Although never nearly as popular as the sword fights, boxing was also featured in the arena. It was originally simply an athletic event as with our amateur boxing, and then the promoters decided to liven it up to appeal to the crowd. The leather straps over the knuckles were studded with leadlike brass knuckles. These devices were called "caestus" and later were even equipped with nails. The caestus of a famous fighter, covered with blood and brains, were hung up in one school to encourage young hopefuls.
Statius gives this description of a boxing match. The editor opens the fight by shouting:
" 'Now courage is needed. Use the terrible caestus in close fighting—next to using swords, this is the best way to test your bravery.'
"Capaneus put on the raw oxhide straps covered with lumps of lead—and he was as hard as the lead. His opponent comes out, a young, curly-haired boy named Alcidamas. Capaneus takes one look at him. laughs and shouts, 'Haven't you anybody better than that?' They lift their arms, deadly as thunderbolts, watching each other. Capaneus is a giant but getting old. Alcidamas is only a youth but stronger than he looks.
"They spar, feeling each other out, just touching their gloves. Then Capaneus moves in and starts slugging, but Alcidamas holds him off and Capaneus only tires his arms and hurts his own chances. The young fellow, a smart fighter, parries, ducks, leans back and bends his head forward to avoid die swings. He turns the blows with his gloves and advances with his feet while keeping his head well back. Capaneus is stronger and has a terrific right but young Alcidamas, feinting right and left, distracts him and then getting his right hand above the older man, comes down from on top. He gets home on his forehead. The blood runs.
"Capaneus doesn't realize how badly he's hurt but he hears the yelling of the crowd, and stopping to wipe the sweat off his face with the back of his glove, he sees the blood. Now he really gets mad and goes for the boy.
"His blows are wasted on the air; most of them only hit his opponent's gloves and the boy stays away from him, running backward but hitting when he gets a chance.
"Capaneus chases him around the arena until both of them are too tired to move, and they stand panting and facing each other. Then Capaneus makes a wild dash. Alcidamas dodges and hits him on the shoulder. Capaneus goes down! He falls on his head and tries to get up but the boy knocks him down again. Suddenly Capaneus jumps up and goes at the boy, flailing with both fists. The boy falls and Capaneus bends over him, hammering him on the head. The crowd yells, 'Save the poor kid! His skull's cracked already and Capaneus is going to beat his brains out.' The attendants rush in and pull Capaneus off his victim. 'You've won!' they tell him. Capaneus bellows, "let me go! I'll smash his face in! I'll spoil that pretty fairy's good looks that make him so damned popular with the crowd.' The attendants had to drag him out of the arena."
Not surprisingly, the old-type circus acts consisting of acrobats, tumblers and animal trainers had a rough time competing with the gladiators and chariot races. One after another they began to drop out and it looked as though they'd be dead as vaudeville. But one man by the name of Ursus Togatus resolved not to be beaten by a bunch of plug-uglies and horses. Ursus could shoot a bow and arrow with his toes while standing on his hands, juggle five glass balls, and had a troupe of trained bears that acted out a play while dressed in clothes. Pretty tame stuff, but he must have been well liked at one time, as he had his picture painted on vases as a souvenir of the circus. He was a tall man with abnormally long arms and legs. He seems a trifle pudgy but apparently he was limber enough. He had a long, clean-shaven face and looked like an exceptionally clever horse.
Ursus was one of the few people in show business who was ever able to adapt himself to a new trend and he made circus history. He dropped the juggling and instead of a troupe of performing bears he kept only one—a really tough animal. When the bear charged him, Togatus would run at the animal with a long pole, vault over his back and race for the arena wall. With the bear right at his heels, he'd use his impetus to run up the wall, jump over the bear again, and then tear back to his pole and repeat the performance. The crowd loved the act, as there was always a good chance that Togatus wouldn't make it.
Other animal trainers quickly got the idea. One man walked on stilts through a pack of hungry hyenas. Another rolled around the arena in a large openwork metal ball while three lions tried to get at him. One of then finally succeeded in tearing his arm off through a hole in the ball, but other performers copied the act. Acrobatic troupes of men and women learned how to grab a charging bull by the horns and turn somersaults over its back. The Romans liked animal acts, especially if they were dangerous, so in spite of the gladiators there were always animals in the circus.
By 50 b.c., the exhibitions were rough enough, heaven knows, but they were still fairly well controlled, and on a comparatively modest scale. But in 46 b.c., a victorious general named Julius Caesar with political ambitions arrived in Rome. In spite of his triumphs, Julius was in the doghouse both with the Senate and the people. They suspected him of wanting to be a dictator. Cicero warned him, "You are only a dwarf tied to a long sword. You have the army but the people will never tolerate you."
Caesar smiled. "Sulla, the dictator, tried to subdue the people by force and failed. I have other plans."
Caesar knew the Roman mob. He put on the first of the really big shows in Roman history, rebuilding the Circus Maximus to hold them. There was a hunt of four hundred lions, fights between elephants and infantry, evening parades of elephants carrying lighted torches in their trunks, bull fighting by mounted Thessalians and the first giraffes ever seen in Rome (Cleopatra sent him the giraffes as a present). The chariot races alone lasted for ten days, from dawn to dark. There were also gladiatorial combats—how many isn't recorded but the senators were so horrified that they passed a law limiting the number of gladiators any one man could own to three hundred and twenty pairs. Caesar may have had a couple of thousand—practically a small army. He used them as a bodyguard when they weren't fighting in the arena.
The law limiting the ownership of gladiators didn't last long. The people went mad over these big games and didn't care if Caesar became dictator or not as long as he kept them amused. But by now, a number of prominent men felt that the games were getting to be a danger. The people would elect anyone to office who gave them a good show. A group of wealthy men decided to give the public more educational entertainment. They hired a troupe of famous Greek actors to perform some of the great classical plays. In the middle of the first performance, a man rushed into the theatre to say that some gladiators were fighting in the circus. In ten minutes, the Greek actors were playing to an empty house. After that the reformers gave up.
Although Caesar had staged the games simply as a popularity getter, they gave him an idea. He said to Dolabella, one of his top advisers, "This is a perfect way to try out new weapons and fighting techniques. Our legions will be fighting tribes from all over the world. Let's pit captives from different tribes against each other, each using his own weapons."
This opened up a whole new era in the games. Not just a few professional gladiators fought but whole battles were staged. Tattooed Britons fighting from chariots went out against German tribesmen; African Negroes with shields and spears took on Arabs fighting from horseback with bows and arrows. Thracians who used scimitars and had little, rough shields strapped to their left wrists engaged the heavily armed Samnites. Once the entire arena was planted to resemble a forest, and a company of legionnaires, condemned to the circus for various military misdemeanors, had to march through it while Gauls in their native costume and with their native weapons ambushed them. An engagement was staged between war elephants and cavalry to get the horses accustomed to the big animals. Meanwhile Caesar and his general staff sat in the imperial box and took notes. The winning side was generally given its freedom, which ensured a good fight.
Julius Caesar might be called the father of the games because under him they ceased to be an occasional exhibition of fairly modest proportions and became a national institution. By the time of Augustus, the people regarded the games not as a luxury but as their right. Under the old Republic, the games lasted for sixteen days: fourteen chariot races, two trials for horses, and fourty-eight theatricals. By the time of Claudius (50 a.d.), there were ninety-three a year. This number was gradually increased to a hundred and twenty-three days under Trajan and to two hundred and thirty under Marcus Aurelius. Eventually there were games of some kind or other going on all the time. In 248 a.d. the crowd didn't go to bed for three days and nights. Augustus and several of the other emperors tried to limit the number, but it always produced mob uprisings. Marcus Aurelius disliked the games but in his official position had to attend, like a president opening the baseball season by throwing out the first ball. He used to sit in the royal box and dictate letters to his secretaries while the games were going on. The mob never forgave him, any more than a modern crowd would forgive a president who sat transacting official business with the bases loaded and Mickey Mantle at bat. Marcus Aurelius was one of the best emperors Rome ever had, but as a result of his contempt for the games, he was also one of the most unpopular.
Claudius, who was probably insane, was very popular. He loved the games and used to make a great point of pretending to add up the betting odds on his fingers (although he was an excellent mathematician) as did the crowd. He also used to jump into the arena to berate the gladiators for not fighting hard enough, send people in the crowd notes asking what they thought of some particular gladiator's chances, and tell dirty jokes. Both Caligula and Nero, probably the two worst rulers in history, were greatly mourned by the crowd because they always put on such magnificent games. Nero, who used to light the arena at night by crucifying Christians and then setting fire to their oil-soaked bodies, was especially beloved. Even after he was forced to kill himself by the Praetorian Guard, the people refused to believe that he was dead. For years opportunists kept cropping up, claiming to be Nero, and always got a following of people who remembered what wonderful games the insane emperor had provided.
CHAPTER THREE
The demand of the crowd, not only for bigger and better games but also for novelties, kept increasing, and the government was hard put to it not only to provide elaborate enough spectacles but also to think up new displays. Possibly the most elaborate demonstrations of all were the naumachia or naval combats. Julius Caesar originated these displays in 46 b.c., digging a special lake in Mars' Field on the outskirts of Rome for the show. Sixteen galleys manned by four thousand rowers and two thousand fighting men fought to the finish. This spectacle was later surpassed by Augustus in 2 b.c. He had a permanent lake built for these fights, measuring 1,800 feet long by 1,200 feet wide, on the far side of the Tiber River. Marble stands were constructed around the lake for the crowd. Traces of this gigantic construction project still remain. One engagement was between two fleets of twelve ships, each with crews of three thousand men (beside the rowers), to commemorate the Battle of Salamis. The men on the oposing fleets were dressed like Greeks and Persians. Later, Titus gave a naumachia on a lake that could be planked over. On the first day gladiators fought on the planking. On the second, there were chariot races. On the third, the planking was removed and a sea fight took place, in which 3,000 men were engaged.
The greatest naumachia of all time was the naval engagement staged by Claudius. As Augustus' lake was too small, the mad emperor decided to use the Fucine Lake (now called the Lago di Fucino), some sixty miles to the east of Rome. This lake had no natural outlet and in the Spring it often flooded many miles of surrounding country. To overcome this trouble, a tunnel three and a half miles long had been cut through solid rock from the lake to the Litis River to carry off the surplus water. This job had taken thirty thousand men eleven years to finish. For the dedication of the opening of this tunnel, Claudius decided to stage a fight between two navies on the lake. The galleys previously used in such engagements had been small craft with only one bank of oars. For this fight, there were to be twenty-four triremes (three banks of oars), all regulation ocean-going warships— and twenty-six biremes (double bank). This armada was divided into two fleets of twenty-five ships each and manned by nineteen hundred criminals under the command of two famous gladiators. One fleet was to represent the Rhodians and the other the Sicilians, and both groups wore the appropriate costumes.
Nineteen hundred desperate and well-armed men could be a dangerous force if they decided to band together and turn against the crowd, so the lake was surrounded by heavily armed troops. In addition, a number of regiments were put on rafts equipped with catapults so they could sink the galleys if necessary. The hills around the lake formed a natural amphitheatre and on the morning of the fight the slopes were covered with over 500,000 spectators. As the lake was several hours' trip from Rome, the crowd brought their lunches and picnicked while watching the fight.
Fortunately, it turned out to be a nice day. As the lake was nearly two hundred square miles in size, the fight was restricted to the southwestern section, the rafts being lashed together to form a semicircle across the lake and mark the limits for manoeuvring. The Emperor Claudius sat on a specially prepared dais in a superb suit of golden armour covered with a purple cloak, while the Queen Mother, Agrippina, in a mantle of cloth of gold, sat beside him. In addition to the infantry surrounding the lake, there was also a detachment of cavalry mounted on magnificent Sicilian steeds drawn up behind the royal family. In order to handle the mob, the slopes had been divided into sections, each section under the care of a magistrate. A big tent had even been put up to care for the wounded after the battle—after all, prisoners were scarce and the survivors could always be used again in other spectacles. As matters turned out, the tent served another purpose. Fifteen women in the crowd gave birth during the fight and had to be cared for in the tent. It is an interesting example of the mob's passion for these fights that women in advanced pregnancy travelled sixty miles from Rome so as not to miss the naumachia.
The signal for the onslaught was given by a silver Triton that rose from the lake and blew on a golden conch shell. This mechanical contrivance must have taken some doing, but it was nothing to many of the tricks that the Romans were able to dream up. If they had expended the same amount of skill and ingenuity in improving their weapons, Rome might never have fallen. At the conch-shell signal, the two fleets approached the royal dais: drums beating, trumpets blowing and the crews saluting with their weapons.
The triremes were about a hundred feet long, each equipped with an iron beak or ram in the bow. In the bow was reared up a long beam with a spike on one end and the other end fastened to the foredeck by a heavy hinge. This was the corvus or "crow." When the corvus was dropped on an opposing galley, the spike sank into wood and held the two ships together. It could then be used as a gangplank for boarders. The ships carried a single square sail which was effective only if the wind was dead astern. Julius Caesar records how astonished he was when he saw the Venetii ships tack but for some reason or other it never occurred to the Romans that this maneouvre might be handy for a sailing ship and they never changed their galleys-rig.
As a result, the galleys depended almost entirely on their oars. The rowers were not in the holds of the galleys but sat on a sort of superstructure projecting over the ships' sides. This was to give the men greater leverage with the oars, for moving one of those big ships even with fifty rowers must have been a tough job. There was one man to an oar and they sat at different levels so the oar blades wouldn't interfere with each other. In the stern sat a man who gave the rowers the time with a drum and two overseers with whips walked up and down platforms running fore and aft to make sure everyone was doing his best. The ships were built long and narrow for speed and were very unseaworthy craft, although they were ideal for a battle on a lake. They were almost identical with the Greek galleys of a thousand years before. All the Romans added, except for the corvus, were foot ropes for the men to stand on while reefing the sail, and shrouds so they could climb the mast. The Greeks had to use a ladder.
The combined fleets passed in review and as they came within hearing distance of the royal dais, the men gave the traditional cry of "Hail, Caesar, we who are about to die greet thee!" Claudius shouted back gaily, "That depends on you, my friends," meaning that if a man put up a good fight he wouldn't be killed. However, the crews yelled, "Good Caesar! If it depends on us, we won't bother to fight" Then the two fleets sailed away together, the crews shouting congratulations to each other.
The mob howled protest and Claudius, jumping off his throne, ran down to the shore, yelling insults at the crews and swearing to have the soldiers set fire to the ships and burn them alive if they didn't fight. Claudius was crippled (he may have been a polio victim) and was also weak in the head. He used to go into insane rages, and this was a typical one. The crowd laughed themselves sick at his antics but finally the crews got the idea and, dividing into two fleets, made ready for the battle. Agrippina led the emperor back to his throne where Claudius, seeing the crowd laugh, began to laugh too, and got hysterical.
When the royal family finally got Cladius quieted down, he gave the signal for the fight by dropping his handkerchief. Instantly the war trumpets of both fleets blared out and the galleys began to move, the drummers building up the stroke as rapidly as possible, for it was of vital importance for the ships to have the maximum amount of momentum when they met.
When galleys fought, they first tried to ram each other with the iron beaks in the prows. If this manoeuvre succeeded, the rammed galley sank with a few minutes and nothing more needed to be done. If the ramming failed, then each galley tried to plough through the oars of the enemy. As the oars were forced back, the handles crushed the rowers at their benches and the disabled galley could then be rammed at leisure. If this manoeuvre also failed, then their was nothing for it but to board with the aid of the corvus and slug it out man to man.
On the first onslaught, nine of the Rhodian galleys were sunk by ramming and three of the Sicilian. Many of the Rhodian galleys had lost one or more banks of oars and could not manoeuvre. They managed to crowd together at one end of the lake and the Sicilian fleet surrounded them and attacked by boarding. The fight, which had started at ten in the morning, went on until three in the afternoon. The Sicilian triremes put up a desperate resistance, Tacitus saying: "The battle, though between malefactors, was fought with the spirit of brave men." Several of the Sicilian single-banked galleys, however, did their best to keep out of the fight. At last "when the surface of the lake was red with blood," the last of the Sicilian fleet surrendered. Three thousand men were killed. The fight had been so exciting that Claudius pardoned the survivors on both sides except for the crews of the three Rhodian galleys who had been rammed, because he thought that they hadn't charged into the fight fast enough, and the crews of six of the Sicilian single-banked galleys, who had been gold-bricking.
This exhibition was such a success that four months later, Claudius gave another show. As he was out of fresh prisoners (all the Roman jails had been swept clean to provide crews for the galleys) he had to be content with a less elaborate production. This time he had a bridge on pontoons stretched across the lake, widening in the middle to a platform about a hundred yards wide. Two armies of about five thousand men each were raised from prisoners of war, newly arrived jailbirds, and slaves. One was dressed up like Etruscans and the other as Samnites. Each side was given the appropriate arms, all the Etruscan weapons having to be made especially for the event as the Etruscans had ceased to exist as a nation three hundred years before. However, some of the old Etruscans' double-headed battle-axes and bronze lances were still in museums and these were carefully duplicated by the Roman smiths.
While the bands played, the two armies marched across the bridge from opposite sides of the lake and met in the middle. Claudius had given orders that no one was to be allowed to swim ashore. If he fell off the bridge, he had either to drown or climb back. At first the Samnites seemed to be winning, pushing the Etruscans back and holding the wide central part of the bridge. But the Etruscans rallied and finally drove the Samnites off the span. All the Etruscans, and a few of the Samnites who had shown outstanding courage, were given their freedom.
CHAPTER FOUR
The first century of the Christian era probably marked the high point of the games. The spectacles had grown to such an extent that it seemed incredible that they could ever be surpassed. The dictator Sulla (93 b.c.) had exhibited one hundred lions in the arena. Julius Caesar had four hundred. Pompey had six hundred lions, twenty elephants and 410 leopards which fought Gaetulians armed with darts. Augustus in 10 a.d. exhibited the first tiger ever to be seen in Rome and had 3,500 elephants. He boasted that he had ten thousand men killed in eight shows. After Trajan's victory over the Dacians, he had eleven thousand animals killed in the arena. The cost of the games also steadily increased. In 364 b.c., the total cost of the games was Ј3,826. In 51 a.d., they cost Ј32,690. This was the sum paid by the emperor; no record has been kept of the games put on by private individuals or politicians, but Petronius speaks of a magistrate who was going to spend Ј7,000 on a three-day show to keep him in office.
I am computing the Roman Sesterce as having the purchasing power of about 1s. 10d. today.
The buildings designed to hold these shows have never been surpassed either for size or for perfection of functional design. The oldest and largest of these vast structures was the Circus Maximus. Although I've described what the arena looked like I haven't said much about the building itself. It was built in the Vail is Murcia, a long valley between the Palatine and Aventine Hills which had been used for chariot races from remote antiquity. Eventually wooden stands, which could be removed after the races were put up on the slopes of the hills for the audience. The first permanent stands were put up in 329 b.c. together with stalls for the chariots. Only the first tier of seats was of stone; the rest continued to be wood. As a result, the stadium was burned down several times, one of the times being when Nero burned Rome. After each burning, it was rebuilt with fresh splendour. Julius Caesar enlarged it to such an extent that some historians date the true Circus Maximus from his time. Caesar put in a ten-foot moat which protected the people from the wild beasts in the arena. A stream was diverted from the hills to feed this moat and still runs near the Via di Cerchi. Augustus is generally given credit for having completed the circus although later emperors continued to enlarge the building. Claudius had the wooden chariot stalls replaced by marble and the cones made of gilt bronze. During the time of Antonius Pius, the stands were so crowded that the upper wooden tiers collapsed, killing 1,112 people. As a result, the stadium was rebuilt completely of stone. Trajan covered the whole building with white marble inside and out, relieved with gold trim work and paintings. He also added columns of coloured Oriental marble and statues of marble and gilt bronze. Eventually the Circus Maximus came to measure 2,000 feet long by 650 feet wide and held 385,000 people— a quarter of the population of Rome.
Constantine gave the Circus three additional tiers of marble seats supported on concrete arches. These arches still remain and form part of the foundation for the church of Saint Anastasia. They were made seven feet thick to support the great weight of the stands. The circus continued to exist through the Middle Ages but it was used as a vast quarry, and many of the early churches in Rome were built with stone taken from it. As late as the sixteenth century part of the structure still stood but now only the site and a few of the seats can be seen.
The Colosseum, started by the Emperor Vespasian in 70 a.d. and completed by his son, Titus, ten years later, was the most perfectly equipped amphitheatre that the Romans or anyone else ever built. As Vespasian and Titus were members of the Flavian family, it was known to the Romans as the "Flavian amphitheatre" and it wasn't until the Middle Ages that it was called the Colosseum because of its size. Unlike the Circus Maximus (which was open at one end), the Colosseum formed a complete oval. It measures 615 by 510 feet and the arena alone is 281 by 177 feet. It covers six acres. Archeologists think it could hold about 50,000 spectators although the Romans claimed that 100,000 people saw the shows, packed into the aisles. (Madison Square Garden in New York holds 18,903.) Its walls originally rose 160 feet high and may have been topped by wooden seats as bleachers. The arena could be flooded for sea fights. It was equipped with a system of elevators, raised and lowered by counter-weights and pulleys, which brought up the wild beasts from their underground cages to the arena at the right moment. Even today, when two-thirds of the building are gone, it remains one of the most impressive structures in the world.
The building has eighty entrances; seventy-six were used by the general public while one was reserved for the emperor and one for the Vestal Virgins, a group of chief priestesses whose duty was to guard a sacred flame which was kept burning continuously. The other two doors opened directly into the arena. One was called the Door of Life and through it the opening procession marched before the show. The other was called the Door of Death and through it the dead bodies of men and beasts were dragged to clear the arena for the next event.
Ivory tickets were distributed for the shows, each one marked with a seat number, tier number and entrance number. Under the stands was an elaborate system of passageways and ramps so that when you entered the building you were able to go directly to your seat with a minimum of trouble. The stands were divided horizontally by flat walks (praecinctiones) and vertically by stairs (cunei). The seats were made of marble, numbered, and with lines inscribed on the marble showing the limits of each seat. Marble diagrams with the seating arrangements marked on them were set in the walls by the entrances. One is now in the Capitoline Museum in Rome. There were four tiers of seats, the three lowest represented on the outside of the building by a circle of arches which admitted light and air into the passageways. The topmost tier has now virtually disappeared. The arches of the ground-level tier were used as entrances. The arches of the next two tiers contained statues of the gods, all except the arches directly above the two main entrances which were bigger than the rest and held life-sized representations of a chariot with four horses and the driver. The first three tiers each had columns of a different type, and the topmost tier was solid masonry with forty small windows flanked by ornamental columns set in the masonry.
An elaborate series of sewers carried off the blood and refuse from the arena and the animal cages below it A system of small sewers led from all parts of the building to one great circular drain which surrounded the Colosseum. This drain, in turn, connected to the Cloaca Maxima, the main sewerage system of the city.
Around the inside of the arena ran a perfectly smooth marble wall about fifteen feet high made of carefully jointed blocks so no animal could climb it. Directly above this wall was the podium, a flat area about fifteen feet wide where the emperor had his box and the nobility sat, composed of senators, knights and the civil and military tribunes. There were apparently no permanent seats on the podium. As in modern boxes, the seats (called curule) were movable and the occupants could stand and walk around as they wished. The podium was separated from the first tier of seats by a low wall. In this first tier sat the rich merchants and minor officials. After that, came the ordinary people.
As a leopard can jump fifteen feet and a tiger can jump twenty, the podium wall was obviously not enough to protect the spectators. However, elephant tusks about five feet long were fixed to the edge of the podium and nets strung along them in such a way that they overhung the arena. In addition, a bronze bar ran along the top of the wall that turned on a pivot so if an animal did jump high enough to grab the bar, it would turn and drop him back into the arena. There was also a moat as in the Circus Maximus. The moat was mainly to break the force of an elephant charge. Without such protection, elephants could easily reach the nobility in the podium—as was discovered when Pompey first exhibited elephants in the Circus Maximus in 55 b.c. before Julius Caesar had the moat dug. Iron gratings had been put up for additional protection, but the elephants ripped these down and only fast footwork on the part of the emperor and his friends saved their lives.
These precautions might seem enough, but most authorities believe that there was also an inner wall of heavy wooden planks running around the arena about ten feet from the podium wall and that the moat lay between this inner barrier and the central part of the arena. There are several reasons for believing this inner wall existed. The Colosseum was so vast that there must have been some way of keeping the animals out of the middle of the arena and away from the podium wall—otherwise the people in the two upper tiers of seats couldn't have seen them because the edge of the podium would have cut off the view. The natural instinct of a wild animal turned loose in a brightly lighted arena full of shouting, yelling people is to hug the wall, and scattered references by Roman writers show that the animals in the Colosseum often did just that. They were driven away from the wall by arena slaves using hot irons or burning straw. but there are no openings in the podium wall through which the slaves could have reached the animals. Also, there are many references to the elaborate scenic effects which acted as backdrops for the shows; the animals issuing from artificial caves, gladiators fighting before a painting representing ancient Carthage, and so on. It is hard to see how this scenery could have been erected and taken down if it were hung on the podium wall, especially as the changes often had to be made while the arena was full of wild animals and certainly the slaves were not allowed on the podium itself among the noble onlookers.
All these facts suggest that there must have been an inner wall, probably made of heavy planks fastened to poles set into the floor of the arena. The elephant tusks carrying the overhanging nets may have been fastened to these poles rather than to the podium wall itself. This inner wall could be painted, or have painted canvases hung on it, representing any scene desired. It may not always have been a board fence, but composed of artificial rocks made of lathes and plaster, tree trunks to represent a forest or any other material that the stage designers of the Colosseum decided to use.
The slaves who changed the scenery could operate between the podium wall and this inner barrier. The barrier must have joined the podium wall at the Gate of Life and the Gate of Death. The overhanging nets couldn't be used at these two places, but Calpurnius says that revolving ivory wheels were set into the podium wall at these points to keep the animals from climbing it
There must have been at least a circle of tall masts in the arena itself, for the great awning which covered the top of the Colosseum to protect the audience from sun and rain had to be supported in the centre by some means. We know that around the top of the Colosseum ran a circle of 240 masts (the sockets where they stood can still be seen) and these masts held the edge of the awning. However, unless the Romans had some very ingenious method for keeping the awning taut, there must have been masts coming up from the arena to take the weight of the great mass in the centre. There may even have been wooden catwalks running across the top of the Colosseum under this awning, as on a modern Hollywood sound stage, for the ancient writers talk of naked little boys with wings tied to them to represent cupids being swung back and forth across the arena by invisible wires as though they were flying. Often large animals, in one case a bull, were carried up to the awning (which was painted to represent the sky) by invisible wires to illustrate some mythological incident. To make such stunts as this possible, there must have been platforms at the top of the building equipped with blocks and tackles as well as space for crews of highly trained stagehands. Yet no matter how complicated were the mechanical miracles that these men had to produce, there was seldom a hitch in the performance. If there was, the stagehands were thrown into the arena to be eaten by wild beasts or killed by gladiators.