each end, and one in the middle of each side; and the same arrangement
was followed in all the other amphitheatres. By what names these gates
were called, and whether these names were special for each particular
building, or general for all, is a question still undecided, and also
which was the state entrance. It is commonly said that in the Colosseum
the state entrance was on the northern side, next the Esquiline Hill,
because there is no number over that arch as there is over the other
arches, but this was probably the case with all the four entrances;
the other three gates are destroyed. The excavations in 1875 have been
supposed to shew that the passage on the southern side towards the
Cœlian did not lead direct to the palace of Commodus, but was carried
round the outer line of the building to the south-east end, near S.
Clemente; the natural entrance from the palace of Nero would be from
the gate at the east end, and not on the north side. The names of the
gates are not easily fixed; one was called Porta Libitinensis, and from
this door the bodies of those who were killed were carried out, as we
learn from Lampridius in the life of Commodus[224]. They were carried
out of this gate on a special bier provided for the purpose, called
_sandapila_, as is mentioned by Juvenal[225], and explained by the old
Scoliast. This name is sometimes written _sanavivaria_, as in the _Acta
Martyrum Felicita et Perpetua_[226]. The word _libitina_ signifies death,
or a funeral, or a bier; it is used also by Horace in his Odes[227],
and explained by the Scoliast in the same manner, and by Martial in
his Epigrams[228]. It appears that the name of _sandapilaria_ and
_libitinensis_ were synonymous. Another gate was called Porta Prætoria,
probably that at the south-east end, opening from the road to the
Vivarium at the Prætorian Camp. Another, Porta Sacra, probably that at
the north-west end, opening to the Via Sacra. The Meta Sudans was close
to this gate, and was supplied with water by tubes, as Seneca mentions in
his Epistles[229]. His fifty-seventh letter is full of lamentation for
the fate of the athletes.
The name of _cochlea_ is given to one of the doors of the amphitheatre,
which led from the _cavea_ to the arena. This name is used by Varro[230],
and has puzzled all the commentators; it need hardly be said that
_cochlea_ is literally “a snail,” and the name has been supposed to
apply to some narrow doorway; but the name is well known in mediæval
Latin as applied to a winding or newel staircase, popularly called a
corkscrew-staircase, and there are two such staircases leading from
the substructures or _cavea_ to the level of the arena, one on either
side, at the south-east end of the great central passage in the Flavian
amphitheatre, to which there can be no doubt that this name was applied.
Trajan’s column is frequently called _columna cochlea_, because there is
such a staircase inside of it.
THE GAMES IN THE ARENA.
The importance attached to the public amusements, both by the people and
by the emperors, appears extraordinary to modern ideas. Caligula[231] was
present from morning to evening, and had a series of the various kinds
of hunting in different countries exhibited, such as the hunts of the
Africans and of the Trojans; on these occasions, the arena was strewed
with red and green foliage. At this period Suetonius also mentions that
the people assembled at midnight for the shows of the following day,
when they were gratuitous[232]. The Emperor Claudius himself would go at
daybreak to the amphitheatre, and see the wild beasts fed, and again at
mid-day[233]. The same practice is mentioned by Pliny as used in the time
of Nero[234]. Petronius also mentions the custom for two old negroes to
sprinkle the arena with scents from small bottles, which they brought for
the purpose[235]. Tacitus gives an account of the games performed under
his own direction in the time of Claudius[236].
“During the same consulship, in the year of Rome eight hundred,
the secular games were celebrated, after an interval of
sixty-four years since they were last solemnized in the reign
of Augustus.
“Being at that time one of the college of fifteen, and invested
with the office of prætor, it fell to my province to regulate
the ceremonies. Let it not be imagined that this is said from
motives of vanity. The fact is, that in ancient times the
business was conducted under the special directions of the
quindecemviral order, while the chief magistrates officiated
in the several ceremonies. Claudius thought proper to revive
this public spectacle. He attended in the circus, and, in his
presence, the Trojan game was performed by the youth of noble
birth. Britannicus, the emperor’s son, and Lucius Domitius, who
by adoption took the name of Nero, and afterwards succeeded to
the empire, appeared, with the rest of the band, mounted on
superb horses. Nero was received with acclamations, and that
mark of popular favour was considered as an omen of his future
grandeur.”
APPENDIX.
SCAURUS.
The meaning of the word Scaurus is “club-footed,” and no doubt the first
member of the family had that peculiar formation of the foot; but this
family was a branch of the great Gens Æmilia, one member of that family
built the Basilica Æmilia in the Forum Romanum, and another was one of
the second Triumvirate. The Scaurus who built this great amphitheatre
was a man of enormous wealth, and a great builder; he is mentioned by
several of his contemporaries, of whom one was Cicero; he was an ædile,
and was noted for his great liberality in his ædileship. His father was
an orator, and was consul in the year of Rome 688 (B.C. 35); his mother,
when a widow, married Sylla the dictator. Pliny mentions him several
times in his Natural History[237]; he calls his buildings _insane_
works, on account of the enormous sum expended upon them, which must
have exceeded the equivalent of two millions sterling of our money. The
temporary amphitheatre which he built would hold 80,000 persons, it was
three storeys high, and had 360 marble columns in it; these were on the
ground-floor, and it is mentioned that those on the first floor were of
glass[238], a luxury before unheard of (and apparently not repeated),
on the upper storey they were of gilt wood. Pliny thus describes this
building of Scaurus:—
“Mosaic pavements were first introduced in the time of Sylla;
at all events, there is still in existence a pavement[239],
formed of small segments, which he ordered to be laid down
in the Temple of Fortune, at Præneste. Since his time, these
mosaics have left the ground for the arched roofs of houses,
and they are now made of glass. This, however, is but a recent
invention; for there can be no doubt that, when Agrippa
ordered the earthenware walls of the hot baths, in the thermæ
which he was building at Rome, to be painted in encaustic,
and had the other parts coated with pargetting, he would have
had the arches decorated with mosaic in glass, if the use of
them had been known; or, at all events, if from the walls of
the theatre of Scaurus, where it figured, as already stated,
glass had by that time come to be used for the arched roofs of
apartments. It will be as well, therefore, to give some account
also of glass[240].”
“It may possibly be observed, that this was because marble was
not then introduced. Such, however, is not the fact; for in
the ædileship of M. Scaurus, three hundred and sixty columns
were to be seen imported, for the decorations of a temporary
theatre, too, one that was destined to be in use for barely a
single month. And yet the laws were silent thereon, in a spirit
of indulgence for the amusements of the public, no doubt. But
then, why such indulgence? or how do vices more insidiously
steal upon us than under the plea of serving the public? By
what other way, in fact, did ivory, gold, and precious stones,
first come into use with private individuals?
“Can we say that there is now anything that we have reserved
for the exclusive use of the gods? However, be it so, let us
admit of this indulgence for the amusements of the public;
but still, why did the laws maintain their silence when the
largest of these columns, pillars of Lucullan marble, as much
as eight-and-thirty feet in height, were erected in the atrium
of Scaurus? a thing, too, that was not done privately, or in
secret; for the contractor for the public sewers compelled
him to give security for the possible damage that might be
done in the carriage of them to the Palace.... Already had L.
Crassus, the orator, he who was the first to possess pillars of
foreign marble, and in this same Palatium too, received from
M. Brutus, on the occasion of a dispute, the nickname of the
‘Palatine Venus,’ for his indulgence in this kind of luxury.
The material, I should remark, was Hymetian marble, and the
pillars were but six in number, and not exceeding some twelve
feet in height.... These particulars, and others in the sequel,
will shew that we are so far improved; for who is there at the
present day that has, in his atrium, any such massive columns
as these of Scaurus[241]?” ...
“I will not permit, however, these two Caiuses, or two Neros,
to enjoy this glory even, such as it is; for I will prove that
these extravagant follies of theirs have been surpassed, in
the use that was made of his wealth by M. Scaurus, a private
citizen. Indeed, I am by no means certain that it was not the
ædileship of this personage that inflicted the first great blow
upon the public manners, and that Sylla was not guilty of a
greater crime in giving such unlimited power to his step-son,
than in the proscription of so many thousands. During his
ædileship, and only for the temporary purposes of a few days,
Scaurus executed the greatest work that has ever been made
by the hands of man, even when intended to be of everlasting
duration; his theatre, I mean. This building consisted of
three storeys, supported upon three hundred and sixty columns;
and this, too, in a city which had not allowed without some
censure one of its greatest citizens to erect six pillars of
Hymetian marble. The ground-storey was of marble, the second
of glass, a species of luxury which ever since that time has
been quite unheard of, and the highest of gilded wood. The
lowermost columns, as previously stated, were eight-and-thirty
feet in height; and, placed between these columns, as already
mentioned, were bronze statues, three thousand in number. The
area of this theatre afforded accommodation for eighty thousand
spectators; and yet the theatre of Pompey, after the city had
so greatly increased, and the inhabitants had become so vastly
more numerous, was considered abundantly large, with its
sittings for forty thousand only. The rest of the fittings of
it, what with Attalic vestments, pictures, and the other stage
properties, were of such enormous value that, after Scaurus
had conveyed to his Tusculan villa such parts thereof as were
not required for the enjoyment of his daily luxuries, the loss
was no less than three hundred millions of sesterces, when the
villa was burnt by his servants in a spirit of revenge....
C. Curio, who died during the civil wars, fighting on the
side of Cæsar, found, to his dismay, that he could not, when
celebrating the funeral games in honour of his father, surpass
the riches and magnificence of Scaurus—for where, in fact,
was to be found such a step-sire as Sylla, and such a mother
as Metella, that bidder at all auctions for the property of
the proscribed? Where, too, was he to find for his father, M.
Scaurus, so long the principal man in the city, and one who
had acted, in his alliance with Marius, as a receptacle for
the plunder of whole provinces? Indeed, Scaurus himself was
now no longer able to rival himself; and it was at least one
advantage which he derived from this destruction by fire of so
many objects brought from all parts of the earth, that no one
could ever after be his equal in this species of folly. Curio,
consequently, found himself compelled to fall back upon his own
resources, and to think of some new device of his own.”
The points on which this account agrees with the Colosseum are so
remarkable, that there can hardly be a doubt that the enormous building
of Scaurus was on this site, and the old tufa walls of the substructure
must have belonged to his building. This was the earliest amphitheatre,
and in none of the other amphitheatres built in imitation of it do we
find similar old tufa walls, although in other respects some are exact
copies of the Colosseum.
AMPHITHEATRE OF NERO.
Some persons interpret a passage in the Annals of Tacitus[242] to mean,
that the amphitheatre of Nero was in the Campus Martius, but this is only
a wrong interpretation of the passage; he is speaking of the great wooden
amphitheatre which Julius Cæsar built there, and which was repaired and
restored to use in the second consulate of Nero (A.D. 56). He mentions
foundations and beams only, and especially says it was of little
importance. The time of Nero was a great building era in Rome, and he no
doubt repaired all the public buildings that required it.
THE GREAT DRAIN.
There is considerable difficulty at the present time (in 1876) in
obtaining correct information on the subject of the great drain, which
carried off the water from the substructures. The entrance to it from
the south-east end, under the entrance for animals, has been mentioned
before, with the sluice-gate, which lifted up like a portcullis, and
the grooves for it remain. Openings into it, covered with modern iron
gratings, are seen in the floor of the passage, and across the mouth of
it is an ancient iron grating. This great and deep drain carried the
water in a straight line beyond the outer wall of the building, and
just at this point a steam engine was placed in the years 1874 and 1875
to pump out the water, which gushed out of the earth a little further
on, in the direction of the church of S. Clement, with a divergence to
the south towards the Cœlian Hill. This water was very abundant, but it
appeared more like the continuous stream of an aqueduct than a natural
spring of water; it was at a very low level, quite 30 ft. underground. At
a considerably higher level, and near the surface of the ground, was an
aperture into the brick _specus_ or conduit of an aqueduct of the third
century, in which the water was flowing steadily along from west to east;
this continued all the summer of 1874, and the water was always flowing.
This aperture was closed in the summer of 1875, and the whole _specus_
buried again; where the water was sent to is not known to any one but the
persons employed, and they say that this water had little to do with the
other water which they pumped out, although both were always good clear
limpid streams of drinking water. The water was pumped out and conveyed
in an open channel, parallel to the building, to the Arch of Constantine,
where it made a small flood during all the spring of 1875, and was then
carried into a modern drain under the road between the Cœlian and the
Palatine, after passing over the road and washing the base of the Arch
of Constantine for several months. The old drain, at a great depth, was
traced the whole length of the Colosseum, parallel to it, close under
the foot of that part of the Cœlian Hill on which the Claudium stood,
and under which the two _piscinæ_, one of the time of Nero, the other of
Alexander Severus, have been mentioned. The workmen employed to clear
out the old drain were alarmed at the great depth; an enormous quantity
of earth had been thrown upon it, and they were afraid of its falling in
behind them, and blocking up their only mode of exit; deep wells were
made down into it, but after they had gone nearly as far as the Arch of
Constantine at this depth, they were stopped for want of air. Another
well, or air-pipe, was necessary, but the works were then all suspended
for want of funds. It is known that an ancient drain, at a great depth,
went under the road, and at a much lower level than a modern drain, which
passes near the monastery or church of S. Gregory on the Cœlian, between
that and the Palatine; and there can be little doubt that this was a
continuation of the same drain, and that it might all be cleared out and
repaired, but unless air-pipes can be put down by boring the expense
would be enormous.
Another small ancient drain has also been found coming from the Summa
Sacra Via, apparently for the fountains at the four corners of the
Porticus Liviæ. The workmen had been told that they were to find the
great drain passing under that part, and going on to the Cloaca Maxima
in the Forum Romanum, but this could not be found, and did not appear
practicable.
Father Mullooly, the excellent Prior of S. Clement, says he has observed
that the water under this church always rises and falls at the same time
as that under the Colosseum, and he is convinced that they both come
from the same source. It seemed probable that this source, or at least
one of the sources of this water, is the great reservoir of the earliest
aqueduct, the Aqua Appia, under the garden of the Villa Cœlimontana,
formerly called Villa Mattei, which is now the property of the Baron
Hoffman, at the west end of the Cœlian Hill, on a high level. The Baron
wanted to make this old vaulted reservoir into a wine-cellar, but found
it impossible to get rid of the water, which is always two or three
feet deep, and as fast as he pumped it out it filled again to the same
level, but no higher; this shews that there must be some outlet to it,
but so deep underground that no one knows which way it goes. This old
reservoir is nearly under the great reservoir of Nero for the Anio Novus,
which was fifty feet higher, and carried on his arches, for which also
the Arch of Dolabella was used as a substructure only. We have found in
our examination of the aqueducts that the later ones always followed
the same course as the earlier ones, not exactly over them, but by the
side of them, each succeeding aqueduct being always on a higher level,
and there is always a subterranean reservoir of one of the earlier
aqueducts nearly under those of the later period. The Appia was made
nearly four centuries before the Anio Novus, still it is very probable
that the same plan was followed in both cases. We have found that the
aqueduct of Claudius and Nero, called the Anio Novus, was divided into
three branches at this point; one went straight on over the Palatine
to the Capitoline Hill, another branch went to the left, or south, of
the Aventine, and a third to the right, or north, to the Colosseum. It
seems extremely probable that the same plan had been followed with the
Appia, both were carried along the high ground of the Cœlian Hill as
far as could be done, and then each was divided into three branches. We
traced one branch of it over the Porta Capena to the Aventine and the
Tiber; this is now necessarily out of use, the gate on the arch of which
it was carried having been destroyed. A landslip in the garden of the
Marchese Rappini, in February, 1876, between the Villa Cœlimontana and
the Palatine, served to shew that a _specus_ or conduit passed there,
now also out of use. An excavation was made there in April of the same
year, but all that came to light was a deep well, an ancient quarry of
tufa, also at a great depth, and the _specus_ of the aqueduct coming
from the reservoir under the Claudium, called a _vivarium_, and going in
the direction of the valley in which was the Porta Capena. This _specus_
has been long out of use, and could not have had any connection with the
flood in the Colosseum, which was the object of the search. The water
conveyed in this _specus_ originally must have been one of those that
passed over the short _agger_ of Servius Tullius from the Cœlian to the
Aventine, found in the excavation of 1868, and traced also in 1876 in the
cave under S. Sabba, by the side of the Aqua Appia, in the same tunnel,
but in a terra-cotta pipe, not in the stone _specus_. The third branch,
in the direction of the Colosseum, may still be in use, though so deep as
to be unknown, supplying wells only, and this may be the one tapped by
the workmen employed by Signor Rosa, and which now floods the Colosseum,
and S. Clement’s also. The only outlet from a large reservoir, in which
the water is always three feet deep, must afford a very abundant supply
of water, and the account given by the workmen who made this branch of
it agrees with this. They say it was a steady constant stream of water,
and it did not gush out of the earth in the manner that a natural spring
does; the spring must therefore be at some distance. If this view is
correct, it would be comparatively easy to turn the stream into a drain
under the Clivus Scauri, and into the one made by the Municipality about
1865, under the road near the church of S. Gregory, between the Cœlian
and the Palatine, and to carry it in that manner to the Tiber.
It is however probable that this spring alone, which was only a
subsidiary spring to the Appian aqueduct, is not sufficiently abundant
to supply the quantity of water, which now rises to the height of about
ten feet, or quite three metres, in the substructures of the Colosseum.
There is another spring, or perhaps more than one, in the ancient stone
quarry under the garden of the monks of SS. John and Paul, on the other
side of the Clivus Scauri, on the site of the Claudium, or that square
part of the Cœlian Hill which is nearest to the Colosseum. This site is
marked on an old plan of Rome, of the sixteenth century, as a reservoir
of water, and there are no less than ten wells that descend into this
old stone quarry. In the eighteenth century, and down to the middle of
the nineteenth, this was called a _vivarium_, and was supposed to be the
place where the wild animals were kept for exhibitions in the Colosseum,
but there is no visible communication from one to the other. A plan of
the old quarry, which was made for this work some years since, shews that
this was not a _vivarium_. There are three ponds, but perhaps only one
spring of water in it, and if the outlet for this water was stopped, the
whole of the quarry, or caves as they are called, would soon be full of
water. It seems probable that this is the place from which the greater
part of the water comes that floods both the Colosseum and the cave of
Mithras, nearly under the church of S. Clement. It seems also quite
practicable to remove the water by an iron pipe into the drain under
the road between the Cœlian and the Palatine, made by the Municipality
about 1866. The level of the quarry is eight metres above that of the
Colosseum; the soil there is on the level of the arena, and that is
seven metres above the original pavement; the water in the old quarry
is therefore fifteen metres, or about 45 ft. above the level of the old
drain of the Colosseum, and nearly six metres above the drain made by the
Municipality.
This opportunity may be taken to say, that great credit is due to the
Municipality of Rome for the energy and perseverance with which they have
carried on an admirable system of new drainage for the city; and not
only the new city on the hills on the site of the city of the Kings and
of the Empire, but also of the modern city of the Popes, built in the
swamp between the hills and the Tiber, the draining of which is by no
means easy. Nothing can be better than the old Cloaca Maxima, which is
still the chief drain to this part of Rome, or for that of part of the
old city; it drains the water of the streams that run down from three
hills, the Palatine, the Capitoline, and the Quirinal, on this side. But
on the northern side of the Capitoline Hill, in which was the Campus
Martius, the mediæval drains are by no means equally good with those of
the Kings; the mouths of these drains are always open to the Tiber, and
when there is a flood of the river the water runs up the drains, and the
Pantheon, which stands on very low ground, is always the first place in
Rome to be flooded. Surely a sluice-gate might be placed at the mouth of
each drain, suspended from a bar at the top, and worked on pivots only,
which would let the water out, but would not let any in, as in the common
_traps_ of a drain in daily use in England.
The Roman authorities say that the water of the Tiber would close the
doors, and not let any of the water in the drain pass out, but if the
door was placed obliquely, and let the water flow past it with as little
pressure upon it as possible, the water in the drains, which runs rapidly
and with considerable force, would very soon force open the door that was
suspended at the mouth of it. Any embankment of the Tiber would be money
thrown away; if the great engineers and architects who built the wall of
Aurelian, could not make it secure on the bank of the Tiber, no modern
engineers or architects will do so. We see that nearly the whole of the
great wall of Aurelian, on the bank of the Tiber, has been swept away by
the great floods; the substructures of the towers, under water, remain,
and are visible when the water is low in the river, but all along the
bank has been swept away. When the water rises at the rate of a foot in
an hour, and continues to do so for twenty hours consecutively, and runs
at the rate of nine or ten miles an hour, no wall can stand against it
that offers any resistance to it; smooth walls parallel to the course of
the river might stand, as the quay of the Ripa Grande does, because it
offers no resistance to the water.