Architectural History: The Colosseum is an iconic building. As classicist Mary Beard and historian Keith Hopkins assert in their new book about it.
All modern responses to the Colosseum - this book inevitably included - turn out to be a combination of admiration, repulsion and a measure of insidious smugness. For it is an extraordinarily bravura feat of architecture and a marker of the indelibility of ancient Rome from the modern landscape, yet the scale of the human slaughter in the arena must revolt us, while simultaneously allowing us to take comfort in the belief that "our" culture is not like that.
It is with these varied strands that the authors grapple as they recite the almost 2,000 year history of the building. The first chapter, entitled 'The Colosseum now . . .', treats us to the reactions of amongst others Lord Byron, Dickens, Mark Twain and Henry James. Intermingled is the sometime 20th-century use of the building for its original purpose as an "entertainment" venue (in 2003 Paul McCartney used it for a charity concert) and ironically since 1999, given the building's gory past, its "floodlighting each time a death sentence is commuted anywhere in the world or when any state votes to suspend or abolish its use".
After this somewhat eclectic beginning, the authors start a rigorous search for the facts with an engaging air of humour. Some of the facts make surprising reading, for example, ". . . there are no genuine records of any Christians being put to death in the Colosseum". This rejection of what is a well-known truth is somewhat qualified by a further sentence, which adds: "It is likely that Christians were put to death there . . . But, despite what we were often told, that is only a guess." This respect for the facts does not inhibit the authors from examining, with quizzical enthusiasm, some myths and theories that have evolved around it.
The authors display the enormity of the task that Vespasian began in 72AD and which his son, Titus, had completed by 80AD. Apart from a great deal of statistical matter about the building and its construction the authors also commissioned a firm of chartered quantity surveyors to estimate the likely cost of creating the foundations of the Colosseum today. The figure which emerged was £28.5 million, excluding drainage work, professional fees and, of course, any building above the ground. On the other hand, the difference between slave and wage labour is highlighted, together with a collection of other uncertainties. What the exercise proclaims is the vastness of the undertaking.
The book covers a wide variety of topics, including - to give but a few examples - the life of a gladiator, which was distinctly unglamorous, the exclusion of women from vast areas of the auditorium, the means by which wild animals were brought to Rome, the duration of the "shows" (123 days for a Trajan bloodbath, according to one observer), the splendid flora (420 species in 1855, although now diminished by weedkiller), and practical tips for any visitor. The book is a great read.
The Colosseum Keith Hopkins and Mary Beard Profile Books, 213pp. £15.99
John McBratney is chairman of the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig and a barrister