What Really Happened Before Christians Entered Roman Arenas?

PART 2:

  A Roman philosopher described the midday intermission  in the arenas as a time when only punishment remained.  In the early  games of the Colosseum, poets recorded condemned prisoners reenacting ancient myths that ended in actual death before the public.  Now go back to the hallway.

  Imagine hearing the sand being prepared above as the gate is unlocked.  The light at the end of the ramp didn’t look like an exit; it looked like the border between the hidden world and the exposed one.  The noise of tens of thousands of voices descended through the stones and beat in the chest before any image  

  Nearby there was a gate with a name of its own, dedicated to the Roman goddess of funerals, reserved for those who did not return.  Then the hinges turn, the ramp fills with sunlight, and the entire underground space seems to hold its breath.  Viewed from within the sand, the coliseum becomes a funnel of faces.

  There are no walls, only a crowd surrounding you.  If stories like this captivate you,  belongs in the Ruined Bible, because this ancient world still hides a lot.  Looking at this machine from top to bottom, the question that explains everything remains.  Why did Rome build this?  The answer begins with Vespasian, the emperor who erected the amphitheater, right over Nero’s private lake, where Nero had a private garden.

  The new emperors placed 50,000 Romans. It was propaganda carved in stone.  An inscription reconstructed by music scholars reveals who paid for the artwork.  The new amphitheater was built with spoils  of war , and the war of that time was in Judea.  According to historians, the gold from the Temple in Jerusalem financed this work.

   Just a few steps away, the Arch of Titus still shows Roman soldiers carrying the sacred candelabrum from the temple.  In the year 80, Tito inaugurated everything with  100 days of games. Ancient accounts speak of thousands of animals  killed.  Entry was free, a gift from the emperor to the people.

  A Roman poet summed up the formula  as bread and circuses.  And the arena also functioned as a court.  Executing convicts in front of the entire city [accompanied by music] transformed punishment into a show of power.  Even the place where one sat taught obedience.  Each Roman saw their own position within the empire reflected in the stone, and above all was the imperial box.

  There, the emperor didn’t just come to watch, he came to be seen.  The outer ring rose almost 50 m, with a length of about 190 m at its longest axis.  80 arches swallowed and returned the crowd with such efficiency that the building emptied in a few minutes.  According to estimates, [the music venue] had water fountains in the corridors and, according to old accounts, even perfumed sprays falling on the audience on hot days.

   In the middle of the stands, an ordinary person felt the crowd’s reaction wash over their own body in waves. For those on the beach, that same sound decided their fate.  The audience screamed, begging for mercy or demanding death.  The final decision rested with the games’ sponsor , but he made his decisions by looking at the crowd, not the fight itself.

  Not every duel ended in death. Defeated players could be spared, and the great  champions became celebrities in Rome.  Some fought for years before receiving the Rudes, a wooden sword  publicly given as a symbol of freedom to others.  All that remained was the gate of the goddess of funerals and a name crossed off the school lists.

  It is within this world of power and spectacle that the most delicate [musical] question of this place emerges.  And what about the Christians?  In the year 64, a fire devastated Rome.   The historian Tacitus recounts that Nero blamed the Christians.  Tacitus describes extremely cruel public executions , turned into spectacles in Nero’s own gardens and circus.

  But there’s one detail that many people forget.  That year, the Colosseum hadn’t even been built yet.  The persecutions  against Christians came in waves, first local, then general, over  two and a half centuries. Ancient documents record Christians condemned to be eaten by beasts in arenas across the empire, such as in the cities of Lyon and Carthage.

  In the case of the Colosseum, however, no source from that time reliably records the name of a martyr executed there.  Tradition points to names like Ignatius of Antioch, the bishop who wrote expecting to be thrown to the beasts in Rome. Centuries later, the church consecrated the Colosseum to the memory of the martyrs, and a cross was erected in the arena.

  It is possible that Christian [musicians] died there among the condemned.  What history confirms is the  system that condemned it.  Gladiator fights ended at the beginning of the 5th century. Hunting persisted for a while longer.  Then came the silence.  Earthquakes brought down part of the outer ring, and medieval Rome began to treat the giant as a luxury quarry.

  Blocks of music that attended the games ended up in palaces and churches, carried cart after cart throughout the entire city.  Think about the route. A structure erected with the spoils of , a temple ended up protected in the name of a persecuted faith.  That’s what happened before the arena, an entire empire working in the dark to show off in the light.

  Today the crowd has vanished, the emperor has vanished, the roar has vanished, but the corridor  remains down there, open and empty.  Sign up for the Ruined Bible and come discover  with us the next stories that time tried to erase.