Nismes, anciently Nemausis, was formerly a flourishing colony of Romans,
established by Augustus Cæsar, after the battle of Actium. Among its
splendid monuments of antiquity, the amphitheater, being infinitely
better preserved than those of Rome and Verona, is the finest monument
of the kind now extant. It was built in the reign of Antonius Pius, who
contributed a large sum of money toward its erection. It is of an oval
figure, one thousand and eighty feet in circumference, sufficiently
capacious to contain twenty thousand spectators. The architecture is of
the Tuscan order, sixty feet high, composed of two open galleries, built
one over another, consisting each of sixty arcades. The entrance into
the arena was by four great gates, with porticos; and the seats, of
which there were thirty-two rows, sufficient to contain some twenty-five
thousand people, rising one above another, consisted of great blocks of
stone, many of which still remain. Over the north gate, appear two
bulls, in alto-relievo, extremely well executed, emblems which,
according to the usage of the Romans, signified that the amphitheater
was erected at the expense of the people. In other parts are heads,
busts, and other sculptures in bass-relief.
This magnificent structure stands in the lower part of the city, and
strikes the spectator with awe and veneration. The external architecture
is almost entire in its whole circuit. It was fortified as a citadel by
the Visigoths, in the beginning of the sixth century: they raised within
it a castle, two towers of which are still extant, and surrounded it
with a broad and deep moat, which was filled up in the thirteenth
century. In all the subsequent wars to which the city of Nismes was
exposed, it served as the last refuge of the citizens, and sustained a
great number of successive attacks; so that its fine preservation is
almost miraculous.
Silliman says of this amphitheater, that it gives a very exact idea of
the Coliseum at Rome, though it is of course smaller. “It is built,” he
adds, “of limestone in immense blocks, laid in courses with perfect
regularity and without mortar. Mortise holes in the center of the upper
surface of each block show that the Romans employed the same means still
in use, to raise and handle large masses of stone. The accuracy of the
masonry seems the more remarkable if we consider the elliptical form of
the structure, making all the vertical joints converge to the foci of
the ellipse. In one place we saw a line of light through a joint of this
sort where the wall was at least four feet thick. The passages, of
course, all expand outward also, and thus admit of a speedy evacuation
of the amphitheater through its sixty _vomitoriæ_. The dimensions of
this ellipse are four hundred and thirty-seven by three hundred and
twenty-two feet. By walking deliberately around the structure, these
dimensions are more readily realized than by a numerical statement: the
circuit is a quarter of a mile. The cornice was decorated with carving
and finished with a frieze; except in the portion corresponding to nine
or ten arches, the capping and cornice are complete around the entire
circuit. In the part where the cornice is deficient, the Saracens, more
than eleven hundred years ago, erected two towers, which were destroyed
by Charles Martel, and fire applied by him disfigured the amphitheater.
As it was all of stone he could not destroy it, but the wood placed in
its arches and corridors burned as in a furnace. He wished to destroy
the building, which had often been used as a fortress in the numerous
wars that followed the downfall of the Roman empire. He succeeded only
in blackening it with smoke which remains to this day. The heat,
however, caused some portions of the limestone to flake off; but very
little progress was made toward the destruction of the amphitheater. The
building is national property, and the French government has restored
many of the arches, laid anew the pavements, and has taken precautions
to guard against further dilapidation. The exterior of the building is,
indeed, somewhat corroded by time, but had war and violence been
restrained, this noble monument of antiquity would have remained, an
architectural wonder to all future ages. Many of the rows of marble
seats remain entire, and enable the observer perfectly to understand the
whole arrangement. The emperor and his household entered by a lower and
special corridor, and the vestal virgins by a corresponding opening on
the opposite side. The senators and patricians entered higher up, while
the plebeians, entering still higher, occupied the more elevated
positions, and the slaves the uppermost of all. The police also had
their appointed place.
“Projecting outward from the cornice at regular intervals were stones,
pierced with holes six inches or more in diameter, through which passed
poles to sustain the awning, the lower ends of the poles being sustained
by corbel stones projecting from the wall below. The amphitheater had no
other covering but the awning, and this, on occasions of the use of the
building for public games, was stretched upon ropes crossing from side
to side of the arena. This covering secured the spectators from sun and
rain, while it permitted free ventilation. The gladiators entered on one
side of the arena and the wild beasts on the other, and probably the
same rule prevailed when gladiator was to contend with gladiator. Here
man fought his fellow-man, or with the fierce wild beast, to pamper the
cruel appetite for blood. Strange feelings of awe and grandeur are
excited by seeing the vast space which was so often filled with human
beings, and one’s mind runs wild with excitement when he sees in
imagination, the lion’s eye glancing at the grating until he was
enlarged to spring upon his victim. The weeds and grass now grow among
the seats, and green-sward covers the once ensanguined arena. The little
lizards leap from stone to stone, and their brief generations are now
the sole tenants of these ancient piles.”