The Ancient Eternal City

Wandering through the Forum, I came upon the home of the Vestal Virgins.  They were females from elite families, chosen between age 6 and 10 to serve Vesta, one of Rome's chief goddesses.  The virgins enjoyed luxurious accommodation and many grew wealthy through influential contacts, but there was a catch...they had to serve for 30 years, and they COULD NOT SHAG during that period under any circumstances.  If they did, their male lover was flogged to death and the (no longer) virgin was buried alive, since their blood could not be shed.  After their 30 year hitch was over, then they could get married, still in early middle age, and many did, into prominent families.  Massive carrot and stick setup here.  This is a statue of one of the virgins...they had high status in Rome.

 

 

Climbing the Palatine Hill, Rome's swish 'hood two thousand years ago.  The emperors had their palace here; Augustus lived here all his life, even before assuming the purple.  You can see the Arch of Titus and the Colosseum from here, both constructed about 65 years after Augustus.

Glowering skies in front, sun in back, made for a nice shot of Rome.

This is a reproduction of a painting depicting the scene at the Colosseum in its heyday.  It's almost all brick now...back then it was almost all marble.  Seats were free, but they were rigidly assigned according to your standing.  The common folk sat up in the Uecker seats near the top.  The corporate and government bigwigs got the ancient equivalent of luxury boxes midway up.  Knights sat down in the lower sections.  Blow this pic up and you'll see that the blokes are doing typical bloke things...drinking, wagering, arguing, talking smack.  The donni are a bit grossed out by all of it.  But they still show up to see gladiators fight each other, or wild beasts.  The critters frequently came out poorly.  When Titus dedicated the Colosseum in AD 80, the games lasted 100 days and resulted in the deaths of at least 5000 lions, tigers, and other critters.  Sometimes the critters got the best of things...at least temporarily.  They were used to dispatch condemned criminals, frequently at lunch break during the all day "festivities".  BTW the meat from the deceased critters was given to the public. 

A view of the interior of the Colosseum.  The floor of the arena was usually a wood base with sand on top.  The subterranean passageways visible at lower left were used as warmup areas for gladiators and as holding pens for animals in cages.  When the critters' turns in the arena came, their cages were hauled up to ground level by pulleys and they were then released into the arena.  The painting illustrates this nicely.  At lower right are a few reconstructed seats.  Almost all the original marble seats were cannibalized and recycled into other building construction between about 500 and 1500.  The Colosseum was badly damaged by earthquakes in the late 4th century AD; then Alaric and his Goths sacked the place in 410 when they invaded the city.  Restoration didn't start until Napoleon captured the area about 200 years ago, and is still ongoing.

When I first entered the Colosseum I had the odd feeling of "So?  Just another stadium."  The curving, high ceilinged concourses are just like countless baseball and football stadiums in the US and elsewhere.  The difference, of course, is that the Colosseum was the first such stadium...by well over a millennium!  In the US a 40 year old stadium is ready to be replaced; one aged 100 is a relic.  The Colosseum, opened 1933 years ago, is on a different time plane altogether.  By the way, it had a retractable canvas roof!  It was used for about 500 years until the barbarians let it go to seed.

This is gate 53 at the Colosseum.  There were 80 gates; 76 for the spectators, the other four for the emperor, his entourage, and the folks putting on the show.  Every ticketholder was assigned a gate.  With staircases throughout, the arena could be emptied of 50-60 thousand people in a few minutes.