All Work Solver
Ancient Rome: The Colosseum
MATT LAUER, anchor:
I'm down here on the floor of the Colosseum and no tourists are allowed down here so it's a privilege to be standing here. Nancy Deconcilia has a degree in classical archaeology and she gives walking tours of Rome. Nancy, great to see you. Thank you very much for being here.
Ms. NANCY DECONCILIA: Thank you.
LAUER: Before we talk about where we're standing here, give me an idea of why the architecture of this building, the Colosseum, is so significant?
Ms. DECONCILIA: Well, it's one of the biggest spectacle buildings in the whole world. The way it was built was like a modern skyscraper with four different companies working at the same time, building up the stone structure and then filling in with brick. It's like two Greek theaters turned face to face. So it's a Roman invention, this kind of building.
LAUER: It was also very efficient, 80,000 people could be in here, 50,000 sitting and 30,000 standing, and they could get those people in and out of here in a big hurry.
Ms. DECONCILIA: Everybody that would come to the games, to the entertainments, would have a little ticket which told them exactly what entrance to go in, what staircase to go up, what section to head for, and where was there seat.
LAUER: I understand the ticket was actually a little chip of stone, which was kind of interesting.
Ms. DECONCILIA: Or--or ivory. Various materials were used.
LAUER: Now this is the kind of blueprint for today's modern sports stadiums, isn't it?
Ms. DECONCILIA: Yes.
LAUER: Everybody, obviously, with their gates and, obviously, we don't have sky boxes here as Al just mentioned--but other than that, this is pretty much the precursor to the stadium?
Ms. DECONCILIA: Exactly. Exactly.
LAUER: Now, in about 80 AD, this building opened, and it's my understanding that up to 5,000 animals were slaughtered during the opening ceremonies. Now, why was death so important in ancient Rome?
Ms. DECONCILIA: Well, there's two various reasons for this. One is that death was all around you. People had very short life spans. Death was something you lived with on a daily basis. Sacrifice in temples. Sacrifice--killing animals was a part of the daily routine, also. And, plus, you have people like gladiators who are almost nonhumans. The fact that they die is of no consequence whatsoever.
LAUER: Take me back in a time machine. Now, the--OK. It's 80 AD. We're in this building. They're about to have an event up top. Give me an idea of what the sights, the sounds, and the smells in this area right here would be.
Ms. DECONCILIA: Well, this must have been like an anthill. It must have been very dark, very gloomy with torches and oil lamps. There must have been people rushing backwards and forwards all over. Strange noises, animals roaring, machinery clanking, smells, just an absolute complete complication on all corridors on all sides.
LAUER: Now they would bring in these animals from all corners of the world. They would house them in cages in another building and they wouldn't feed them and they'd keep them in the dark for days so when they brought them out in front of the crowd, they were just wild.
Ms. DECONCILIA: The animals had been, as a matter of fact, completely blinded by the light as soon as they were lifted into the arena up above. And so they would roar with terror, and then immediately, they would smell flesh. They would smell something to eat.
LAUER: And those were, of course, the convicted who were brought up to the floor of the Colosseum, which we should mention, was two stories ahead of us. We're down in the--I know you don't like the word, but the dungeon area.
Ms. DECONCILIA: Yeah.
LAUER: There was a wooden floor to the Colosseum and it was covered in sand. Why?
Ms. DECONCILIA: The sand was to soak up all that blood.
LAUER: That's so gross.
Ms. DECONCILIA: The blood, of course, created a terrible stench, so they had to have special people called "sparsors" who would go around with perfume and spray this bloody sand with perfume to try to put down this tremendous stench of blood.
LAUER: I know not only were there the animals and the gladiators, there was also music and scenery.
Ms. DECONCILIA: Yes.
LAUER: Sets were very much a part of the show?
Ms. DECONCILIA: Yes. The scenery was mostly used for the beast shows, and that's because the beasts really represent, for the people watching these entertainments, the far corners of the empire where Roman power is stretching. They've never seen these animals. They've only heard of them and they want to see them in a show.
LAUER: And how did they get that scenery up to the floor?
Ms. DECONCILIA: So, the scenery would be in boxes. The scenery would be fixed on sections of the wooden flooring up above, which, with a system of counterweights and pulleys and huge winches, sections of the floor would be taken down, and the scenery would be fixed to this piece of floor, and the floor would then rise up and everybody mentioned the miraculous appearance of hills and trees.
LAUER: It was really like a Broadway show except it had death at the end of it.
Ms. DECONCILIA: Exactly. Exactly. And the, the--the scenery was one of the most interesting parts of this whole show.
LAUER: This is a little difficult to shoot, but there's a cave-like structure there. What happened in there?
Ms. DECONCILIA: This is a tunnel and through this tunnel would come the cages with the roaring animals that were crazed with fear and hunger. And they would be brought in here and placed at the base of the elevators that would take them through this very complicated system of trap doors where they would pop up out into the arena. And people mentioned the roar of 80 lions bursting out of trapped doors all at once. It gave people goose bumps.
LAUER: And, of course, we're in this narrow hallway here. We should mention also that the Colosseum was built on a lake bed or at least part of it was. What's the significance to that?
Ms. DECONCILIA: The lake was just occurring in nature in this particular area. Nero made use of this lake by making it into the centerpiece of his urban villa, and he used to have floating boat parties on this lake. Afterwards, when he died, he was so hated that the emperor that followed him, Vespasian, thought it was a good idea to give this whole property back to the people, and so you have the construction of this spectacle building, a building for the people.
LAUER: Nancy Deconcilia, thank you so much. We're going to join you later and you're going to take us up top a little bit. We'll talk about the kinds of people who would come to the shows, the emperor and, of course, those gladiators we all love to talk about. Nancy, thanks very much.
Ms. DECONCILIA: Certainly. You're welcome