May 9, 2023 • 54 mins
It's funny how similar The Colosseum in Rome is to modern day arenas. They really had it figured out. Tune in today to learn all about this early entertainment venue.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you
should know as always.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Thanks ever, Chuck.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
I think we just broke our record for earliest edit
and that came quick.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
You cleared your throat, and we for some reason are
cutting it out because it's not good stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Well I want to hear that, do they?
Speaker 1 (00:33):
I don't know. Maybe weird and you're fifteen. We've established
our unprofessional qualities.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
True, it is true. Speaking of unprofessional qualities, you know
who is terrible? Some of these emperors.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Very nice segue. Have you ever been to the coliseum?
You have right?
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yes, it's amazing.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Did you go into it?
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (00:56):
I didn't go into it. I walked around it. And
you know, this was my big European jaunt was when
I was broke and backpacking. So like my friend and
I did the best we could we but we did
walk outside of a lot of structures that many other
people pay to get into.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
You didn't have money for a pottery shard.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
No, we had no do to get in these places.
But it's just a wonder to walk around, and I mean,
that's what I love about Rome is just seeing Yeah,
seeing stuff that old is just really humbling and cool.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Rome is one of the very few cities that I've
visited and been like, I could totally live here.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Oh really.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Yeah. It's a knee town for sure. And part of
it is because you just be walking along and all
of a sudden the wall is suddenly three thousand years old.
You know. It's just like that kind of place, like
everything's just kind of built up on top of everything else,
but stuff has been preserved or accidentally exposed. It's just
a really neat tone. I loved it for sure.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Yeah. And boy, just how good looking is everybody?
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Yeah? Those Italians they know what they're doing.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
When they were oh man, I was like, ooh, I'm
in love with her and her and I might be
gay look at that guy they are.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
They are a good looking bunch for sure.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
All of them are just so attractive, Like the in
on a Friday night at the Spanish Steps. It's just like,
how many good looking, dark haired people can you get
together in one spot?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Chuck. I think like our our most dedicated listeners know
that you're just buttering up the Italians because you're going
to be busting out some Italian accents. You don't want
them to be mad at you, or I should say,
all oiling them up.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Very nice. That's a good one.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
I don't know if that was nice or good, but
I appreciate the kudos.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Yeah, but we're talking Colisseum and it's interesting to me
how like and you might have gotten all this stuff
from the tour, but I was just kind of knocked
out in this article Lvia put together of how how
sort of modern like modern stadium going experience.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
It felt like, yeah, and actually there's there was one
fact that stood out to me. I was like, well,
they've got current stadiums beat oh boy, Supposedly the packed
cheek to jowl you could fit eighty seven thousand people
in there and the whole place could be emptied or
filled within fifteen minutes because the circulation was that beautifully engineered.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Yeah, I think that's a slightly dubious claim.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
But okay, I bet it's seventeen.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Well, I bet it was quick and like nothing like
it is today and.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Eighteen and I'm not going any higher than that.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Well, and back then, you would you know, you would
just walk back to your place or take a mule
or something like, you know, post traffic experiences near American
stadiums or the stuff of the legend.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
It's awful, yes, for sure.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
But parking decks the worst thing ever invented.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
They're pretty bad. They're awful, Yes, it's true. And do
you know it's going to get a lot worse. They're
developing that whole area that like kind of no man's lane.
It's like old tring tracks and abandoned stuff in between
State Farm Arena and Mercedes Benz Stadium.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Yeah, oh yeah, the gulch.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yes, they're they're they're developing that. So it's just gonna
get a million times worse down there. They should just
set up helicopter service and drop people in.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Well, I think what they're doing is trying to be like, hey,
don't jump in your car, just go hang out at
a bar restaurant, like there's gonna be stuff to do there.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Yeah, because there's not right now.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
No, there's not much, not a whole lot.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
There's some cool hotels down there, but they're kind of.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Time coming around a little bit.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Yeah for sure. So, but we're not talking about downtown
Lan and everybody who to your horses. We're talking about
the coliseum. Like you said, that was just kind of
one fact, and I'm calling it a back chuck your
your Yeah, I guess you're poop puing in a little bit,
which is fine. We can agree to disagree on that,
and I think you're probably right. But still it is.
(04:55):
It kind of underscores how everybody in history has looked
back at the call is just this marvel of engineering
and a design and architecture. It was built in like
eight years, astoundingly enough, and it's survived earthquakes and all
sorts of terrible catastrophes, and it's still standing in a
lot pretty good shape considering how old it is two
(05:18):
thousand years. But what I didn't know when I was there,
I knew, but it didn't really sink in. It is
one of the most despicable places ever built in the
history of Western civilization.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, we're going to get into the
stuff that went on there. It's you know, it wasn't
like the history of the Globe Theater or anything like that,
you know.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
No, it was much bloodier. Because everyone knows well, yes,
the gladiators fought at the Colisseum I've seen that Russell
Crowe movie. True, but it was much much worse than
even that, and that was pretty bad. But like you said,
we'll get into it. Let's talk about the actual Colosseum
and where it came from first, how about that.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Yeah, so you know, there's a long history of theaters
period in the world. The Colisseum certainly was not the first,
but it was one of the first, you know, built
in stone concrete amphitheaters. And if you're confused, like I was,
the term amphitheater these days can can just mean a
(06:20):
you know, a big concert venue. It doesn't necessarily mean
it is just a round thing, right, because most things
called an amphitheater day are the kind that were not
like they wouldn't have used that term back then because
they weren't fully encircled. It's like it's a theater like
the Hollywood Bowl or something. You've got a stage and
(06:41):
then the seats are sort of built in a big
hill in a semicircle like those are called amphitheaters now,
but technically amphi means around, and so it was these
were the first theaters to be built all the way
around whatever performance was going on.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Yeah, totally and like today's amphitheaters are much more like
the old theaters, which are exactly what you described as.
Like if you go to amphitheater, you can understand what
a theater was in Greece and ancient Rome, and back
in the day, the Roman Senate decided that having these
venues permanent as permanent structures was decadent, so there was
(07:19):
a ban on building permanent theaters and amphitheaters. But that
doesn't mean that the ones that they built that were
temporary weren't incredibly elaborate. Sure, our good friend Pliny mentions
one wooden temporary theater in Rome. I believe that had
three stories of columns, three thousand bronze statues, and they
(07:42):
gave out free bobbleheads of nero when you came in.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
What's up with planning all over the place the past
few years?
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Like, if you're a historian took especially of that era,
you are so happy that that man lived because he
sat down and said, you know what, I'm gonna write
all this down for I'm sure people who come later
are going to want to know what we were doing
at this time. And sure, no because of planting.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
I guess we've just done more topics. I just feel
like we went I mean, he's the new fighter flight
for us.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Yeah, he really is totally So, like.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
We said, there were stone amphitheaters. The first one ever,
I believe was in Pompeii, the very awesome and famous
Pink Floyd Liva Pompei concert was full near so kind
of nobody, which is a very cool, strange thing to do.
And then finally get we get Nero as emperor, and
(08:36):
he was around during the Great Fire of sixty four
where a lot of the wooden stuff obviously went away,
including wooden amphitheaters in Rome, and Nero was able to say, like,
all right, you know, I'm going to rebuild a lot
of stuff and put my stamp on Rome, but I'm
not He didn't get around to building an amphitheater before
(08:58):
he went.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Away, No he didn't. And it was a big deal
that the amphitheater in Rome, the temporary one, was burned
down because already gladiator battles had been firmly established in
the popular culture. So all of a sudden you had
like people who couldn't go to like, you know, the
(09:20):
local blood sport event, and like vent all of their
frustrations and not you know, stage an uprising against you
as the emperor. So it's something you would want to have.
But because of that fire, a lot of people still
to this day blamed Nero for starting the fire because
he rebuilt such opulent monuments to himself on the rubble
(09:41):
of Rome. Anyway, he eventually was toppled by a coup.
He died by suicide, and that left open a power
vacuum that was filled within one year. I think Rome
had something like three different no, four different emperors because
a little civil war started, and the guy who emerged
(10:03):
successfully was the first emperor of the Flavian dynasty, Vespasian.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Vespasian very nice, yeah, he and you know, he took
a look around. He had a couple of kids, a
couple of sons, notably Titus and I guess Domaitian I think,
so okay, and he got them established as successor. So
he was pretty firmly rooted at this point. And he
was like, you know, Nero came in and tried to, well,
(10:33):
not try to very successfully, built a lot of monuments
to himself, kind of put his own stamp on Rome.
Like Chuck will mention earlier, in the podcast many years
from now, and I want to put my stamp on
this thing, and so I'm going to build my own
sort of huge colossus theater. He didn't say that because
(10:54):
we'll talk about where the name came from in a second.
But his son had been out, you know, active as
a military leader. I believe it was Titus. Yeah, for
the siege of Jerusalem. Came back with a lot of
war spoils, and so basically, you know, I've got all
this money now besides raising taxes and claiming public land
(11:15):
and doing you know, basically whatever Vespasian wanted as far
as building infrastructure and probably monuments to himself. Sure, he said,
now I've got these war spoils, so I can build
like a proper concrete, permanent stone amphitheater.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Yeah, the first one in Rome. And Vespasian was already
pretty beloved. He was a really popular general, successful general.
He was popular with the Senate. So when he became emperor,
everybody was like, okay, this is cool. But he really
won everybody over because Nero had been taking all of
Rome's money and spending it on monuments to himself and
like this enormous multi acre I think like one hundred
(11:54):
and fifty acre house called the Golden House, and Vespasian
did the opposite. Yeah, he built some monuments to himself,
but he also built a lot of public monuments. And
that's what the Colosseum was. It was a gift to
the citizens of Rome. Like remember that kreuddy wooden temporary theater.
Remember how the Senate banned temporary theaters. Here is your
first state of the art, permanent amphitheater that you are
(12:18):
going to watch so many people murdered and it's going
to just knock your socks.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Off, that's right. Had a very crass joke that I'm
going to keep to myself, okay, because this is a
family show, but tell me later. I'll tell you later,
all right. And he was so sort of take this
anarro that he built the Colosseum on the site where
that estate was where Nero lived domus Aria.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
That's the Golden House, that's right.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
That was the land on which the Golden House sat,
and the lake that was built there. There was this
artificial pond, so like I'm going to fill that up
even and really just sort of eraise in Neuro's legacy
as much as possible and can you tell him where
the name Colosseum may have come from.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Apparently there was like a hundred something foot tall nude
statue of Nero and rather than it was bronze, and
rather than melted down and reuse it, they put it
up and they propped it up in front of the Colosseum.
So that was the Amphitheater that had the colossus of
Nero or the Colosseum. It's like museum but with coloss.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Right, But they didn't pronounce it colossium.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
No, they called it like the Amphitheater.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Yeah, no one said colisseum until later. No one's ever
said colossum except for me.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Yeah, you have never really threw me off before we
started recording.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
All right, I say we take a break, okay, and
then we come back and talk about the building itself.
(14:08):
All right, we're back. We're talking coliseum, big theater, stadium,
outdoor arena, whatever you want to call it. Amphitheater in
ancient Rome. If you're talking about the building itself, it
is six one hundred and twenty by five hundred and
thirteen feet one hundred and fifty seven feet tall, which
(14:28):
about fifteen stories. Obviously, we mentioned it was made of
mostly concrete, but that's, you know, sort of the structure.
There was also about three and a half a million
cubic feet of stuff like wood, of course, travertine, marble, stone.
And the reason why you mentioned the coliseum is still
largely standing through earthquakes and such two thousand plus years
(14:50):
later is because this thing was built on wetlands. So
they had to go very very deep with this concrete
with their foundation, and that's what you get two thousand
years later, it's still going.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Yeah. There's a historian of ancient Rome named Garrett Ryan
has got a blog called Told in Stone, and he
said that they built facing walls ten feet thick on
each side that supported a ring of concrete foundation that
they poured one hundred feet wide and forty feet deep.
That's what the Colisseum is built on them.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
I wonder what the ancient recipe for concrete was.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Funny enough, I kind of looked that up because Roman
concrete is very famous because it's still standing in modern
concrete can crumble in a matter of decades, right, So
the Romans kind of had us beat. And they figured
out that it was because they mixed quicklimb in at
really high temperatures, and it created this chemical reaction that
(15:46):
was still kind of buzzing after the stuff was poured,
so that it would cure much more quickly and solidly.
That's what they think it was.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
So just the heat they heated up that quick crete.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
The heat, my god, the heat.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
If you love columns, you would be delighted with the
Colisseum because there's a lot of columns and they go
in order from lowly to I guess the most revered,
as they start with a Doric style at the bottom,
move on up to the ionic on the second level,
and then finally, of course you get to the very
fancy Corinthian columns on the top. And they even had
(16:24):
a little, not a little, a pretty sizable retractable awningeah
that went all the way around it. And if you've
ever been to the Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta, it
sort of is like that, where there's a circle in
the ceiling in Atlanta, of course that opens in huts
like a camera shutter wood or I guess an old
(16:46):
film camera shutter wood. So in Atlanta it has a
circle around above like to where the field could possibly
get rained on. Of course, they don't open it when
it's going to rain, sure, but all the humans are covered.
And that was the same deal as there was a
circle in the center that always stayed open because you know,
they didn't have retractable roofs, but they did have a
(17:06):
retractable partial awning to keep everyone else dry.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Yeah, and then the so the building was huge. The
actual like floor, the ground that the action took place
on the arena floor, it was an oval shape of
two hundred and seventy two by one hundred and fifty seven.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Feet the sandbox.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Yeah, it was covered insand because they would soak up
like blood and they needed it because a lot of
blood was spilled there. And like I said, it took
eight years to build, and apparently it was finally dedicated
under Emperor Titus Vespasian son under his watch, and he
was actually a pretty short lived emperor, although much beloved.
(17:48):
And his little brother Domitian. Yeah, when he became emperor,
he excavated that arena floor about ten twenty feet down. Yeah,
built the hypogium, which means basement or below ground. And
it was here where suddenly this thing became like this
(18:08):
magical marvel of special effects and technical wizardry.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Yeah, totally. This is where like you could really kick
it up a notch when you could have six hundred
dudes and a lot of you know, most of these
were slaves obviously, but they're down there all of a
sudden with pulleys and ramps and trap doors and fully
operated elevators, and you could do all kinds of crazy
(18:34):
magical things down there. At the least, you've got a
holding area for animals and gladiators and people, and you know,
it was sort of like you would think of any
sort of backstage area of like a circus or something,
except it was underground.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
I think that they portrayed it in Gladiator, if I'm
not mistaken, but they would have. Like there's a production
company that build a replica of this for a PBS
documentary a few years back and actually donated it to Italy,
so it's on display it in the coliseum. But they
showed how like you would put an animal in a cage,
used some police to bring it up, and as it
was coming up toward the floor of the arena, a
(19:12):
trap door would open, and then all of a sudden,
there's just a lion sitting there that wasn't there before,
So I mean imagine watching like a man fight a
lion to begin with. Before it was like here comes
the lion walk in, and here comes the man walking in. Pohum.
Now it's like a lion magically appears and starts fighting
with the guy. This was like the kind of stuff
(19:34):
that they were throwing at the citizens of Rome at
the time, and from what I can tell, almost all
of the citizens of Rome were eating it up. There
were some people who are like, this is an awful
barbaric place at the time, but most citizens of Rome
were super into it.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
You know when I saw bon Jobi in concert, well,
I saw them a couple of times, both by accident.
They opened up for thirty eight Special when I was
like in the eighth grade, when they were a very
small band.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Wake up like after having been drugged in like a
bon Jovi concert.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
No. The second time was my senior year in high school.
Sort of a long story, but there was somebody at
our school that couldn't find anyone to go with them,
so I went with them. But bon Jovi in that
second one, you know, when they were the headliner at
the beginning of the show, there's like, you know, the
band is kind of coming out and they start off
their song and I'm like, where's John, Where's John? And
(20:25):
boom smoke. A smoke blast happens on stage and the
smoke clears and bon Jovi is just standing there.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
So being bon Jovi exactly.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
He had a horizontal trap door that would instead of
falling through it, it would shoot him up Nate in an instant,
and I was, even though it's not like I was
dying to go to that show, I was. I was
pretty knocked out.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
I gotta say, for sure, buddy, you better stand exactly
where they tell you to stand on that kind of
trapdoor play.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
I think, so you don't want to. It went up
with some I think I saw behind this of it
one time. Even it went up with some speed.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
I'll thought that was fun.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
So one of the things, oh, we didn't mention that
the like, there were plenty of people who were in
that ring, including animals, that would have liked to have
gotten out of that ring. So they prevented this by
separating the seating area from the arena floor a rather
large stone barrier, twelve foot stone barrier with a bronze
(21:26):
fence on top of that and then on top of
that they lined it with elephant tusks, so it do it, yeah,
to get over. But that seating area was like a
snapshot of social hierarchy in Rome because they had it
very much divided up socially.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Yeah, and this, Like reading this, I was kind of like,
it's sort of exactly how it is today. You've got
your very very special people are sitting courtside. Yeah, down
there on the hardwood floor, but they can yell at
Jimmy Butler or Lebron or whoever. Sure, senators families obviously,
and their guests. They could bring their own folding chairs,
(22:05):
which is pretty special at the time, I think, sure.
But they also had their box seats, you know a
little higher up what would we would call like a
luxury box today. And this is where you know, usually
see the emperor and emperor's guests, just just like you
would today any rich or famous person who has a
luxury box and their hangers on.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Right, kit you imagine those senators to just like assert
their individualism, like bedazzled some of their seats right that
they brought. Sure, So after that I had not heard
of this group. There there was a social stratus stratum yeah,
in Rome called it equestrians. Yeah, the equestriane order were
(22:46):
people who had originally served in the cavalry and then
went on to become extraordinarily prosperous and wealthy business people.
So there were merchants, tradesmen, bureaucrats, sometimes artisans. And the
reason that they were ticking up the slack for the
business world in Rome, it is because the Senate was
forbidden from engaging in business, so didn't want the senators tainted.
(23:11):
So all of that fell to these equestrians who made
up that I guess wealthy class, but not senators or
the emperor.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Yeah, so they're like in the what you would call
the one hundred level seats, you move up to the
two hundred level as far as modern arenas go, and
then you've got your middle class. But within that middle
class in the coliseum it was subdivided more than three
hundred times for very specific areas, for very specific social groups,
(23:41):
like you know, ambassadors are in this section. If you're
a soldier on leave, you're over here. If you were
a member of some sort of guild, in middle class guild,
then you're sitting over here. And then of course you've
got your three hundred level those bleeds. It's always been
that way. It'll alway these be this way. You have
the cheap seats, and it's I don't think it's confirmed,
(24:06):
but most of these were standing room only at the coliseum.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Yeah, they're just basing that on the fact that they
are so steep and the seats so shallow. It's like
this has to be standing room only. Yeah. And there
there were times where, especially during events that the emperor
put on at the coliseum, where you couldn't leave. So
if you're uncomfortable ts you had to stay there and
(24:29):
watch because the Emperor was putting this on for your benefit.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Who did they ban entirely though? I thought's done this interesting?
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Yeah, they banned grave diggers actors and former gladiators. And
I'm just high or low for you know what that
what the reason was. And grave diggers is pretty obvious
that you know, plenty of societies around the world in
different times have looked upon grave diggers is basically untouchable,
like societies unwanted but incredibly necessary rights. The way you
(24:57):
treat incredibly necessary people, that's how grave dig have been treated. Actors.
I saw a stack exchange explanation that said that they
were viewed as like lowly and untrustworthy and dangerous even
maybe and the former gladiators, I saw that they were
worried that they might attack other people out of revenge
(25:18):
or something. But the person who gave that answer doubted
it well after worth with a grain of salt.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Yeah, the actress in tracks, just because it's been well
established that acting as a profession was not something that
was looked kindly upon or to aspire to for most
of its history.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Right, but they were considered lowlier than slaves then because
the slaves were allowed to go sit in the cheap seats,
the actors couldn't even come in. Yeah, it's strange. And
I know that Rome had a much different view of
their slaves than the West African slave trade that started
by the Portuguese in theeenth seventeenth century. That was I know,
(25:59):
it's it's still a lot different, but that's still pretty surprising, right,
of course, I'm with you, So, Chuck, I mentioned that
you didn't have enough mind to get a pottery shart.
That wasn't some random weird thing I was saying earlier.
That's actually what the tickets were. They had a gate,
a section, and a seat number inscribed on a little
shard of pottery.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Can you believe that they're I mean, surely you turn
these things back in, right, I guess.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
But I didn't see any examples of any that had survived.
But surely there must be a couple left. As many
events as were held there.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
I can't imagine they carved, you know, fifty plus thousand
of these for every single event that they had, But
you know, maybe so who knows. It was free to
get in. That's kind of cool. You didn't have to
pay any money. But they were not just anyone could
get the tickets. They were very much distributed in this
sort of the same way the seating was very structured
(26:50):
in a hierarchical way. The tickets were distributed thusly as well.
And you know that's how you got in. You got
in with your little ticket. Your little ticket said what
gate to go in, just like today, to get you
in as quickly as possible. And like you said, they've
got people out of there, it seems like pretty quickly.
The only reason I said was dubious because anytime they
(27:11):
say something like very specific like fifteen minutes, and it
was two thousand years ago. I'm always like, who was
timing this back then?
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Right, That's why I was going up to eighteen minutes.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Yeah, you know, I bet it was super speedy.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Though, so one of the other things about it that
comes into play later. It was equipped with water fountains
and flushing toilets, so there was running water that could
reach the coliseum. Yeah, but then your hat for later, okay.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Yeah, and that also means that during the games there
were drunk dudes at urinals barking out their sports opinions.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Yeah, for sure. Essentially, some thing's never change, something's never changed.
So I guess it's finally time we talk about what
exactly went on there, right.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Yeah, I mean when it first opened, Titus, do you
know if if Dad was still around to see it
open at least, or was he dead or was he
just out of power.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
I don't know. I don't think they really curious, like
stepped out of power much before they died, those guys,
the emperors.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
But they said, all right, big grand opening. Let's get
one hundred straight days of action going every single day
for one hundred days. We're gonna have a big show
and a show at the coliseum. Was kind of an
all day thing. You know. After that first hundred days,
it looks like they basically had stuff during the winter
(28:36):
and then like special events like to celebrate the emperor
or for big you know, the birthdays and not you know,
just anyan's birthday, but you can rent it out like.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
A Jackie Donald or at the coliseum.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
That's funny. But the very first thing that would happen
was a procession. It was known as a solemn procession,
had music, sort of religious themes, and then they started
killing animals.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Yeah, I saw that they kind of they kind of
I guess justified or you know, put some sort of
veneer of sanctity on this. By this whole thing basically
having religious themes throughout, good for them. So, yes, you're
gonna make me talk about the animals.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Huh, Well, I mean I said they killed animals.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Okay, I'll go into somewhat greater detail. So what they
would do is they would go procure animals from all
corners of the Roman Empire, some Saharan Africa, Asia. They
would bring in tigers, lions, bear seriously, if they would
bring in elephants, they brought in alligators Rhinocera just anything
(29:49):
you can think of, any massive exotic animal that's deadly.
They went and got a bunch of them and brought
them back for these events, which we should say took
months of planning and a lot of people working on
every single one. They were like, you know, half assed
one off, you know, to like a band in the
(30:11):
park kind of thing, like this is a this is
like a really huge event, right, Yeah, So I'm really.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Say one hundred days is just like crazy impressive.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Yes, there really is. So they would take these animals
and then they would they would convert the arena floor
into something like a jungle with potted plants or shrubs
or something like that, and then they would bring in
either animal handlers or hunters venatois or bistiari who would
hunt the animals in front of everybody. And it wasn't
(30:41):
like any kind of equal stuff, but the animals did
sometimes kill some of the humans, and apparently the the
spectators just love that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Sure, yeah, I mean they brought them in from all
over the world as sort of like a big show
of hey, look at where we've been, look at how
vast we are. We're not just bringing in local The
cats of Rome. You know, there's kinds of feral cats
in Rome, unsatisfying. Could you imagine someone getting killed by
(31:12):
one hundred feral cats attacking them though? That'd be pretty fun.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Yeah, I can I can see it now.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
And then sometimes they would have the animals fight one another.
They would match up, you know, a cheetah versus a
tiger or something like that, sure, or an elephant versus
a rhinoceros.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
I saw a bear versus python. Really yeah, dude, they
got really weird and disgusting.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
I wouldn't think that would even work. You can't go
to python into fighting, can you?
Speaker 2 (31:43):
I saw it written down on the internet chuck. Yeah,
I can't remember where I saw it, but I think
it was a legit source.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Yeah. No, I'm not saying it didn't happen. But did
you see the Yell review of the performance. No, Python
didn't do much, Bear was disinterested. One star.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Yeah. I wonder like how many of these animals just
didn't fight each other.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Well, and I'm sure they forced them to do whatever,
you know, I'm sure they prodded and goaded them and
you know, injured them and did whatever they had to do. Yeah,
but they would also just have animal tricks and stuff
like that, a little more circus like atmosphere at times
when they weren't killing them or making them kill each other.
(32:22):
So after this is done, enslave people come out and
they clean up hundreds and hundreds of dead animals, and
I guess rake the sand around to mix the blood
in and sure the guts and make sure everything was
nice and tidy. Sometimes they would butcher the animals and
give out the meat right there, so you could be
out there for a show in the early afternoon and
(32:44):
get a lion's thigh to keep there in the arena
for the rest of the day until you can take
it home and die of food poisoning.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Right, I thought about that too. That is not a
great plan.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
But they sometimes they would feed them real lunch. They
did have vending places, like what do you call them
concession stands where you could buy stuff, and it was
it was like a modern state em in a lot
of ways.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Again, Yeah, I mean like it's it's so much so
that I was like, oh, okay, is football and all
like professional sports just all descended from the coliseum And.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
How did you sneak in your weed?
Speaker 2 (33:23):
I don't think they had to sneak it in back then.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Yeah, probably so.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
So after that, after they got all the animals cleaned
up in the sand raked and all that stuff, it
was about noon, and noon was the time for public executions,
because hoy, they would most people think that gladiator battles
were to the death. That was actually infrequent as far
as gladiator battles, as we'll see, but they gave them
(33:47):
plenty of death of humans with these public executions, and
they would really go to town creating these elaborate deaths
like this is a person's death, but they would dress
them up like Icarus and pretend they were flying close
to the sun and set them on fighter like that
kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Yeah, crucifixions hack you to death with a sword. These
reenact reenactments are just like I had never heard of
that before in my life. I mean, it's bad enough
to have a public execution, but yeah, then to make
someone reenact some big famous like story from history where
the hero dies or whatever, it's just like, it's pretty
(34:26):
unbelievable as far as Christians being fed to the lions go.
That's something that you've heard over and over throughout history.
That surely happened but it wasn't like every single time
the Colosseum had a show they would just throw, you know,
fifteen Christians out in the middle of a bunch of lions.
(34:47):
Persecution of Christians in Rome was happened over the course
of a long time in a lot of places here
and there. But it wasn't like that was what was
always happening at the coliseum.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
Right, But yes they were. They were persecuted and executed
for their for their beliefs, like it did happen. One
that was documented was saying Ignatious of Antioch, and he
was martyred in UH one ten and he was mauled
by animals, like he was torn to pieces by half
(35:19):
starved wild animals that were released on him. And he
apparently had asked friends in high places not to intercede
on his behalf. And he didn't fight back, by all accounts,
he just stood there and took it and died. And
that happened a lot like there was a There was
a lot of Christian and Jewish persecution in Rome because
(35:40):
they didn't conform to the Roman mythological beliefs, right right,
They're pantheon of gods and so they and they were
also in the minority, and people on the margins have
always been persecuted. Maybe not fed to the lions, but
persecuted at least, and Rome was no different.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
Yeah. When I worked in New Jersey at the restaurant
many years ago that I worked at, there was a
bar tender named Pete. And if a football game was
on in the bar and you walked by and around, like, hey,
what's up with the game, he would say, line's ten,
Christian's nothing. That was like his go to line for
anybody that asked the score.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Oh wow, I guess two thousand years later, it's not
too soon, right Bright.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
He always got to chuckle out of most people, Yeah,
but probably offended some people. Sure, looking back, I thought
Pete was so old. It's funny. I was twenty five
that that Pete was thirty two.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
It is, though, it's so old. When you're in your twenties.
Everybody's still old.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Everybody's so old.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Oh have you seen that that new naporghatsy special.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Yeah, he's talking about being like forty two, and he
thinks he's still young hanging out with the twenties. Something.
Some forty five year ol comes over. He's like beat it,
old man. There's a couple of young guys hanging out
over here. It is good, very good.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
He's but then the punchline of that, you're not gonna
do the punchline?
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Remember the punch line. I think I was laughing too
ardor must not have heard it.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
The punch line. He's like, yeah, you and young guys
just hanging out over and then he goes something like uh,
and also maybe let's sit down.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
That's right. That was a good punchline. He's good.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
If you're a Nate Barghetti fan. He was on an
episode of Movie Crush. We talked about the movie Scream.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Oh that's a good, good pick, so go check it out.
You're not a Nate Barghesi fan, goes some of that
and go watch his specials.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
Yeah, he has blowed up since that Movie Crush appearance.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
He's doing arenas now what Yes, dude, he's doing Phillips
Arena or State Barn Arena.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
On his next show, it's crazy and it's great.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
Yeah, and it's going to half a new better guy.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
Agreed. Speaking of better guys, maybe we should take a
break work on ourselves a little bit.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Work on our segs and then come back better guys.
(38:20):
All right, Chuck, it's time to talk about gladiators, gladiators, gladiators.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
Let's do it.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
There's a lot of misconceptions, and we talked about this
in the Spartakuss episode. We talked about chariot racing and
gladiator gladiators and stuff like that, and that's that's definitely
worth going to listen to. If this is if you're like, wow,
ancient Rome is fascinating, you want to learn more about it,
go listen to our Spartakuss episode. But there's a lot
of misconceptions still, one of which, like I mentioned, is
(38:48):
that most gladiator battles were fight fights to the death,
and that's just not how it was, in part because
of how gladiators were brought into existence. They were usually criminals,
prisoners of war, not look not not looked highly upon.
That's another big misconception too, that they were like today's
(39:09):
modern mma fighters with all these fans that are like
crazy for them. Not really accurate. But that's not to
say that some of them didn't make like household names
of themselves and probably did have some fans, but it's
just not a really apt analogy. But as I was saying,
the the reason why you didn't want to fight to
the death is because it took a lot of time
(39:31):
and effort and investment to train a prisoner of war
or a criminal who had been condemned to fight like
well and be a gladiator that successful. So those gladiator
schools were like, we're gonna regular gladiers. Do not let
them fight to the death, We want them back rewind
first too.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
Yeah, uh yeah, they're they're trying to put a good
product out there because they're charging well they weren't charging money,
I guess, but it was entertainment. And when they're all dying,
then you're just you know, what's going to happen is
all of a sudden, it's you know, the B team,
then the C team is out there, right, And so yeah,
(40:13):
they had a lot of time invested in these guys.
Uh and I say guys because it was one men,
except for when they occasionally had like, hey, let's bring
some women out here to fight as sort of a
novelty act kind of thing. But the Colosseum opened in
ady A, d and they organized this like everything else
(40:34):
was organized to the team. You know, Colosseum. Wise, these
these gladiator battles were organized because they also didn't want
to throw in you know, Russell Crowe with you know,
with me, because I would get pummeled and die so
quickly it wouldn't be any fun for anybody. So yeah,
they organized them by experience level, by their skill, maybe
(40:58):
by how they fought, Like, you don't want a grappler
in there with a swordsman, although that could be interesting,
who knows, but they wanted a swordsman against the swordsman.
And then they had they had four different groups, right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
They had well five. They have Murmillos, which were heavily armored.
They had a full helmet, they had a big old shield,
they had the gladiator sword that you think of, and
then kind of like Murmillo two point zero or Thraxis,
where they had a smaller shield and a Thracian sword,
the curved sword, but were very similar to Murmillo's.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
That's right. Then you had the and you were going
to leave this to me Reddiarius nice I guess they
had lighter armor. These guys had a net and a trident,
so there was some sort of a nautical theme going
on so they could like throw a net over someone
and tried it in them in the chest. Then you
(41:53):
had the chariot battlers, the chariot fighters, they were the Esidarius,
and then finally, what do we have the Hoppolo Maccus.
Nice job.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
I think these are the ones that you think of
when you when you think of a gladiator. They had
a helmet that had a plume on it. They had
a spear, they had a short sword, they had a
small round shield. I think they had like the shoulder armor. Okay,
pretty sure that's what Russell Crow would have been a gladiator.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
I haven't seen I saw that once back then. I
haven't seen it since then.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
I think I've seen it twice, but it's been a
while for sure. Yeah. I think it was on TNT
once when I was watching TNT.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
I think I thought it was pretty good back then.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
But they would so like you said, they would, they
sometimes they would they'd put a Hoppolo Maccus against a
Ruddiarius or something like that, just to see what happened
with one guy with a net and another guy with
a spear, you know, So they would have them fight
like that. But like you were saying, they they did
line them up according to skill level. And one thing
(42:51):
that bears mentioning so that the events of the coliseum
were free, but the gladiator school still charged whoever was
on the event or sponsoring the event for renting the gladiators.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Yeah, how did the money work if they weren't making
any money? Did the state just fund it all?
Speaker 2 (43:09):
Yes? Either so, holding an event at the coliseum free
to everybody who could get a ticket fifty thousand people
was a really good way of showing everybody how incredibly
wealthy you.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
Were, right or because he collected so many taxes.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
Pretty much, or if you were the emperor himself. It
was a way of it was like a gift to
the citizen. Why it's a way to keep them like
kind of sedated in line like TV today. It's the
exact same premise from the emperor's perspective, but it was
also a way to like generate belovedness and adoration from
the populace by putting on a really good event at
(43:47):
the coliseum.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
Yeah, I'd be curious about and we probably will never
know these specifics, but coming from a world of like
TV and film production, I would love to know how
it literally worked. As a production, like a big production
like this, with budgets and production managers essentially whatever they
called them. Yeah, I mean they had to have people
doing all that, and I'm sure there were fights over
(44:09):
you know, what they could afford and what they couldn't. Yeah,
like how much money did that got to have that elephant?
Speaker 2 (44:15):
Exactly?
Speaker 1 (44:15):
So he tried it out. Alligators three days in a row.
I can't get another alligator in there.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
We have ninety seven more days to go.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
Wow, amazing.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
So I said that the gladiator battles have been around
for a while by the time the Colosseum has built,
been around for at least three hundred years. They started
out as part of funeral games, and everybody was like, well,
we like this, so it kind of became like a
thing that wasn't just part of funerals, right, Yeah, and
some I said, some gladiators were like well known, And
(44:47):
there was one who might have been the most well
known of all time. His name was Flamma the Flame,
and apparently he was a captured Syrian soldier.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
Did they call him play my jama don't?
Speaker 2 (45:00):
Surely somebody did. Okay, we are from now on. Yeah,
So he turned down his freedom three different times they
would offer you your freedom by giving you a rudies,
a wooden sword that was symbolic of your transition back
into normal society. Three times he turned it down and
finally died in a battle at age thirty five. And
(45:23):
it's blong been considered that he was, you know, just
in it for the money or the glory or the fame.
But somebody I read suggested that he was doing it
because he was trying to stand for his culture, because
the Romans viewed Syrians very lowly, very cowardly, and Flamma,
the Syrian soldier, is like the greatest gladiator in all
(45:45):
of Rome. So they suggested that that might be why
he kept fighting.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
So flamm and Jamma was like, I'm not taking that wooden.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
Sword exactly, he can, that's right.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
There was also an emperor who got involved a gladiator
style Kommodis, who was a real piece of doo doo.
He rained from one eighty to one ninety two, and
you know it was he didn't really fight people. He
would go out there, you know, to boost his own ego,
apparently hundreds and hundreds of times as a quote unquote gladiator.
(46:20):
But you know, they would submit to him immediately, or
they would submit to them and he would just murder them.
He had like people with disabilities out there dressed up
as monsters with sponges painted like rocks, you know that,
supposedly throwing at him, and he would hunt them with arrows.
(46:41):
He would come out in public with their blood smeared
on him. He would kill animals. He was just a
real awful human being. There's one story where he supposedly
shot one hundred bears in one morning. Yeah, and he
was terrible.
Speaker 2 (47:02):
Yeah. To make it even worse, he would charge the
Roman treasury twenty five thousand pieces of silver per appearance
that he said, I'm going to appear, and so give
me twenty five thousand pieces of silver. And then there's
one other thing that I want to mention, because the
Colosseum eventually started to crumble, as we'll talk about in
a second, but during its heyday and possibly toward the
(47:23):
beginning of it, the air contemporary accounts of filling the
Colisseum with water five or six feet deep, putting ships
in there, and staging mock naval battles. I'm pretty sure
we talked about that in the Spartacus episode. Or some
other episode because it's really familiar. Ye may have happened.
It definitely happened in an artificial lake meat outside of
(47:46):
the Colisseum. But these some of these contemporary accounts are like, no, no,
we're talking about the Colisseum itself.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
Yeah, you know what my bet is is that they
did it at least once in the Colisseum. And we're like,
this is what do they call them? Nomachias? Nomachias? Yeah,
that they would that. They were like, we should build
our own place to do this, and they built one
near the Tiber River that was exclusively for these mocker
(48:13):
naval battles because I think the Colisseum was probably problematic.
That would be my guess.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
I think you're a historian now, but you can stop
holding on to that fact that there was running water
that could make it to the Colosseum. Everybody, that's right,
So I said, the Colosseum started to crumble.
Speaker 1 (48:28):
Right, Yeah, I mean quite literally and metaphorically. You know,
when the rise of the Christian Church in Rome, obviously
they would come along and say this kind of brutality
can't stand. The decline of the Roman Empire period and
you know, people weren't as into this stuff it was.
It was a moment in time that it was super
popular and like anything, yeah four hundred, your moment in time.
(48:52):
But that would wane, and the first earthquake hit in
four forty three, which damaged it, but it still being
used like as an amphitheater I think, you know, into
the sixth century, and then the medieval period comes along
and for about five hundred years they made it into
sort of like a like a live work play space.
Speaker 2 (49:16):
Yeah, exactly, with shops, warehouses, the common area, the arena
floor became a common area and then it got hit
by an earthquake again in thirteen forty nine and the
structure collapsed partially and it ended up becoming like a
stripped for parts. A lot of people scavenge stone from
(49:38):
it and other kind of works, including our works. But
also they used it for like building materials too, and
they used some of this at the direction of the
various popes over the years because they would take in
and build Christian churches and cathedrals with this. So because
so much of the Colisseum have been used to build churches,
and because so many Christians have been killed there, the
(50:01):
coliseum itself became kind of a Catholic holy place and
became an official holy place in seventeen forty nine when
Pope Benedict the fourteenth blessed it. He said, this is
now a Christian holy site, and that protected it from
any more pillaging or destruction and actually led to some
early restoration projects.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
Yeah, so they started to get to work on it
to protect it a little more. After the unification of
Italy in eighteen seventy it became you know, a legit
national monument. They you know, of course, Mussolini comes along
and fully uncovers the how'd you pronounce that hypogeum?
Speaker 2 (50:41):
That's where I'm going.
Speaker 1 (50:42):
Yeah, and you know, further rebuilt it, further stabilized it,
brought out some of the you know, restored some of
the history for sure, and then you know, I think
it wasn't until like the late twentieth century that it,
you know, modern restoration, like really nice techniques came along
to make sure that it was not only safe for tourists,
(51:03):
but like a robust place to you know, keep making
money off of or not keep But I guess, you know,
for some of the first times making money.
Speaker 2 (51:12):
Off Yes, some people consider it the greatest tourist traction
of Rome. Apparently it brings in six million visitors a year,
and I think there were six million people there when you,
me and I went.
Speaker 1 (51:24):
That's a lot of people.
Speaker 2 (51:25):
It is a lot.
Speaker 1 (51:26):
Maybe that's why I didn't go in.
Speaker 2 (51:28):
It's it's very neat. Though we didn't make it down
to the Hypogium. I don't know if it was open
yet for visitors. Yeah, no, twenty twenty one. No, we
definitely weren't able to. I would like to go back
and go down there.
Speaker 1 (51:40):
Yeah, I got to pay to go in this time.
Speaker 2 (51:42):
Okay, I'll cover your admission. How about that?
Speaker 1 (51:45):
Thank you?
Speaker 2 (51:47):
Well, since Chuck thanked me everybody, that means it's time
for listener mail.
Speaker 1 (51:53):
This is a good one. This is about skydiving. It's like, hey, guys,
got a good story. I took my boyfriend now husband
and skydiving for his thirty second birthday about ten years
ago in New England and had gone once before, so
the nerves were gone. But I was just full of
pure excitement and adrenaline. I was in the middle of
having my front tooth replaced. Do you see where this
(52:16):
is going yet? No?
Speaker 2 (52:16):
No, yet?
Speaker 1 (52:17):
And I had a flipper retainer. Do you see where
this is going yet?
Speaker 2 (52:21):
No? No yet?
Speaker 1 (52:21):
Okay, Chuck, I think you went through this experience. Of course.
I remember the flipper retainer. I asked the staff if
I should remove it, but they said, no, it's pretty
snug in there. You'll be fine. I was feeling vain
and didn't want my toothless face in the video. And
guess what happened during the free fall. I was a
little frustrated by needing to interact and entertain to the camera,
and I really wanted to just enjoy the moment, so
(52:44):
half jokingly, I blew a kiss and flipped a bird
at the cameraman. As instant karma would have it, my
faith tooth flew out. Had panicked and motioned to the
gap in my mouth to the cameraman, and he just
gave the thumbs up. All good, And I remember thinking, no,
not all good. This just got so much more expensive
and I have no tooth. And you can even see
(53:05):
me sort of looking around for it in midfall.
Speaker 2 (53:07):
Which I did not see that coming.
Speaker 1 (53:10):
I hope it would be magically floating next to me
because I plumbled to the earth. I just say plummeled.
I think that's pummeled and plummeted at the same time.
Speaker 2 (53:20):
I think that's a great new word. Jesus made.
Speaker 1 (53:22):
Not my smartest moment, but desperation took over. And this
is from Aaron Bogan, and Aaron sent the video which
is on YouTube, and it's very funny.
Speaker 2 (53:32):
To watch airs.
Speaker 1 (53:34):
You can't see the tooth fly out, but you see
immediately Aaron grab her mouth and motion around and sort
of looking around, and it's just very funny. So let
me see if I can even find how you would skydive.
New England presents colon Aaron's skydive from nine years ago
and it's got five hundred and seventy three views, two
(53:56):
of which were mine, So maybe we could make Aeron
a little more famous.
Speaker 2 (54:00):
Take care, thanks a lot, Aaron. That was a indeed
Chuck like Chuck said a good email. Thank you for that.
Sorry that happened, but at least you got a great
story out of it. And if you want to be
like Aaron and tell us one of your great stories,
we want to hear it. You can send it to
us via email at Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (54:21):
Stuff you should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you
should know as always.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Thanks ever, Chuck.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
I think we just broke our record for earliest edit
and that came quick.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
You cleared your throat, and we for some reason are
cutting it out because it's not good stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Well I want to hear that, do they?
Speaker 1 (00:33):
I don't know. Maybe weird and you're fifteen. We've established
our unprofessional qualities.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
True, it is true. Speaking of unprofessional qualities, you know
who is terrible? Some of these emperors.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Very nice segue. Have you ever been to the coliseum?
You have right?
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yes, it's amazing.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Did you go into it?
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (00:56):
I didn't go into it. I walked around it. And
you know, this was my big European jaunt was when
I was broke and backpacking. So like my friend and
I did the best we could we but we did
walk outside of a lot of structures that many other
people pay to get into.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
You didn't have money for a pottery shard.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
No, we had no do to get in these places.
But it's just a wonder to walk around, and I mean,
that's what I love about Rome is just seeing Yeah,
seeing stuff that old is just really humbling and cool.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Rome is one of the very few cities that I've
visited and been like, I could totally live here.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Oh really.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Yeah. It's a knee town for sure. And part of
it is because you just be walking along and all
of a sudden the wall is suddenly three thousand years old.
You know. It's just like that kind of place, like
everything's just kind of built up on top of everything else,
but stuff has been preserved or accidentally exposed. It's just
a really neat tone. I loved it for sure.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Yeah. And boy, just how good looking is everybody?
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Yeah? Those Italians they know what they're doing.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
When they were oh man, I was like, ooh, I'm
in love with her and her and I might be
gay look at that guy they are.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
They are a good looking bunch for sure.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
All of them are just so attractive, Like the in
on a Friday night at the Spanish Steps. It's just like,
how many good looking, dark haired people can you get
together in one spot?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Chuck. I think like our our most dedicated listeners know
that you're just buttering up the Italians because you're going
to be busting out some Italian accents. You don't want
them to be mad at you, or I should say,
all oiling them up.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Very nice. That's a good one.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
I don't know if that was nice or good, but
I appreciate the kudos.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Yeah, but we're talking Colisseum and it's interesting to me
how like and you might have gotten all this stuff
from the tour, but I was just kind of knocked
out in this article Lvia put together of how how
sort of modern like modern stadium going experience.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
It felt like, yeah, and actually there's there was one
fact that stood out to me. I was like, well,
they've got current stadiums beat oh boy, Supposedly the packed
cheek to jowl you could fit eighty seven thousand people
in there and the whole place could be emptied or
filled within fifteen minutes because the circulation was that beautifully engineered.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Yeah, I think that's a slightly dubious claim.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
But okay, I bet it's seventeen.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Well, I bet it was quick and like nothing like
it is today and.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Eighteen and I'm not going any higher than that.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Well, and back then, you would you know, you would
just walk back to your place or take a mule
or something like, you know, post traffic experiences near American
stadiums or the stuff of the legend.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
It's awful, yes, for sure.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
But parking decks the worst thing ever invented.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
They're pretty bad. They're awful, Yes, it's true. And do
you know it's going to get a lot worse. They're
developing that whole area that like kind of no man's lane.
It's like old tring tracks and abandoned stuff in between
State Farm Arena and Mercedes Benz Stadium.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Yeah, oh yeah, the gulch.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yes, they're they're they're developing that. So it's just gonna
get a million times worse down there. They should just
set up helicopter service and drop people in.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Well, I think what they're doing is trying to be like, hey,
don't jump in your car, just go hang out at
a bar restaurant, like there's gonna be stuff to do there.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Yeah, because there's not right now.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
No, there's not much, not a whole lot.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
There's some cool hotels down there, but they're kind of.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Time coming around a little bit.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Yeah for sure. So, but we're not talking about downtown
Lan and everybody who to your horses. We're talking about
the coliseum. Like you said, that was just kind of
one fact, and I'm calling it a back chuck your
your Yeah, I guess you're poop puing in a little bit,
which is fine. We can agree to disagree on that,
and I think you're probably right. But still it is.
(04:55):
It kind of underscores how everybody in history has looked
back at the call is just this marvel of engineering
and a design and architecture. It was built in like
eight years, astoundingly enough, and it's survived earthquakes and all
sorts of terrible catastrophes, and it's still standing in a
lot pretty good shape considering how old it is two
(05:18):
thousand years. But what I didn't know when I was there,
I knew, but it didn't really sink in. It is
one of the most despicable places ever built in the
history of Western civilization.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, we're going to get into the
stuff that went on there. It's you know, it wasn't
like the history of the Globe Theater or anything like that,
you know.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
No, it was much bloodier. Because everyone knows well, yes,
the gladiators fought at the Colisseum I've seen that Russell
Crowe movie. True, but it was much much worse than
even that, and that was pretty bad. But like you said,
we'll get into it. Let's talk about the actual Colosseum
and where it came from first, how about that.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Yeah, so you know, there's a long history of theaters
period in the world. The Colisseum certainly was not the first,
but it was one of the first, you know, built
in stone concrete amphitheaters. And if you're confused, like I was,
the term amphitheater these days can can just mean a
(06:20):
you know, a big concert venue. It doesn't necessarily mean
it is just a round thing, right, because most things
called an amphitheater day are the kind that were not
like they wouldn't have used that term back then because
they weren't fully encircled. It's like it's a theater like
the Hollywood Bowl or something. You've got a stage and
(06:41):
then the seats are sort of built in a big
hill in a semicircle like those are called amphitheaters now,
but technically amphi means around, and so it was these
were the first theaters to be built all the way
around whatever performance was going on.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Yeah, totally and like today's amphitheaters are much more like
the old theaters, which are exactly what you described as.
Like if you go to amphitheater, you can understand what
a theater was in Greece and ancient Rome, and back
in the day, the Roman Senate decided that having these
venues permanent as permanent structures was decadent, so there was
(07:19):
a ban on building permanent theaters and amphitheaters. But that
doesn't mean that the ones that they built that were
temporary weren't incredibly elaborate. Sure, our good friend Pliny mentions
one wooden temporary theater in Rome. I believe that had
three stories of columns, three thousand bronze statues, and they
(07:42):
gave out free bobbleheads of nero when you came in.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
What's up with planning all over the place the past
few years?
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Like, if you're a historian took especially of that era,
you are so happy that that man lived because he
sat down and said, you know what, I'm gonna write
all this down for I'm sure people who come later
are going to want to know what we were doing
at this time. And sure, no because of planting.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
I guess we've just done more topics. I just feel
like we went I mean, he's the new fighter flight
for us.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Yeah, he really is totally So, like.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
We said, there were stone amphitheaters. The first one ever,
I believe was in Pompeii, the very awesome and famous
Pink Floyd Liva Pompei concert was full near so kind
of nobody, which is a very cool, strange thing to do.
And then finally get we get Nero as emperor, and
(08:36):
he was around during the Great Fire of sixty four
where a lot of the wooden stuff obviously went away,
including wooden amphitheaters in Rome, and Nero was able to say, like,
all right, you know, I'm going to rebuild a lot
of stuff and put my stamp on Rome, but I'm
not He didn't get around to building an amphitheater before
(08:58):
he went.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Away, No he didn't. And it was a big deal
that the amphitheater in Rome, the temporary one, was burned
down because already gladiator battles had been firmly established in
the popular culture. So all of a sudden you had
like people who couldn't go to like, you know, the
(09:20):
local blood sport event, and like vent all of their
frustrations and not you know, stage an uprising against you
as the emperor. So it's something you would want to have.
But because of that fire, a lot of people still
to this day blamed Nero for starting the fire because
he rebuilt such opulent monuments to himself on the rubble
(09:41):
of Rome. Anyway, he eventually was toppled by a coup.
He died by suicide, and that left open a power
vacuum that was filled within one year. I think Rome
had something like three different no, four different emperors because
a little civil war started, and the guy who emerged
(10:03):
successfully was the first emperor of the Flavian dynasty, Vespasian.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Vespasian very nice, yeah, he and you know, he took
a look around. He had a couple of kids, a
couple of sons, notably Titus and I guess Domaitian I think,
so okay, and he got them established as successor. So
he was pretty firmly rooted at this point. And he
was like, you know, Nero came in and tried to, well,
(10:33):
not try to very successfully, built a lot of monuments
to himself, kind of put his own stamp on Rome.
Like Chuck will mention earlier, in the podcast many years
from now, and I want to put my stamp on
this thing, and so I'm going to build my own
sort of huge colossus theater. He didn't say that because
(10:54):
we'll talk about where the name came from in a second.
But his son had been out, you know, active as
a military leader. I believe it was Titus. Yeah, for
the siege of Jerusalem. Came back with a lot of
war spoils, and so basically, you know, I've got all
this money now besides raising taxes and claiming public land
(11:15):
and doing you know, basically whatever Vespasian wanted as far
as building infrastructure and probably monuments to himself. Sure, he said,
now I've got these war spoils, so I can build
like a proper concrete, permanent stone amphitheater.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Yeah, the first one in Rome. And Vespasian was already
pretty beloved. He was a really popular general, successful general.
He was popular with the Senate. So when he became emperor,
everybody was like, okay, this is cool. But he really
won everybody over because Nero had been taking all of
Rome's money and spending it on monuments to himself and
like this enormous multi acre I think like one hundred
(11:54):
and fifty acre house called the Golden House, and Vespasian
did the opposite. Yeah, he built some monuments to himself,
but he also built a lot of public monuments. And
that's what the Colosseum was. It was a gift to
the citizens of Rome. Like remember that kreuddy wooden temporary theater.
Remember how the Senate banned temporary theaters. Here is your
first state of the art, permanent amphitheater that you are
(12:18):
going to watch so many people murdered and it's going
to just knock your socks.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Off, that's right. Had a very crass joke that I'm
going to keep to myself, okay, because this is a
family show, but tell me later. I'll tell you later,
all right. And he was so sort of take this
anarro that he built the Colosseum on the site where
that estate was where Nero lived domus Aria.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
That's the Golden House, that's right.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
That was the land on which the Golden House sat,
and the lake that was built there. There was this
artificial pond, so like I'm going to fill that up
even and really just sort of eraise in Neuro's legacy
as much as possible and can you tell him where
the name Colosseum may have come from.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Apparently there was like a hundred something foot tall nude
statue of Nero and rather than it was bronze, and
rather than melted down and reuse it, they put it
up and they propped it up in front of the Colosseum.
So that was the Amphitheater that had the colossus of
Nero or the Colosseum. It's like museum but with coloss.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Right, But they didn't pronounce it colossium.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
No, they called it like the Amphitheater.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Yeah, no one said colisseum until later. No one's ever
said colossum except for me.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Yeah, you have never really threw me off before we
started recording.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
All right, I say we take a break, okay, and
then we come back and talk about the building itself.
(14:08):
All right, we're back. We're talking coliseum, big theater, stadium,
outdoor arena, whatever you want to call it. Amphitheater in
ancient Rome. If you're talking about the building itself, it
is six one hundred and twenty by five hundred and
thirteen feet one hundred and fifty seven feet tall, which
(14:28):
about fifteen stories. Obviously, we mentioned it was made of
mostly concrete, but that's, you know, sort of the structure.
There was also about three and a half a million
cubic feet of stuff like wood, of course, travertine, marble, stone.
And the reason why you mentioned the coliseum is still
largely standing through earthquakes and such two thousand plus years
(14:50):
later is because this thing was built on wetlands. So
they had to go very very deep with this concrete
with their foundation, and that's what you get two thousand
years later, it's still going.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Yeah. There's a historian of ancient Rome named Garrett Ryan
has got a blog called Told in Stone, and he
said that they built facing walls ten feet thick on
each side that supported a ring of concrete foundation that
they poured one hundred feet wide and forty feet deep.
That's what the Colisseum is built on them.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
I wonder what the ancient recipe for concrete was.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Funny enough, I kind of looked that up because Roman
concrete is very famous because it's still standing in modern
concrete can crumble in a matter of decades, right, So
the Romans kind of had us beat. And they figured
out that it was because they mixed quicklimb in at
really high temperatures, and it created this chemical reaction that
(15:46):
was still kind of buzzing after the stuff was poured,
so that it would cure much more quickly and solidly.
That's what they think it was.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
So just the heat they heated up that quick crete.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
The heat, my god, the heat.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
If you love columns, you would be delighted with the
Colisseum because there's a lot of columns and they go
in order from lowly to I guess the most revered,
as they start with a Doric style at the bottom,
move on up to the ionic on the second level,
and then finally, of course you get to the very
fancy Corinthian columns on the top. And they even had
(16:24):
a little, not a little, a pretty sizable retractable awningeah
that went all the way around it. And if you've
ever been to the Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta, it
sort of is like that, where there's a circle in
the ceiling in Atlanta, of course that opens in huts
like a camera shutter wood or I guess an old
(16:46):
film camera shutter wood. So in Atlanta it has a
circle around above like to where the field could possibly
get rained on. Of course, they don't open it when
it's going to rain, sure, but all the humans are covered.
And that was the same deal as there was a
circle in the center that always stayed open because you know,
they didn't have retractable roofs, but they did have a
(17:06):
retractable partial awning to keep everyone else dry.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Yeah, and then the so the building was huge. The
actual like floor, the ground that the action took place
on the arena floor, it was an oval shape of
two hundred and seventy two by one hundred and fifty seven.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Feet the sandbox.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Yeah, it was covered insand because they would soak up
like blood and they needed it because a lot of
blood was spilled there. And like I said, it took
eight years to build, and apparently it was finally dedicated
under Emperor Titus Vespasian son under his watch, and he
was actually a pretty short lived emperor, although much beloved.
(17:48):
And his little brother Domitian. Yeah, when he became emperor,
he excavated that arena floor about ten twenty feet down. Yeah,
built the hypogium, which means basement or below ground. And
it was here where suddenly this thing became like this
(18:08):
magical marvel of special effects and technical wizardry.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Yeah, totally. This is where like you could really kick
it up a notch when you could have six hundred
dudes and a lot of you know, most of these
were slaves obviously, but they're down there all of a
sudden with pulleys and ramps and trap doors and fully
operated elevators, and you could do all kinds of crazy
(18:34):
magical things down there. At the least, you've got a
holding area for animals and gladiators and people, and you know,
it was sort of like you would think of any
sort of backstage area of like a circus or something,
except it was underground.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
I think that they portrayed it in Gladiator, if I'm
not mistaken, but they would have. Like there's a production
company that build a replica of this for a PBS
documentary a few years back and actually donated it to Italy,
so it's on display it in the coliseum. But they
showed how like you would put an animal in a cage,
used some police to bring it up, and as it
was coming up toward the floor of the arena, a
(19:12):
trap door would open, and then all of a sudden,
there's just a lion sitting there that wasn't there before,
So I mean imagine watching like a man fight a
lion to begin with. Before it was like here comes
the lion walk in, and here comes the man walking in. Pohum.
Now it's like a lion magically appears and starts fighting
with the guy. This was like the kind of stuff
(19:34):
that they were throwing at the citizens of Rome at
the time, and from what I can tell, almost all
of the citizens of Rome were eating it up. There
were some people who are like, this is an awful
barbaric place at the time, but most citizens of Rome
were super into it.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
You know when I saw bon Jobi in concert, well,
I saw them a couple of times, both by accident.
They opened up for thirty eight Special when I was
like in the eighth grade, when they were a very
small band.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Wake up like after having been drugged in like a
bon Jovi concert.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
No. The second time was my senior year in high school.
Sort of a long story, but there was somebody at
our school that couldn't find anyone to go with them,
so I went with them. But bon Jovi in that
second one, you know, when they were the headliner at
the beginning of the show, there's like, you know, the
band is kind of coming out and they start off
their song and I'm like, where's John, Where's John? And
(20:25):
boom smoke. A smoke blast happens on stage and the
smoke clears and bon Jovi is just standing there.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
So being bon Jovi exactly.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
He had a horizontal trap door that would instead of
falling through it, it would shoot him up Nate in an instant,
and I was, even though it's not like I was
dying to go to that show, I was. I was
pretty knocked out.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
I gotta say, for sure, buddy, you better stand exactly
where they tell you to stand on that kind of
trapdoor play.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
I think, so you don't want to. It went up
with some I think I saw behind this of it
one time. Even it went up with some speed.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
I'll thought that was fun.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
So one of the things, oh, we didn't mention that
the like, there were plenty of people who were in
that ring, including animals, that would have liked to have
gotten out of that ring. So they prevented this by
separating the seating area from the arena floor a rather
large stone barrier, twelve foot stone barrier with a bronze
(21:26):
fence on top of that and then on top of
that they lined it with elephant tusks, so it do it, yeah,
to get over. But that seating area was like a
snapshot of social hierarchy in Rome because they had it
very much divided up socially.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Yeah, and this, Like reading this, I was kind of like,
it's sort of exactly how it is today. You've got
your very very special people are sitting courtside. Yeah, down
there on the hardwood floor, but they can yell at
Jimmy Butler or Lebron or whoever. Sure, senators families obviously,
and their guests. They could bring their own folding chairs,
(22:05):
which is pretty special at the time, I think, sure.
But they also had their box seats, you know a
little higher up what would we would call like a
luxury box today. And this is where you know, usually
see the emperor and emperor's guests, just just like you
would today any rich or famous person who has a
luxury box and their hangers on.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Right, kit you imagine those senators to just like assert
their individualism, like bedazzled some of their seats right that
they brought. Sure, So after that I had not heard
of this group. There there was a social stratus stratum yeah,
in Rome called it equestrians. Yeah, the equestriane order were
(22:46):
people who had originally served in the cavalry and then
went on to become extraordinarily prosperous and wealthy business people.
So there were merchants, tradesmen, bureaucrats, sometimes artisans. And the
reason that they were ticking up the slack for the
business world in Rome, it is because the Senate was
forbidden from engaging in business, so didn't want the senators tainted.
(23:11):
So all of that fell to these equestrians who made
up that I guess wealthy class, but not senators or
the emperor.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Yeah, so they're like in the what you would call
the one hundred level seats, you move up to the
two hundred level as far as modern arenas go, and
then you've got your middle class. But within that middle
class in the coliseum it was subdivided more than three
hundred times for very specific areas, for very specific social groups,
(23:41):
like you know, ambassadors are in this section. If you're
a soldier on leave, you're over here. If you were
a member of some sort of guild, in middle class guild,
then you're sitting over here. And then of course you've
got your three hundred level those bleeds. It's always been
that way. It'll alway these be this way. You have
the cheap seats, and it's I don't think it's confirmed,
(24:06):
but most of these were standing room only at the coliseum.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Yeah, they're just basing that on the fact that they
are so steep and the seats so shallow. It's like
this has to be standing room only. Yeah. And there
there were times where, especially during events that the emperor
put on at the coliseum, where you couldn't leave. So
if you're uncomfortable ts you had to stay there and
(24:29):
watch because the Emperor was putting this on for your benefit.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Who did they ban entirely though? I thought's done this interesting?
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Yeah, they banned grave diggers actors and former gladiators. And
I'm just high or low for you know what that
what the reason was. And grave diggers is pretty obvious
that you know, plenty of societies around the world in
different times have looked upon grave diggers is basically untouchable,
like societies unwanted but incredibly necessary rights. The way you
(24:57):
treat incredibly necessary people, that's how grave dig have been treated. Actors.
I saw a stack exchange explanation that said that they
were viewed as like lowly and untrustworthy and dangerous even
maybe and the former gladiators, I saw that they were
worried that they might attack other people out of revenge
(25:18):
or something. But the person who gave that answer doubted
it well after worth with a grain of salt.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Yeah, the actress in tracks, just because it's been well
established that acting as a profession was not something that
was looked kindly upon or to aspire to for most
of its history.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Right, but they were considered lowlier than slaves then because
the slaves were allowed to go sit in the cheap seats,
the actors couldn't even come in. Yeah, it's strange. And
I know that Rome had a much different view of
their slaves than the West African slave trade that started
by the Portuguese in theeenth seventeenth century. That was I know,
(25:59):
it's it's still a lot different, but that's still pretty surprising, right,
of course, I'm with you, So, Chuck, I mentioned that
you didn't have enough mind to get a pottery shart.
That wasn't some random weird thing I was saying earlier.
That's actually what the tickets were. They had a gate,
a section, and a seat number inscribed on a little
shard of pottery.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Can you believe that they're I mean, surely you turn
these things back in, right, I guess.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
But I didn't see any examples of any that had survived.
But surely there must be a couple left. As many
events as were held there.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
I can't imagine they carved, you know, fifty plus thousand
of these for every single event that they had, But
you know, maybe so who knows. It was free to
get in. That's kind of cool. You didn't have to
pay any money. But they were not just anyone could
get the tickets. They were very much distributed in this
sort of the same way the seating was very structured
(26:50):
in a hierarchical way. The tickets were distributed thusly as well.
And you know that's how you got in. You got
in with your little ticket. Your little ticket said what
gate to go in, just like today, to get you
in as quickly as possible. And like you said, they've
got people out of there, it seems like pretty quickly.
The only reason I said was dubious because anytime they
(27:11):
say something like very specific like fifteen minutes, and it
was two thousand years ago. I'm always like, who was
timing this back then?
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Right, That's why I was going up to eighteen minutes.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Yeah, you know, I bet it was super speedy.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Though, so one of the other things about it that
comes into play later. It was equipped with water fountains
and flushing toilets, so there was running water that could
reach the coliseum. Yeah, but then your hat for later, okay.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Yeah, and that also means that during the games there
were drunk dudes at urinals barking out their sports opinions.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Yeah, for sure. Essentially, some thing's never change, something's never changed.
So I guess it's finally time we talk about what
exactly went on there, right.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Yeah, I mean when it first opened, Titus, do you
know if if Dad was still around to see it
open at least, or was he dead or was he
just out of power.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
I don't know. I don't think they really curious, like
stepped out of power much before they died, those guys,
the emperors.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
But they said, all right, big grand opening. Let's get
one hundred straight days of action going every single day
for one hundred days. We're gonna have a big show
and a show at the coliseum. Was kind of an
all day thing. You know. After that first hundred days,
it looks like they basically had stuff during the winter
(28:36):
and then like special events like to celebrate the emperor
or for big you know, the birthdays and not you know,
just anyan's birthday, but you can rent it out like.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
A Jackie Donald or at the coliseum.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
That's funny. But the very first thing that would happen
was a procession. It was known as a solemn procession,
had music, sort of religious themes, and then they started
killing animals.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Yeah, I saw that they kind of they kind of
I guess justified or you know, put some sort of
veneer of sanctity on this. By this whole thing basically
having religious themes throughout, good for them. So, yes, you're
gonna make me talk about the animals.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Huh, Well, I mean I said they killed animals.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Okay, I'll go into somewhat greater detail. So what they
would do is they would go procure animals from all
corners of the Roman Empire, some Saharan Africa, Asia. They
would bring in tigers, lions, bear seriously, if they would
bring in elephants, they brought in alligators Rhinocera just anything
(29:49):
you can think of, any massive exotic animal that's deadly.
They went and got a bunch of them and brought
them back for these events, which we should say took
months of planning and a lot of people working on
every single one. They were like, you know, half assed
one off, you know, to like a band in the
(30:11):
park kind of thing, like this is a this is
like a really huge event, right, Yeah, So I'm really.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Say one hundred days is just like crazy impressive.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Yes, there really is. So they would take these animals
and then they would they would convert the arena floor
into something like a jungle with potted plants or shrubs
or something like that, and then they would bring in
either animal handlers or hunters venatois or bistiari who would
hunt the animals in front of everybody. And it wasn't
(30:41):
like any kind of equal stuff, but the animals did
sometimes kill some of the humans, and apparently the the
spectators just love that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Sure, yeah, I mean they brought them in from all
over the world as sort of like a big show
of hey, look at where we've been, look at how
vast we are. We're not just bringing in local The
cats of Rome. You know, there's kinds of feral cats
in Rome, unsatisfying. Could you imagine someone getting killed by
(31:12):
one hundred feral cats attacking them though? That'd be pretty fun.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Yeah, I can I can see it now.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
And then sometimes they would have the animals fight one another.
They would match up, you know, a cheetah versus a
tiger or something like that, sure, or an elephant versus
a rhinoceros.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
I saw a bear versus python. Really yeah, dude, they
got really weird and disgusting.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
I wouldn't think that would even work. You can't go
to python into fighting, can you?
Speaker 2 (31:43):
I saw it written down on the internet chuck. Yeah,
I can't remember where I saw it, but I think
it was a legit source.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Yeah. No, I'm not saying it didn't happen. But did
you see the Yell review of the performance. No, Python
didn't do much, Bear was disinterested. One star.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Yeah. I wonder like how many of these animals just
didn't fight each other.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Well, and I'm sure they forced them to do whatever,
you know, I'm sure they prodded and goaded them and
you know, injured them and did whatever they had to do. Yeah,
but they would also just have animal tricks and stuff
like that, a little more circus like atmosphere at times
when they weren't killing them or making them kill each other.
(32:22):
So after this is done, enslave people come out and
they clean up hundreds and hundreds of dead animals, and
I guess rake the sand around to mix the blood
in and sure the guts and make sure everything was
nice and tidy. Sometimes they would butcher the animals and
give out the meat right there, so you could be
out there for a show in the early afternoon and
(32:44):
get a lion's thigh to keep there in the arena
for the rest of the day until you can take
it home and die of food poisoning.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Right, I thought about that too. That is not a
great plan.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
But they sometimes they would feed them real lunch. They
did have vending places, like what do you call them
concession stands where you could buy stuff, and it was
it was like a modern state em in a lot
of ways.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Again, Yeah, I mean like it's it's so much so
that I was like, oh, okay, is football and all
like professional sports just all descended from the coliseum And.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
How did you sneak in your weed?
Speaker 2 (33:23):
I don't think they had to sneak it in back then.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Yeah, probably so.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
So after that, after they got all the animals cleaned
up in the sand raked and all that stuff, it
was about noon, and noon was the time for public executions,
because hoy, they would most people think that gladiator battles
were to the death. That was actually infrequent as far
as gladiator battles, as we'll see, but they gave them
(33:47):
plenty of death of humans with these public executions, and
they would really go to town creating these elaborate deaths
like this is a person's death, but they would dress
them up like Icarus and pretend they were flying close
to the sun and set them on fighter like that
kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Yeah, crucifixions hack you to death with a sword. These
reenact reenactments are just like I had never heard of
that before in my life. I mean, it's bad enough
to have a public execution, but yeah, then to make
someone reenact some big famous like story from history where
the hero dies or whatever, it's just like, it's pretty
(34:26):
unbelievable as far as Christians being fed to the lions go.
That's something that you've heard over and over throughout history.
That surely happened but it wasn't like every single time
the Colosseum had a show they would just throw, you know,
fifteen Christians out in the middle of a bunch of lions.
(34:47):
Persecution of Christians in Rome was happened over the course
of a long time in a lot of places here
and there. But it wasn't like that was what was
always happening at the coliseum.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
Right, But yes they were. They were persecuted and executed
for their for their beliefs, like it did happen. One
that was documented was saying Ignatious of Antioch, and he
was martyred in UH one ten and he was mauled
by animals, like he was torn to pieces by half
(35:19):
starved wild animals that were released on him. And he
apparently had asked friends in high places not to intercede
on his behalf. And he didn't fight back, by all accounts,
he just stood there and took it and died. And
that happened a lot like there was a There was
a lot of Christian and Jewish persecution in Rome because
(35:40):
they didn't conform to the Roman mythological beliefs, right right,
They're pantheon of gods and so they and they were
also in the minority, and people on the margins have
always been persecuted. Maybe not fed to the lions, but
persecuted at least, and Rome was no different.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
Yeah. When I worked in New Jersey at the restaurant
many years ago that I worked at, there was a
bar tender named Pete. And if a football game was
on in the bar and you walked by and around, like, hey,
what's up with the game, he would say, line's ten,
Christian's nothing. That was like his go to line for
anybody that asked the score.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Oh wow, I guess two thousand years later, it's not
too soon, right Bright.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
He always got to chuckle out of most people, Yeah,
but probably offended some people. Sure, looking back, I thought
Pete was so old. It's funny. I was twenty five
that that Pete was thirty two.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
It is, though, it's so old. When you're in your twenties.
Everybody's still old.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Everybody's so old.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Oh have you seen that that new naporghatsy special.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Yeah, he's talking about being like forty two, and he
thinks he's still young hanging out with the twenties. Something.
Some forty five year ol comes over. He's like beat it,
old man. There's a couple of young guys hanging out
over here. It is good, very good.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
He's but then the punchline of that, you're not gonna
do the punchline?
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Remember the punch line. I think I was laughing too
ardor must not have heard it.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
The punch line. He's like, yeah, you and young guys
just hanging out over and then he goes something like uh,
and also maybe let's sit down.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
That's right. That was a good punchline. He's good.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
If you're a Nate Barghetti fan. He was on an
episode of Movie Crush. We talked about the movie Scream.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Oh that's a good, good pick, so go check it out.
You're not a Nate Barghesi fan, goes some of that
and go watch his specials.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
Yeah, he has blowed up since that Movie Crush appearance.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
He's doing arenas now what Yes, dude, he's doing Phillips
Arena or State Barn Arena.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
On his next show, it's crazy and it's great.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
Yeah, and it's going to half a new better guy.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
Agreed. Speaking of better guys, maybe we should take a
break work on ourselves a little bit.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Work on our segs and then come back better guys.
(38:20):
All right, Chuck, it's time to talk about gladiators, gladiators, gladiators.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
Let's do it.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
There's a lot of misconceptions, and we talked about this
in the Spartakuss episode. We talked about chariot racing and
gladiator gladiators and stuff like that, and that's that's definitely
worth going to listen to. If this is if you're like, wow,
ancient Rome is fascinating, you want to learn more about it,
go listen to our Spartakuss episode. But there's a lot
of misconceptions still, one of which, like I mentioned, is
(38:48):
that most gladiator battles were fight fights to the death,
and that's just not how it was, in part because
of how gladiators were brought into existence. They were usually criminals,
prisoners of war, not look not not looked highly upon.
That's another big misconception too, that they were like today's
(39:09):
modern mma fighters with all these fans that are like
crazy for them. Not really accurate. But that's not to
say that some of them didn't make like household names
of themselves and probably did have some fans, but it's
just not a really apt analogy. But as I was saying,
the the reason why you didn't want to fight to
the death is because it took a lot of time
(39:31):
and effort and investment to train a prisoner of war
or a criminal who had been condemned to fight like
well and be a gladiator that successful. So those gladiator
schools were like, we're gonna regular gladiers. Do not let
them fight to the death, We want them back rewind
first too.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
Yeah, uh yeah, they're they're trying to put a good
product out there because they're charging well they weren't charging money,
I guess, but it was entertainment. And when they're all dying,
then you're just you know, what's going to happen is
all of a sudden, it's you know, the B team,
then the C team is out there, right, And so yeah,
(40:13):
they had a lot of time invested in these guys.
Uh and I say guys because it was one men,
except for when they occasionally had like, hey, let's bring
some women out here to fight as sort of a
novelty act kind of thing. But the Colosseum opened in
ady A, d and they organized this like everything else
(40:34):
was organized to the team. You know, Colosseum. Wise, these
these gladiator battles were organized because they also didn't want
to throw in you know, Russell Crowe with you know,
with me, because I would get pummeled and die so
quickly it wouldn't be any fun for anybody. So yeah,
they organized them by experience level, by their skill, maybe
(40:58):
by how they fought, Like, you don't want a grappler
in there with a swordsman, although that could be interesting,
who knows, but they wanted a swordsman against the swordsman.
And then they had they had four different groups, right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
They had well five. They have Murmillos, which were heavily armored.
They had a full helmet, they had a big old shield,
they had the gladiator sword that you think of, and
then kind of like Murmillo two point zero or Thraxis,
where they had a smaller shield and a Thracian sword,
the curved sword, but were very similar to Murmillo's.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
That's right. Then you had the and you were going
to leave this to me Reddiarius nice I guess they
had lighter armor. These guys had a net and a trident,
so there was some sort of a nautical theme going
on so they could like throw a net over someone
and tried it in them in the chest. Then you
(41:53):
had the chariot battlers, the chariot fighters, they were the Esidarius,
and then finally, what do we have the Hoppolo Maccus.
Nice job.
Speaker 2 (42:03):
I think these are the ones that you think of
when you when you think of a gladiator. They had
a helmet that had a plume on it. They had
a spear, they had a short sword, they had a
small round shield. I think they had like the shoulder armor. Okay,
pretty sure that's what Russell Crow would have been a gladiator.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
I haven't seen I saw that once back then. I
haven't seen it since then.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
I think I've seen it twice, but it's been a
while for sure. Yeah. I think it was on TNT
once when I was watching TNT.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
I think I thought it was pretty good back then.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
But they would so like you said, they would, they
sometimes they would they'd put a Hoppolo Maccus against a
Ruddiarius or something like that, just to see what happened
with one guy with a net and another guy with
a spear, you know, So they would have them fight
like that. But like you were saying, they they did
line them up according to skill level. And one thing
(42:51):
that bears mentioning so that the events of the coliseum
were free, but the gladiator school still charged whoever was
on the event or sponsoring the event for renting the gladiators.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Yeah, how did the money work if they weren't making
any money? Did the state just fund it all?
Speaker 2 (43:09):
Yes? Either so, holding an event at the coliseum free
to everybody who could get a ticket fifty thousand people
was a really good way of showing everybody how incredibly
wealthy you.
Speaker 1 (43:22):
Were, right or because he collected so many taxes.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
Pretty much, or if you were the emperor himself. It
was a way of it was like a gift to
the citizen. Why it's a way to keep them like
kind of sedated in line like TV today. It's the
exact same premise from the emperor's perspective, but it was
also a way to like generate belovedness and adoration from
the populace by putting on a really good event at
(43:47):
the coliseum.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
Yeah, I'd be curious about and we probably will never
know these specifics, but coming from a world of like
TV and film production, I would love to know how
it literally worked. As a production, like a big production
like this, with budgets and production managers essentially whatever they
called them. Yeah, I mean they had to have people
doing all that, and I'm sure there were fights over
(44:09):
you know, what they could afford and what they couldn't. Yeah,
like how much money did that got to have that elephant?
Speaker 2 (44:15):
Exactly?
Speaker 1 (44:15):
So he tried it out. Alligators three days in a row.
I can't get another alligator in there.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
We have ninety seven more days to go.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
Wow, amazing.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
So I said that the gladiator battles have been around
for a while by the time the Colosseum has built,
been around for at least three hundred years. They started
out as part of funeral games, and everybody was like, well,
we like this, so it kind of became like a
thing that wasn't just part of funerals, right, Yeah, and
some I said, some gladiators were like well known, And
(44:47):
there was one who might have been the most well
known of all time. His name was Flamma the Flame,
and apparently he was a captured Syrian soldier.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
Did they call him play my jama don't?
Speaker 2 (45:00):
Surely somebody did. Okay, we are from now on. Yeah,
So he turned down his freedom three different times they
would offer you your freedom by giving you a rudies,
a wooden sword that was symbolic of your transition back
into normal society. Three times he turned it down and
finally died in a battle at age thirty five. And
(45:23):
it's blong been considered that he was, you know, just
in it for the money or the glory or the fame.
But somebody I read suggested that he was doing it
because he was trying to stand for his culture, because
the Romans viewed Syrians very lowly, very cowardly, and Flamma,
the Syrian soldier, is like the greatest gladiator in all
(45:45):
of Rome. So they suggested that that might be why
he kept fighting.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
So flamm and Jamma was like, I'm not taking that wooden.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
Sword exactly, he can, that's right.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
There was also an emperor who got involved a gladiator
style Kommodis, who was a real piece of doo doo.
He rained from one eighty to one ninety two, and
you know it was he didn't really fight people. He
would go out there, you know, to boost his own ego,
apparently hundreds and hundreds of times as a quote unquote gladiator.
(46:20):
But you know, they would submit to him immediately, or
they would submit to them and he would just murder them.
He had like people with disabilities out there dressed up
as monsters with sponges painted like rocks, you know that,
supposedly throwing at him, and he would hunt them with arrows.
(46:41):
He would come out in public with their blood smeared
on him. He would kill animals. He was just a
real awful human being. There's one story where he supposedly
shot one hundred bears in one morning. Yeah, and he
was terrible.
Speaker 2 (47:02):
Yeah. To make it even worse, he would charge the
Roman treasury twenty five thousand pieces of silver per appearance
that he said, I'm going to appear, and so give
me twenty five thousand pieces of silver. And then there's
one other thing that I want to mention, because the
Colosseum eventually started to crumble, as we'll talk about in
a second, but during its heyday and possibly toward the
(47:23):
beginning of it, the air contemporary accounts of filling the
Colisseum with water five or six feet deep, putting ships
in there, and staging mock naval battles. I'm pretty sure
we talked about that in the Spartacus episode. Or some
other episode because it's really familiar. Ye may have happened.
It definitely happened in an artificial lake meat outside of
(47:46):
the Colisseum. But these some of these contemporary accounts are like, no, no,
we're talking about the Colisseum itself.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
Yeah, you know what my bet is is that they
did it at least once in the Colisseum. And we're like,
this is what do they call them? Nomachias? Nomachias? Yeah,
that they would that. They were like, we should build
our own place to do this, and they built one
near the Tiber River that was exclusively for these mocker
(48:13):
naval battles because I think the Colisseum was probably problematic.
That would be my guess.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
I think you're a historian now, but you can stop
holding on to that fact that there was running water
that could make it to the Colosseum. Everybody, that's right,
So I said, the Colosseum started to crumble.
Speaker 1 (48:28):
Right, Yeah, I mean quite literally and metaphorically. You know,
when the rise of the Christian Church in Rome, obviously
they would come along and say this kind of brutality
can't stand. The decline of the Roman Empire period and
you know, people weren't as into this stuff it was.
It was a moment in time that it was super
popular and like anything, yeah four hundred, your moment in time.
(48:52):
But that would wane, and the first earthquake hit in
four forty three, which damaged it, but it still being
used like as an amphitheater I think, you know, into
the sixth century, and then the medieval period comes along
and for about five hundred years they made it into
sort of like a like a live work play space.
Speaker 2 (49:16):
Yeah, exactly, with shops, warehouses, the common area, the arena
floor became a common area and then it got hit
by an earthquake again in thirteen forty nine and the
structure collapsed partially and it ended up becoming like a
stripped for parts. A lot of people scavenge stone from
(49:38):
it and other kind of works, including our works. But
also they used it for like building materials too, and
they used some of this at the direction of the
various popes over the years because they would take in
and build Christian churches and cathedrals with this. So because
so much of the Colisseum have been used to build churches,
and because so many Christians have been killed there, the
(50:01):
coliseum itself became kind of a Catholic holy place and
became an official holy place in seventeen forty nine when
Pope Benedict the fourteenth blessed it. He said, this is
now a Christian holy site, and that protected it from
any more pillaging or destruction and actually led to some
early restoration projects.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
Yeah, so they started to get to work on it
to protect it a little more. After the unification of
Italy in eighteen seventy it became you know, a legit
national monument. They you know, of course, Mussolini comes along
and fully uncovers the how'd you pronounce that hypogeum?
Speaker 2 (50:41):
That's where I'm going.
Speaker 1 (50:42):
Yeah, and you know, further rebuilt it, further stabilized it,
brought out some of the you know, restored some of
the history for sure, and then you know, I think
it wasn't until like the late twentieth century that it,
you know, modern restoration, like really nice techniques came along
to make sure that it was not only safe for tourists,
(51:03):
but like a robust place to you know, keep making
money off of or not keep But I guess, you know,
for some of the first times making money.
Speaker 2 (51:12):
Off Yes, some people consider it the greatest tourist traction
of Rome. Apparently it brings in six million visitors a year,
and I think there were six million people there when you,
me and I went.
Speaker 1 (51:24):
That's a lot of people.
Speaker 2 (51:25):
It is a lot.
Speaker 1 (51:26):
Maybe that's why I didn't go in.
Speaker 2 (51:28):
It's it's very neat. Though we didn't make it down
to the Hypogium. I don't know if it was open
yet for visitors. Yeah, no, twenty twenty one. No, we
definitely weren't able to. I would like to go back
and go down there.
Speaker 1 (51:40):
Yeah, I got to pay to go in this time.
Speaker 2 (51:42):
Okay, I'll cover your admission. How about that?
Speaker 1 (51:45):
Thank you?
Speaker 2 (51:47):
Well, since Chuck thanked me everybody, that means it's time
for listener mail.
Speaker 1 (51:53):
This is a good one. This is about skydiving. It's like, hey, guys,
got a good story. I took my boyfriend now husband
and skydiving for his thirty second birthday about ten years
ago in New England and had gone once before, so
the nerves were gone. But I was just full of
pure excitement and adrenaline. I was in the middle of
having my front tooth replaced. Do you see where this
(52:16):
is going yet? No?
Speaker 2 (52:16):
No, yet?
Speaker 1 (52:17):
And I had a flipper retainer. Do you see where
this is going yet?
Speaker 2 (52:21):
No? No yet?
Speaker 1 (52:21):
Okay, Chuck, I think you went through this experience. Of course.
I remember the flipper retainer. I asked the staff if
I should remove it, but they said, no, it's pretty
snug in there. You'll be fine. I was feeling vain
and didn't want my toothless face in the video. And
guess what happened during the free fall. I was a
little frustrated by needing to interact and entertain to the camera,
and I really wanted to just enjoy the moment, so
(52:44):
half jokingly, I blew a kiss and flipped a bird
at the cameraman. As instant karma would have it, my
faith tooth flew out. Had panicked and motioned to the
gap in my mouth to the cameraman, and he just
gave the thumbs up. All good, And I remember thinking, no,
not all good. This just got so much more expensive
and I have no tooth. And you can even see
(53:05):
me sort of looking around for it in midfall.
Speaker 2 (53:07):
Which I did not see that coming.
Speaker 1 (53:10):
I hope it would be magically floating next to me
because I plumbled to the earth. I just say plummeled.
I think that's pummeled and plummeted at the same time.
Speaker 2 (53:20):
I think that's a great new word. Jesus made.
Speaker 1 (53:22):
Not my smartest moment, but desperation took over. And this
is from Aaron Bogan, and Aaron sent the video which
is on YouTube, and it's very funny.
Speaker 2 (53:32):
To watch airs.
Speaker 1 (53:34):
You can't see the tooth fly out, but you see
immediately Aaron grab her mouth and motion around and sort
of looking around, and it's just very funny. So let
me see if I can even find how you would skydive.
New England presents colon Aaron's skydive from nine years ago
and it's got five hundred and seventy three views, two
(53:56):
of which were mine, So maybe we could make Aeron
a little more famous.
Speaker 2 (54:00):
Take care, thanks a lot, Aaron. That was a indeed
Chuck like Chuck said a good email. Thank you for that.
Sorry that happened, but at least you got a great
story out of it. And if you want to be
like Aaron and tell us one of your great stories,
we want to hear it. You can send it to
us via email at Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (54:21):
Stuff you should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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