Worldschooling

Touring the Colosseum in Rome: A Conversation with my Mom a few weeks ago based on our tour.

Jack: What do you want to talk about mom?

Mom: I am processing everything we learned about the Flavian Amphitheater, known as the Colosseum. What do you recall?

Jack: Mostly all the cool stuff we saw when we were touring. Like first seeing the colosseum and walking inside it.

Mom: The colosseum is massive! What was your favorite part?

Jack: Oh yeah! I remember how there was the huge weight that would carry up big beasts for animal fights in the Colosseum! Wasn’t that so cool?

Mom: Can you imagine what it was like to lift the black bears, panthers, lions, elephants and other exotic animals up to the stage? How did they do it, did they pull ropes?

Jack: Don’t you remember that they didn’t really pull ropes that much to bring the animals up? The Romans would actually put a weight that was much more heavy than the beasts on the top of the rope line, and then the animal on the bottom. But the animal would not only be tied to the weight, it would also be connected to the ground! That way, when it was time to bring the beast up to the fighting arena, all the Romans had to do, was undo the rope tying the animal to the ground, and then the bear or lion would be up and ready to fight! So they really did not need to pull ropes for that.

Mom: My favorite part of the colosseum tour was learning about the real purpose of the colosseum; it was all about the politics, not just fun and entertainment for 50,000 spectators 100 days a year. Typically a household would be allowed to visit 3 times a year and they would be allotted 5 free tickets for each game. Tickets were originally made of stone and later would be made from ceramics. Families lived together in multigenerational homes of about 15-20. Who would get to go from the household?

Jack: Oh, well, what is your interactive hypothesis on that pondering question?

Mom: Ok, I’ll answer my own question. Rarely women. The veterans and elders had first priority. Younger men from the household may have been enrolled in the army and away for years at a time. A ticket would guarantee a day of feasting and a shocking series of entertainment.

Jack: yeah, I think they got a lot of free wine, meat and bread on those occasions. Don’t you remember that the colosseum was a lot of times actually used for politics! The emperors and senators would take advantage of all the people to express their ideas with whenever there was an occasion at the colosseum.

Mom: The colosseum was organized by neighborhood and by class. The emperor would enter the stadium from whatever side he was trying to impress.

Jack: Yeah, but remember that the senators and governors of Rome would also have a special walkway! But they only got to be on the outside entries because they were not as important compared to the emperor.

Mom: What types of entertainment did the people see?

Jack: I think there was a lot of gladiator fighting, because that’s what’s the colosseum is mostly known for. But there was also many other things seen there.

Mom: There were circus shows, criminals were executed, famous battles were re-enacted, all in the name of “entertainment”, and surely it was how the Roman Empire showed their power and control. There were no movies or tv after all. Killing really became a spectacle sport, just like in our culture when we see a hero kill a villain in a film. Isn’t it amazing how many men died fighting, whether they were fighting animals or fighting each other? It’s possible that 400,000 men and 1,000,000 animals died there.

Jack: Yeah, pretty creepy! But all we’ve talked about was Roman stuff, what about after the empire fell? What happened to the colosseum? I think I remember learning about some things that happened there after the Romans.

Mom: In the Middle Ages the water supply was attacked by the many conquerors of Rome and a huge percent of the population fled the city. It was chaos. The purpose of the Colosseum changed significantly.

Jack: I remember how the colosseum became like a little town, there were a bunch of crammed houses. Must have been hard to live there knowing that people used to die in the place of your house!

Mom: The Colosseum did become a place where people lived with their workshops, gardens and animals. Ironically, it actually became a cemetery too. It was ransacked for it’s valuable steel bars and even the stone was used to build other monuments around Rome. Multiple earthquakes destroyed parts too. Later it was briefly converted into a fortified castle for a ruling family, the Catholic Church took it over and turned it into a hospital and a quarry and eventually, Mussolini motivated to restore the grandeur of ancient Rome’s monuments.

Jack: In the Christian period, the Vatican took marble, statues, and important artifacts that were held in the Roman colosseum. Guess where they put them? Well, churches! So a bunch of those churches we saw in Rome while we were there maybe had some ancient Roman materials on them! Some could even be from the colosseum!

Mom: I wonder too. There is so much more to learn! We hope that we sparked your interest about the Colosseum.

Here are a bunch of the resources we read:

https://blog.globol.com/en/art/europe/italy/rome/colosseum-history-facts-anecdotes-6
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/secrets-of-the-colosseum-75827047/
https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/colosseum
https://commons.trincoll.edu/historyblog/2012/11/07/mussolinis/