive?
> To me (and, I would argue, most people), the monument symbolizes specifically those often pointless killings and nothing else
What do you think and your opinion is useless for the history. The monument was not symbolizing these killings give that was build before the killings happened and was not build for the sole purpose of killing people.
> prove my lack of knowledge of historical events
You proved that yourself I didn't need to do anything.
> Meanwhile, you have not told me anything I did not already know.
Meanwhile, your opinion is wrong even tho you've the right amount of information to understand that these games was normal.
It's like box, extreme sport or anything else like that. The difference is that the violence and the killings were well received by the population as these were normal back then.
Gladiators were not forced to participate to the games, they decided to do out of their own will. Which is totally different from other events where people were not given the choice. If you didn't want to participate to the games, was ok. No freedom for you. If you wished to do so, you had a chance to live free and a chance to die in the arena.
We're in the contemporary era and things that happened in the Nazi time are still relevant. While things that happened in the ancient era are, by definition, ancient.
So if you want speak about history a good start is to try to study it first.
Otherwise next time we're discussing on how aggressive were people in the Neolithic and how stupid were the law in the Code of Hammurabi
it's a myth perpetrated by Hollywood movies that gladiators were slaves sent to die in the Colosseum, in reality they were trained athletes, much like football players in the US today
Of course 2,000 years ago society was very different, perhaps it was more violent, but Iraqi war killed at least 500,000 people in a few years.
More people died there over the next 15 centuries, when the Colosseum wasn't a battle arena anymore and the knowledge of what it was built for was lost, than during the Roman empires that used it also as a fighting pit.
The important part is that "they were not sent to die"
They costed a lot of money to their owners and matches were often just representations of battles, like modern wrestling, not real battles.
It wasn't uncommon to fix matches, they had to provide entertainment, not death.
But more interestingly, many gladiators trainers rented them to fight in the Colosseum and they had insurance policies on their lives, if the gladiator was injuried or died in the fight, there were penalties to pay.
Most of the games were paid for by low level politicians that wanted to make a name for themselves and rented the gladiators from the trainers.
Also the thumbs up/thumbs down it's also a myth, it never existed as a gesture, if the organizer decided to send some gladiator to death because the crowd asked for it, they had to pay the aforementioned penalties to the trainer.
Not surprisingly the organizer had the last word and often times they spared them.
Most of those that died were war slaves already sentenced to death.
It was games, like we intend them today, they also had a referee on the ground.
It was a very modern take on the matter at the times, to the point that we still use the same setup for sports entertainment.
Honestly I don't, not in English, but I'll be back with some if you can wait a couple of days.
I am from Rome, live at walking distance from the Colosseum and visited it many times.
One of my closest friend is a tourist guide there and he's also an historian specialized in roman history. That's were I gathered most of my knowledge.
While I can’t speak for OP, the way I see it is that the athletes were expected to kill each other, so the wording you dispute is just semantics.
Sure, trainers wanted their slave to survive, so they could win the prize money and influence with the king. But that still means they fully acknowledged that the majority of them would die.
the job was fight, like boxers or mma fighters fight today
of course they are able to kill someone else, but that's not their main goal
Very low social status, packed together with criminals... Not even close to American athletes who definitely have social status.
I've said "they were trained athletes" focusing on the trained athletes part, not on their status.
As I've said elsewhere they were mostly war prisoners forced into the fighting career. Of course war prisoners don't have the same rights of citizens.
But they were trained nonetheless, and could compete with modern american athletes in activities that require strength and resistance.
Also, we are discovering more and more evidence that are uncovering secrets or making us reconsider some.of the things we though we knew for certain about gladiators and ancient romans in general.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/bloody-gladiator-f...
Nutritional/sports science has come so far in the past few decades, check the world records of any sport to see the progress... There's absolutely no chance that a Roman age athlete could compete in speed or strength fields. Look at people like Hafthor Bjornsson, steroid fueled giants. These people could not exist in the Roman age
Again, I've specifically mentioned strength and resistance
most records you are referring to were broken thanks to better overall conditions
Bolt can't run as fast as he does today on a dusty track made of pressed clay wearing leather sandals...
> These people could not exist in the Roman age
they would have also probably died before puberty
also: in ancient times sport competition was much more important than today and it was a very serious matter
https://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/february/ancient-athlete...
Different times.
Even if you survived, those claws are not sterile. The inevitable infections would kill you.
You could become a gladiator in one of several ways. Many gladiators had been taken prisoner in one of the numerous wars waged by the Romans. They gave the spectacles a multi-ethric character. Others were ordinary slaves whose owner had sold them to a gladiator manager. Some had been found guilty of a serious crime. None of these people had any rights Free men also became gladiators. These so-called auctorati elected to become gladiators of their on free will. They signed a contract relinquishing their civil rights for a given period. Mary hoped it would make them rich or bring eternal fame and glory. Among them were a number of high-placed officials, such as senators. Emperor Commodus even liked to appear as a gladiator. Gladiators lived in ludi, a cross between a training centre and barracks. Each was trained to become a certain type of gladiator. Life was tough. As a rule gladiators fought twice a year. Few fought more than twenty battles in their career. Many didn't survive beyond the age of thirty.
A gladiator was trained in the ludus by experienced former gladiators. They trained both in the morning and in the afternoon using heavy wooden weapons and a reed shield. Corporal punishment was common practice. Research into the bones of gladiator corpses reveals that they were fed a muscle-enhancing diet consisting largely of barley and beans and rich in minerals.
Right now it's pretty much at the center of a roundabout...
There are lot of things in Rome that were studied and them left underground because it made no sense to expose them in a museum or just to the elements. The Coliseum, on the other hand, has always been above ground.
These are incredibly valuable cultural artefacts, but their value is in their ability to inspire and educate. That can only be done through access. Restricting that access, limiting who is allowed to be educated and inspired inevitably means limiting it's value to society. This is our heritage, not just that of a small privileged elite.
Are you somehow implying that by not destroying the Colosseum, it's equivalent to slaughtering 10,000 people? That's what you are implying right?
Any Roman building has historical significance, which I would argue is worth glorifying.
We have countries like the US that have been bullying and fighting wars around the world since the end of the world war two, yet we're here to discuss how many gladiator and lions were killed two thousands years ago
As always you can't feel how smelly is your breath but you're easy to spot a small dot in someone's eye
Actually, it appears that you are here solely to bring the US into the discussion with every one of your comments. Maybe give it a rest?
So said, is not that hard to understand that the article was about showing something that was hidden before and now is available to everyone to visit. Nobody is hiding or denying what happened there, every Italian school teaches it without propaganda.
Yet, many comments here are about "how so many people died let's not go to visit it". Like this is not even the sense of the article?
These comments brought the political consideration into picture and I'm just showing how weak these are.
You seem to be somewhat pushing at an open door with your comment.
If the fact a lot of people died there is "sad AF", you're probably better off not visiting any sites which were active over 1,500 years ago.
Learning about the past doesn’t mean we think the practices that existed back then were good. For most people it’s about curiosity and understanding how the world of today came to be (and Ancient Rome is an important part of that story in the western world).