Amphitheatre

“ We are told that the courses of the circus represented the evolutions of the stars, the dances of the theatre symbolized the voluptuous whirl of pleasure in which all living beings were hurried along, and the combats of the amphitheatre were a type of the struggles in which the human race is ever engaged. The circus, theatre, and amphitheatre were, then, so many temples of worship, and, as we may well believe, the most popular and the best frequented temples that paganism ever consecrated to its false and corrupting rites. ”

“ What a sight was the old amphitheatre of Titus, five hundred and sixty feet long and four hundred and seventy feet wide, built on eighty arches and rising one hundred and forty feet into the air, with its four successive orders of architecture, and enclosing its eighty thousand seated spectators, arranged according to rank, from the Emperor to the lowest of the populace, all seated on marble benches covered with cushions, and protected from the sun and rain by ample canopies! What an excitement, when men strove not with wild beasts alone, but with one another ”

“ The theatre is opposite the celebrated Roman amphitheatre, and the wish to visit it by moonlight was expressed spontaneously by the whole party. The custode was roused, and we entered the vast arena and stood in the midst, with the gigantic ranges of stone seats towering up in a receding circle, as if to the very sky, and the lofty arches and echoing dens lying black and silent in the dead shadows of the moon. A hundred thousand people could sit here ”

“ A great crowd is just leaving the amphitheatre and as the attendants roll back the heavy awnings and unleash the tent-poles, the moon, which has been excluded for the performance, begins to filter in, and presently the stone begins to throw off faint shimmers, and dark shadows fall across the stage. The builded temple, which has been screened, is now revealed, and its colours glow again, albeit in shades not known to the light of day. The porticos of temples look down upon the theatre, and olive trees stand dark and beautiful on the hills. ”

“ The idea of the theatre is representation and illusion, and the stage is, as it were, magic ground, over which the imagination may glance without restraint and wander at will from Thebes to Athens, from the present to the past or future. But in the amphitheatre all is reality. The citizen, seated face to face with his fellow-citizens, could not for a moment forget either his country or his times. ”

“ But to those who were habituated to the intense realism of the amphitheatre, the idealised suffering of the stage was unimpressive. All the genius of a Siddons or a Ristori would fail to move an audience who had continually seen living men fall bleeding and mangled at their feet. ”

“ The capricious conduct of beasts suddenly released from confinement and darkness, and brought into the bright light of the amphitheatre, with the dense crowds of spectators all around shouting applause or execration, is quite natural. ”

“ I am loath to leave the piazza and palace without finding some word or two to suggest their antique majesty, in the sunshine and the shadow; and how fit it seemed, notwithstanding their venerableness, that there should be a busy crowd filling up the great, hollow amphitheatre, and crying their fruit and little merchandises, so that all the curved line of stately old edifices helped to reverberate the noise. The life of to-day, within the shell of a time past, is wonderfully fascinating. ”

“ Traversing the green arena of the amphitheatre,—where annual festas are held, and occasional cricket matches played—to the left, and leaving the Temple of Diana to the right, we come upon a deep descent just in front of the villa, and enter it for a minute to cast a hasty coup-d'œil at the ample frescoes of the ceiling and the grim mosaics of the floor ”

“ They were standing on the edge of the amphitheatre, the ground shelving steeply downward in front of them, rocks and water below. And to think that she—his dearest, she, all gentleness and refinement, was mated to this coarse clay! ”

“ But it was only in the earliest times that it produced its full effect, when the people was more a people than it is now. For, properly speaking, such an amphitheatre is constructed to give the people an imposing view of itself,—to cajole itself. ”

“ The noble amphitheatre of downs, by which the town is surrounded, were seen in all their beauty, and no one unacquainted with what was passing, would have supposed that a morn so auspicious could usher in other than a joyous day. ”

“ An amphitheatre is one of those few ruins that leave no problem to solve. Here we have a grey antiquity without any mutilation of form, and merely spoliated of its benches. The patron saint of Naples was, they say, imprisoned here. A little chapel ascertains the spot, but he does no miracles on this arena. When we come to temples, we are always at a great loss for proprietors. ”

“ By five o’clock the little industries that have prevailed since the rehearsal ended are mostly completed; and the theatre becomes quite still. It is a complete, a solemn, almost an awful stillness. All the busy life and cheerful murmur of this human ant-hill are hushed. The rows of seats are as deserted as the degrees of some old ruined amphitheatre in Rome. The stage is a desert. The “flies” and “borders” loom overhead in cobweb indistinctness. Afar off the dusky, feeble chandelier, looks like a moon on which no sun condescends to shine ”

“ A stab in the dark, or a shot from behind a hedge ends matters, and all is over," answered Macdonald, as they issued into the street, after settling with the patron. "And now, before it is quite dark, let us take a view of the amphitheatre. I see its ruins above the flat-roofed houses at the end of the street yonder, and a bold outline it rears against the clear sky of the evening." ”

“ After the music, they were conducted to a small amphitheatre, constructed on the little green platform before the castle, where they were amused by the tricks of the jugglers, sleight of hand, fire-eating, rope-dancing, and every prank that has been known from the shores of the Ganges to those of the Thames, from the most distant periods, even down to our own times. ”

“ A garden then glided into the amphitheatre, expanding and advancing without any visible agency, and in a short time admirable designs, formed out of clumps of myrtle and of box, such as ships, towers and castles, men, horses, pyramids and the like, were seen, such as we make of plants in our gardens, while the theatre was filled with sweet melody from the birds among the trees. ”

“ The theatre, the circus, and, far beyond both, the cruel amphitheatre, constituted, for the ancient world, a passionate enjoyment, that by many authors, and especially through one period of time, is described as going to the verge of frenzy. And we, in modern times, are far too little aware in what degree these great carnivals, together with another attraction of great cities, the pomps and festivals of the Pagan worship, broke the monotony of domestic life, which, for the old world, was even more oppressive than it is for us. ”

“ The circus was too spacious for the eye to gloat upon the expression of conflicting passions, and watch the last ebbings of life; but the amphitheatre brought the greatest possible number of spectators within easy distance of the dead and dying, and fostered the passion for the sight of blood, which continued for centuries to vie in interest with the harmless excitement of the race. ”

“ One such spot I have, and from it many a lesson I have learned.—It is a great amphitheatre, Nature-made, vast and open. It slopes to the north and west, and all about it and about are green trees—green trees and shrubs and lowly plants. In the whole space I am the one spectator—save for little grasses that stand on tiptoe to look and listen; save for little weeds that nod their heads; and a beetle crawling heedless over dry and shining grains of sand. In the orchestral centre, where, in ancient Greece, should stand the lighted altar, there chances to be a little crimson maple ”

“ I divined that we were approaching the center of the city. Soon, indeed, I saw before me the sparkling walls of the amphitheatre I had descried from the hill of Observation at the locks. Here it is, that the great plays, the gigantic concerts, the operas, and services of the Pan-Tan are held. It was a seraphic, astounding picture. It rose in the midst of a great square of many acres in extent, where the light, purposely subdued, allowed its dazzling beauty subdued isolation. How wonderful! ”

“ Caius Scribonius Curio built the first amphitheatre, for the celebration of his [142] father's funeral games. It was composed of two theatres of wood, placed on pivots, so that they could be turned round, spectators and all, and placed face to face, thus forming a double theatre, or amphitheatre, which ending suggested its elliptical shape. Statilius Taurus, the friend of Augustus, B.C. 30, erected a more durable amphitheatre, partly of stone and partly of wood, in the Campus Martius. Others were afterwards built by Caligula and Nero. ”

“ Fancy, at the outset, the arrival of the audience—people dressed in the picturesque holiday costume of the time, which varied with every varying rank, hurrying to their daylight play from miles off; all visible in every direction on the surface of the open moor, and all converging from every point of the compass to the one common centre of Piran Round. Then, imagine the assembling in the amphitheatre; the running round the outer circle of the embankment to get at the entrances; the tumbling and rushing up the steps inside; the racing of hot-headed youngsters to get to the top places ”

“ Not a creature in the upper tiers had been able to keep his seat; men and women alike had risen to their feet and were shouting and roaring to the competitors. The music in the towers might have ceased, so completely was it drowned by the tumult in the amphitheatre. ”

“ From the hour of midnight the streets and ways leading to the great Amphitheatre were alive with people, all tending toward the same goal: men and women in holiday clothes and little children running beside them. ”

“ The entrance to this place might be from without-side the amphitheatre: here is no want of room for the door within; for the level of the area was at least twelve feet lower than the podium, like our pit at the play-houses; and it is probable there was a descent of the whole level this way, to draw off the rain into some subterraneous passage: the podium in the castrensian amphitheatre is monstrously high. Our area, no doubt, is exceedingly elevated by manuring, ploughing, and ruins: yet it preserves a dish-like concavity, through innumerable injuries ”

“ Sometimes these are stages of circular galleries of seats hewn out of the hillside, where rows of spectators might sit one above the other, all looking down on a broad, flat space in the centre, under their feet, where the representations took place. Sometimes, when the country was flat, or it was easier to build than to excavate, the amphitheatre was raised above ground, rising up to a considerable height. ”

“ I refer to the wonderful amphitheatre which stands at the side of the official residence of the major-general commanding the Division of the Philippines. Advantage has been taken of the existence of a natural amphitheatre with remarkable acoustic properties. Man has added what Nature left undone, and the result is an imposing and beautiful auditorium capable of seating four thousand people, throughout which a whisper can be heard. ”

“ As they moved around the arena, some of these men were saluted by the whole multitude with noisy acclamations, in token, I suppose, of the approbation wherewith the feats of some former festival had deserved to be remembered. On the appearance of others, groans and hisses were heard from some parts of the Amphitheatre, mixed with contending cheers and huzzas from others of the spectators. ”

“ A queer smell breathed about the place, a smell of must [83] and age and dried-up incense. Pauline and Molly were glad to get away from it and feel the fresh air and the sunshine again. They rambled on to the western slope of the hill, and a little way down, where the land descends in terraces to the wooded valley below, they came upon the ruins of a Roman amphitheatre. They had never seen an amphitheatre before, but they guessed what it was from a picture which mamma had shown them. ”

“ I have thought it a poor, barren entertainment, fit but for children, and those grown children whose minds, uninstructed in higher things, must seek their happiness in some spring of mere sensual joy. Women frequent the amphitheatre, I am sure, rather to make a show of their beauty, their dress, and equipage, than for any thing else ”

“ The amphitheatre, erected by Ummidia Quadratilla (whose passion for actors is mentioned by Pliny, Epist. vii. 24, on the occasion of her death at the age of about eighty) , is still existing: it is built of opus reticulatum and the five entrances are by arches of larger blocks of stone; it is approximately circular in plan. The external walls are 59 ft. high. ”

“ They stopped on their way at the Tragic and Comic Theatres, and at length reached the Amphitheatre itself. This edifice is by far the largest in the city, and is better preserved than any. It is built of large blocks of a dark volcanic stone, and constructed in that massive style which the Romans lived, and of which they have left the best examples in these huge amphitheatres. As this Amphitheatre now stands, it might still serve for one of those displays for which it was built. Tier after tier those seats arise, which once had accommodations for fifteen or twenty thousand human beings. ”