Arena

“ A very interesting portion of the arena is the labyrinth of corridors, passages, and stairs, which honeycomb its massive masonry, and into which, in the event of a shower, the whole body of spectators could at once retreat, leaving the great circles of stone as deserted as at midnight. So admirable, too, are the arrangements, that there could have been very little crowding. The vomitories get wider and wider as they approach the entrance, where the people would emerge on every side, like the drops of water flung off by the rotatory motion of a mop. ”

“ Throwing myself upon the grass in the middle of the arena, I enjoyed the freedom of my situation; and pursued the last tracks of light, as they faded behind the solitary arches, which rose above the rest. Red and fatal were the tints of the western sky; the wind blew chill and hollow, and something more than common seemed to issue from the withering herbage on the walls. I started up, fled through a dark arcade, where water falls drop by drop, and arrived, panting, in the great square before the ruins. ”

“ If the Paarl Kloof, as Klaas called it, from whence we had just come, had been sufficiently striking, the mighty amphitheatre in which we lay was infinitely more amazing. Imagine a vast arena, almost completely circular in shape, flat and smooth, and composed as to its flooring of intermingled sand and gravel, reddish-yellow in colour. ”

“ Looking across this sanded arena westwardly still, there is a pedestal of marble supporting three low conical pillars of gray stone, much carven. Many an eye will hunt for those pillars before the day is done, for they are the first goal, and mark the beginning and end of the race-course. ”

“ In the centre of the arena a large fire tosses the flames into space, the light glistens on the leaves and brings into bolder relief the fantastic striped colours of red, white, and natural black on their almost naked bodies, and also supplies light for the performance. On one side is erected a thick and impenetrable break of bushes, semi-circular in shape, about 4 feet high and 30 feet long. ”

“ Before going to the café I had dined, and before dining I had found time to go and look at the arena. Then it was that I discovered that Arles has no general physiognomy and, except the delightful little church of Saint Trophimus, no architecture, and that the rugosities of its dirty lanes affect the feet like knife-blades. It was not then, on the other hand, that I saw the arena best. The second day of my stay at Arles I devoted to a pilgrimage to the strange old hill town of Les Baux, the mediæval Pompeii, of which I shall give myself the pleasure of speaking. ”

“ Paul was spoiling their trade for miniature temples. Down there in the arena Paul did battle with the beasts, very likely as punishment. This is the spot—these are the very benches—but we cannot see the picture: we cannot wake the tread of the vanished years.
Behind the arena are the columns that support the stage, and back of these are the dressing-rooms, their marble walls as solid and perfect to-day as when the ancient players dallied and gossiped there. At one end is a dark, cave-like place where we thought the wild beasts might have been kept. ”

“ A few minutes, it seemed, and I had risen above the great mountains—floating, alone, afar in the redness. At a tremendous distance below, the arena showed, dimly; with the mighty House looking no larger than a tiny spot of green. The Swine-thing was no longer visible. ”

“ And he sees, directly opposite, behind the bars of another compartment across the arena a lion walking to and fro, then a line of sandals, bare legs, and purple fringes. Beyond are the vast circling wreaths of people, in symmetrical tiers, enlarging as they rise, from the lowest which hems in the arena to the uppermost above which masts rise to sustain a hyacinth-colored awning, suspended in air by ropes. ”

“ The arena, for so I have termed it, appeared a perfect circle of about ten to twelve miles in diameter, the House, as I have mentioned before, standing in the center. The surface of the place, like to that of the Plain, had a peculiar, misty appearance, that was yet not mist.
From a rapid survey, my glance passed quickly upward along the slopes of the circling mountains. How silent they were. I think that this same abominable stillness was more trying to me than anything that I had so far seen or imagined. I was looking up, now, at the great crags, towering so loftily. ”

“ Like a smile of scorn lies the moonlight down below there upon the green arena, where once stood the Colossus of the Sun-god. The star of the north [8] glimmers low through the windows, and the Serpent and the Bear crouch. What a world has gone by! ”

“ The arena is an excavation of perhaps thirty feet in depth, and the rows of seats, all built of vast blocks of stone, stretch round it in retreating 187 and rising platforms to the surface of the hill. The lower story is surrounded with dens; and the upper terrace is enclosed with a circle of small apartments, like boxes in a theatre, opening by handsome arches upon the scene. It is the ruin of a noble structure, and, even without the help of the imagination, exceedingly impressive. ”

“ It is a vast building and unites the conveniences both of the ancient and modern theatres. It has a roof like a modern theatre, and the seats in the parterre are arranged like the seats in an ancient Greek theatre. Above this are what we should call boxes, and above them again what we usually term a gallery. A vast and deep arena lies between the parterre and the orchestra and fills up the space between the audience and the proscenium. It is admirably adapted both for spectators and hearers; when a tragedy, comedy or opera is acted, a scaffolding is erected and seats placed in the arena. ”

“ The main entrance to the Riding Hall branches from the road a few paces beyond the arch, the lower level of the galleries being reached by a flight of steps that cling to the steep retaining wall of the road. The great arena is 150 by 600 feet and is covered by a cantilever roof, so that when the eye first encounters this interior, a sensation of its vastness holds the spectator in its grip. ”

“ At the Arena Chapel the picture stood out at a glance, every superfluous detail giving instant place to the main spirit of the scene; here the treatment is much more elaborate, but a considerable portion of the earnestness and oneness of the Arena frescoes is gone; the work, though beautiful, is not striking, not that it is exactly confused, but seems rather to be that of a conscientious workman carrying out directions faithfully, with a little painful effort. ”

“ It is so suggestive of the fierce and splendid spectacles of Roman times that the ring left by a modern circus on the arena, and absurdly dwarfed by the vast space of the oval, had an impertinence which we hotly resented, looking down on it from the highest grade of the interior. It then lay fifty feet below us, in the middle of an ellipse five hundred feet in length and four hundred in breadth, and capable of holding fifty thousand spectators. The seats that the multitudes pressed of old are perfect, yet; scarce a stone has been removed from the interior ”

“ The well-preserved amphitheatre, the subterranean parts of which below the arena are intact, with a main passage down the centre, a curved passage all round with holes for trap doors in its roof, and numerous small chambers, also with trap doors in their vaulted roofs for admitting the wild beasts, whose cages were on the other side of the curved passage, to the arena, are especially interesting. ”

“ The circus is divided into two parts—one in the shade, the other in the sunshine; in the first one pays more; in the second sit the common people. The arena has four doors at equal distances from each other—the door through which the toreros enter, the door for the bulls, another for the horses, and a fourth, under the king’s box, for the heralds of the spectacle. Over the door through which the bulls enter rises a sort of sloping platform which is called the toril, and well for him who can find a place there! ”

“ It is a circus. The large open space in the centre was called the arena. Here there were fierce and bloody fights; wild beasts fought with each other, or with men trained to the business and called gladiators, and these gladiators often fought with each other—all for the amusement of the people, who were never satisfied unless a quantity of blood was shed, and many were killed. This arena was covered with sand, and a ditch filled with water separated it from the seats. ”

“ The fragments cumbering the arena were enormous, and highly interesting from their character. There were rich blocks of cornice, ten feet long; fluted and reeded pillars; great arcs of heavily-carved sculpture, which appeared to have served as architraves from pillar to pillar, along the face of the proscenium, where there was every trace of having been a colonnade; and other blocks sculptured with figures of animals in alto-relievo. There were generally two figures on each block, and among those which could be recognized were the dog and the lion. ”

“ There was one break in the encircling rise of ground, it is true, and that was at a spot directly opposite the station of le Bourdon and his companion, where the rill which flowed from the spring found a passage out toward the more open ground. Branches shaded most of the mound, but the arena itself was totally free from all vegetation but that which covered the dense and beautiful sward with which it was carpeted. ”

“ It will be seen at once that the arena and most of the seats lie in a great hollow excavated for the purpose, thus making sufficient for the exterior a low wall of hardly more than ten to thirteen feet in height. ”

“ It will be noticed that the important things about the developed circus are the arēna, carcerēs, spīna, mētae, and the seats, all of which will be more particularly described.
332 The Arena.—The arena is the level space surrounded by the seats and the barriers. The name was derived from the sand used to cover its surface to spare as much as possible the unshod feet of the horses. A glance at the plan will show that speed could not have been the important thing with the Romans that it is with us. ”

“ A female child of seven years was brought into the great arena, which was covered with human beings, their faces all turned upwards. She was engaged to walk the entire length of a rope inclined from the floor on one side of the building up to the roof on the other, about a hundred feet in height. ”

“ There are the same dens for wild beasts under the podium, and in the pavement the same sockets for pivots to work in, to pull up the cages, or pegmata, or lifts. The arena, instead of being a boarded floor, is of brick, carried on vaults, with numerous square apertures for the trap-doors. The central passage is vaulted at the two ends, but open in the greater part. Round each of the openings there is a deep groove, as if a wooden cover had been fitted tightly over each and made water-tight, so that the surface of the arena might be flooded for naval fights ”

“ We now see distinctly the large corbels [167] all round the building at a certain height, about six feet below the present level of the soil, for carrying the boards of the great floor covered with sand called the arena, upon which the athletes wrestled, the wild beasts were killed, and the persons condemned to death were torn to pieces by wild beasts; so that the martyrdom of the early Christians who were condemned to death in this manner took place on the sand of the arena, and not on the soil of the area. ”

“ Opposite this gate at the other end of the arena was the station for the chariots (AA in the plan) , called carcerēs, "barriers," flanked by two towers at the corners (II) , and divided into two equal sections by another gate (B) , called the porta pompae, by which processions entered the circus. There are also gates (HH) between the towers and the seats. The exterior appearance of the towers and barriers, called together the oppidum, is shown in Fig. 140.
331 The arena is divided for about two-thirds its length by a fence or wall (MM) , called the spīna, "backbone." ”

“ These horses, then, going in the way I have stated, pass twice round the arena and place themselves in the middle of the arena in five or six lines, one before the other, and the king's horse in front of them, all facing the king; they stand in such a way that between them and the men there is an open space all round. ”

“ A podium, or enclosing wall, surrounded this arena in its entire circuit, and the thickness of this wall was such that it resisted the thrust of the sides of the Mount Lucotitius, on the eastern slopes of which the edifice was constructed. The places arranged for the spectators of the games, around the arena, were evidently placed, on the west, on the slope of Mount Lucotitius, where have been found walls converging toward the centre of the structure to support the tiers of seats running in the contrary direction. ”

“ Athletic sports may be practised in a well-rolled grass field, but the best arena is an enclosure, with a regularly laid down running track, the fouadation made of clinkers and rubble, and the surface of well-rolled fine cinder ashes. ”

“ The interior is arranged in the following manner:—Around the arena, which is of truly Roman grandeur, runs a circular barrier of planks, six feet high, painted a bright red, and furnished on each side, at about two feet from the ground, with a wooden ledge, on which the chulos and banderilleros put one foot, in order to jump over to the other side when they are followed too closely by the bull. This barrier is called las tablas. ”

“ People go wild with excitement as they did long ago when they watched the contests in the arena in the Circus Maximus, in the stadium, or as they did who lined the road from Marathon to Athens to watch the footrunners. ”