The amphitheatre is a Roman invention, but ... What is an amphitheatre?
IMO nobody has explained it better than Bill Thayers in his subItem on the subject:
Now before we start, repeat after me: an amphitheatre and a theatre are different types of buildings.
Amphi-theatres are "theatres in the round": amphi- means "around" in Greek.
A theatre is a space with a stage, and the audience is on one side of it. People need to hear, so a theatre is relatively small.
An amphitheatre is for action: it's a sports arena, where the spectators sit around the field. They need to see, but they don't really need to hear, so an amphitheatre can be much larger. |
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The oldest amphitheatres have been built in Campania; some (at Capua, Literno and Cuma) can be dated at the end of the II century BC; some others (Avella, Pozzuoli, Telese) at the middle of the first century BC.
In Rome the law prohibited the building of structures for shows. Pompeius in 55 BC managed to build a theatre only by justifying it as an extension of the Temple of Venus, thus overcoming the ban.
Pliny the Elder reports that in 53 or 52 BC C. Scribonius Curio gave games and shows in Rome, and for the occasion he invented an original machine. It was composed of two theatres which could rotate and form one arena.
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In the morning the public sat in the theatres, then the semicircles were rotated to close the space, so that in the afternoon the people could enjoy the gladiatorial games. Pliny also deplores the fact that the Romans after the first day did not budge from the seats, even while they were being rotated, so that the arena was a less dangerous place than the stalls:
... theatra iuxta duo fecit amplissima ligno, cardinum singulorum versatili suspensa libramento, in quibus utrisque antemeridiano ludorum spectaculo edito inter sese aversis, ne invicem obstreperent scaenae, repente circumactis — ut constat, post primos dies etiam sedentibus aliquis —, cornibus in se coeuntibus faciebat ampitheatrum gladiatorumque proelia edebat, ipsum magis auctoritatum populum Romanum circumferens.
Provisional buildings were built in Rome for the games, nevertheless the habit of organising them in public spaces continued.
In the meantime the word amphitheatrum started to indicate the thing that was previously called spectacula, or in greek Theatron kynegeticon (hunting theatre). The first mention belongs to Vitruvius (De Architectura, I,7,1). When giving directions for the layout of a city, he says that "If there be neither amphitheatre nor gymnasium, the temple of Hercules should be near the circus."
The first stone amphitheatre of Rome is that of Statilius Taurus, built in 29 BC somewhere in the Campus Martis, its precise location being a matter of fierce debate. It seems that wooden structures continued to be popular; in 27 AD in Fidene, just outside Rome, one of these collapsed killing 20.000 spectators (Suetonius), or killing and wounding 50.000 (Tacitus).
Taurus' amphitheatre, though still in use for a long time, had become inadequate for the splendid shows of the imperial capital. It seems that Caligula hosted the shows in the Saepta, a big public space, and then Nero in 57 AD actually had a wooden one built - it only took one year - for his shows. It was magnificent: the awning was blue, and it used the longest wooden beam ever seen in Rome: 120 ft. long and 2 ft wide. The descriptions of it mention gems, gold, ivory. The wall around the arena had ivory rollers on top, that stopped the wild animals from jumping over, and for more protection a golden net was cast all around, with big pointed tusks leaning inwards. It seems that this theatre disappeared in the most famous of the roman fires: the one of 64 AD.
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