Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you should know as always.
Thanks ever, Chuck.
I think we just broke our record for earliest edit and that came quick.
You cleared your throat, and we for some reason are cutting it out because it's not good stuff.
Well I want to hear that, do they?
I don't know. Maybe weird and you're fifteen. We've established our unprofessional qualities.
True, it is true. Speaking of unprofessional qualities, you know who is terrible? Some of these emperors.
Very nice segue. Have you ever been to the coliseum? You have right?
Yes, it's amazing.
Did you go into it?
Yes?
I didn't go into it. I walked around it. And you know, this was my big European jaunt was when I was broke and backpacking. So like my friend and I did the best we could we but we did walk outside of a lot of structures that many other people pay to get into.
You didn't have money for a pottery shard.
No, we had no do to get in these places. But it's just a wonder to walk around, and I mean, that's what I love about Rome is just seeing Yeah, seeing stuff that old is just really humbling and cool.
Rome is one of the very few cities that I've visited and been like, I could totally live here.
Oh really.
Yeah. It's a knee town for sure. And part of it is because you just be walking along and all of a sudden the wall is suddenly three thousand years old. You know. It's just like that kind of place, like everything's just kind of built up on top of everything else, but stuff has been preserved or accidentally exposed. It's just a really neat tone. I loved it for sure.
Yeah. And boy, just how good looking is everybody?
Yeah? Those Italians they know what they're doing.
When they were oh man, I was like, ooh, I'm in love with her and her and I might be gay look at that guy they are.
They are a good looking bunch for sure.
All of them are just so attractive, Like the in on a Friday night at the Spanish Steps. It's just like, how many good looking, dark haired people can you get together in one spot?
Chuck. I think like our our most dedicated listeners know that you're just buttering up the Italians because you're going to be busting out some Italian accents. You don't want them to be mad at you, or I should say, all oiling them up.
Very nice. That's a good one.
I don't know if that was nice or good, but I appreciate the kudos.
Yeah, but we're talking Colisseum and it's interesting to me how like and you might have gotten all this stuff from the tour, but I was just kind of knocked out in this article Lvia put together of how how sort of modern like modern stadium going experience.
It felt like, yeah, and actually there's there was one fact that stood out to me. I was like, well, they've got current stadiums beat oh boy, Supposedly the packed cheek to jowl you could fit eighty seven thousand people in there and the whole place could be emptied or filled within fifteen minutes because the circulation was that beautifully engineered.
Yeah, I think that's a slightly dubious claim.
But okay, I bet it's seventeen.
Well, I bet it was quick and like nothing like it is today and.
Eighteen and I'm not going any higher than that.
Well, and back then, you would you know, you would just walk back to your place or take a mule or something like, you know, post traffic experiences near American stadiums or the stuff of the legend.
It's awful, yes, for sure.
But parking decks the worst thing ever invented.
They're pretty bad. They're awful, Yes, it's true. And do you know it's going to get a lot worse. They're developing that whole area that like kind of no man's lane. It's like old tring tracks and abandoned stuff in between State Farm Arena and Mercedes Benz Stadium.
Yeah, oh yeah, the gulch.
Yes, they're they're they're developing that. So it's just gonna get a million times worse down there. They should just set up helicopter service and drop people in.
Well, I think what they're doing is trying to be like, hey, don't jump in your car, just go hang out at a bar restaurant, like there's gonna be stuff to do there.
Yeah, because there's not right now.
No, there's not much, not a whole lot.
There's some cool hotels down there, but they're kind of.
Time coming around a little bit.
Yeah for sure. So, but we're not talking about downtown Lan and everybody who to your horses. We're talking about the coliseum. Like you said, that was just kind of one fact, and I'm calling it a back chuck your your Yeah, I guess you're poop puing in a little bit, which is fine. We can agree to disagree on that, and I think you're probably right. But still it is. It kind of underscores how everybody in history has looked back at the call is just this marvel of engineering
and a design and architecture. It was built in like eight years, astoundingly enough, and it's survived earthquakes and all sorts of terrible catastrophes, and it's still standing in a lot pretty good shape considering how old it is two thousand years. But what I didn't know when I was there, I knew, but it didn't really sink in. It is one of the most despicable places ever built in the history of Western civilization.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, we're going to get into the stuff that went on there. It's you know, it wasn't like the history of the Globe Theater or anything like that, you know.
No, it was much bloodier. Because everyone knows well, yes, the gladiators fought at the Colisseum I've seen that Russell Crowe movie. True, but it was much much worse than even that, and that was pretty bad. But like you said, we'll get into it. Let's talk about the actual Colosseum and where it came from first, how about that.
Yeah, so you know, there's a long history of theaters period in the world. The Colisseum certainly was not the first, but it was one of the first, you know, built in stone concrete amphitheaters. And if you're confused, like I was, the term amphitheater these days can can just mean a
you know, a big concert venue. It doesn't necessarily mean it is just a round thing, right, because most things called an amphitheater day are the kind that were not like they wouldn't have used that term back then because they weren't fully encircled. It's like it's a theater like
the Hollywood Bowl or something. You've got a stage and then the seats are sort of built in a big hill in a semicircle like those are called amphitheaters now, but technically amphi means around, and so it was these were the first theaters to be built all the way around whatever performance was going on.
Yeah, totally and like today's amphitheaters are much more like the old theaters, which are exactly what you described as. Like if you go to amphitheater, you can understand what a theater was in Greece and ancient Rome, and back in the day, the Roman Senate decided that having these venues permanent as permanent structures was decadent, so there was a ban on building permanent theaters and amphitheaters. But that doesn't mean that the ones that they built that were
temporary weren't incredibly elaborate. Sure, our good friend Pliny mentions one wooden temporary theater in Rome. I believe that had three stories of columns, three thousand bronze statues, and they gave out free bobbleheads of nero when you came in.
What's up with planning all over the place the past few years?
Like, if you're a historian took especially of that era, you are so happy that that man lived because he sat down and said, you know what, I'm gonna write all this down for I'm sure people who come later are going to want to know what we were doing at this time. And sure, no because of planting.
I guess we've just done more topics. I just feel like we went I mean, he's the new fighter flight for us.
Yeah, he really is totally So, like.
We said, there were stone amphitheaters. The first one ever, I believe was in Pompeii, the very awesome and famous Pink Floyd Liva Pompei concert was full near so kind of nobody, which is a very cool, strange thing to do.
And then finally get we get Nero as emperor, and he was around during the Great Fire of sixty four where a lot of the wooden stuff obviously went away, including wooden amphitheaters in Rome, and Nero was able to say, like, all right, you know, I'm going to rebuild a lot of stuff and put my stamp on Rome, but I'm not He didn't get around to building an amphitheater before he went.
Away, No he didn't. And it was a big deal that the amphitheater in Rome, the temporary one, was burned down because already gladiator battles had been firmly established in the popular culture. So all of a sudden you had like people who couldn't go to like, you know, the local blood sport event, and like vent all of their frustrations and not you know, stage an uprising against you as the emperor. So it's something you would want to have.
But because of that fire, a lot of people still to this day blamed Nero for starting the fire because he rebuilt such opulent monuments to himself on the rubble of Rome. Anyway, he eventually was toppled by a coup. He died by suicide, and that left open a power
vacuum that was filled within one year. I think Rome had something like three different no, four different emperors because a little civil war started, and the guy who emerged successfully was the first emperor of the Flavian dynasty, Vespasian.
Vespasian very nice, yeah, he and you know, he took a look around. He had a couple of kids, a couple of sons, notably Titus and I guess Domaitian I think, so okay, and he got them established as successor. So he was pretty firmly rooted at this point. And he was like, you know, Nero came in and tried to, well, not try to very successfully, built a lot of monuments to himself, kind of put his own stamp on Rome.
Like Chuck will mention earlier, in the podcast many years from now, and I want to put my stamp on this thing, and so I'm going to build my own sort of huge colossus theater. He didn't say that because we'll talk about where the name came from in a second. But his son had been out, you know, active as a military leader. I believe it was Titus. Yeah, for
the siege of Jerusalem. Came back with a lot of war spoils, and so basically, you know, I've got all this money now besides raising taxes and claiming public land and doing you know, basically whatever Vespasian wanted as far as building infrastructure and probably monuments to himself. Sure, he said, now I've got these war spoils, so I can build like a proper concrete, permanent stone amphitheater.
Yeah, the first one in Rome. And Vespasian was already pretty beloved. He was a really popular general, successful general. He was popular with the Senate. So when he became emperor, everybody was like, okay, this is cool. But he really won everybody over because Nero had been taking all of Rome's money and spending it on monuments to himself and like this enormous multi acre I think like one hundred and fifty acre house called the Golden House, and Vespasian
did the opposite. Yeah, he built some monuments to himself, but he also built a lot of public monuments. And that's what the Colosseum was. It was a gift to the citizens of Rome. Like remember that kreuddy wooden temporary theater. Remember how the Senate banned temporary theaters. Here is your first state of the art, permanent amphitheater that you are going to watch so many people murdered and it's going to just knock your socks.
Off, that's right. Had a very crass joke that I'm going to keep to myself, okay, because this is a family show, but tell me later. I'll tell you later, all right. And he was so sort of take this anarro that he built the Colosseum on the site where that estate was where Nero lived domus Aria.
That's the Golden House, that's right.
That was the land on which the Golden House sat, and the lake that was built there. There was this artificial pond, so like I'm going to fill that up even and really just sort of eraise in Neuro's legacy as much as possible and can you tell him where the name Colosseum may have come from.
Apparently there was like a hundred something foot tall nude statue of Nero and rather than it was bronze, and rather than melted down and reuse it, they put it up and they propped it up in front of the Colosseum. So that was the Amphitheater that had the colossus of Nero or the Colosseum. It's like museum but with coloss.
Right, But they didn't pronounce it colossium.
No, they called it like the Amphitheater.
Yeah, no one said colisseum until later. No one's ever said colossum except for me.
Yeah, you have never really threw me off before we started recording.
All right, I say we take a break, okay, and then we come back and talk about the building itself. All right, we're back. We're talking coliseum, big theater, stadium, outdoor arena, whatever you want to call it. Amphitheater in ancient Rome. If you're talking about the building itself, it is six one hundred and twenty by five hundred and thirteen feet one hundred and fifty seven feet tall, which
about fifteen stories. Obviously, we mentioned it was made of mostly concrete, but that's, you know, sort of the structure. There was also about three and a half a million cubic feet of stuff like wood, of course, travertine, marble, stone. And the reason why you mentioned the coliseum is still largely standing through earthquakes and such two thousand plus years
later is because this thing was built on wetlands. So they had to go very very deep with this concrete with their foundation, and that's what you get two thousand years later, it's still going.
Yeah. There's a historian of ancient Rome named Garrett Ryan has got a blog called Told in Stone, and he said that they built facing walls ten feet thick on each side that supported a ring of concrete foundation that they poured one hundred feet wide and forty feet deep. That's what the Colisseum is built on them.
I wonder what the ancient recipe for concrete was.
Funny enough, I kind of looked that up because Roman concrete is very famous because it's still standing in modern concrete can crumble in a matter of decades, right, So the Romans kind of had us beat. And they figured out that it was because they mixed quicklimb in at really high temperatures, and it created this chemical reaction that was still kind of buzzing after the stuff was poured, so that it would cure much more quickly and solidly. That's what they think it was.
So just the heat they heated up that quick crete.
The heat, my god, the heat.
If you love columns, you would be delighted with the Colisseum because there's a lot of columns and they go in order from lowly to I guess the most revered, as they start with a Doric style at the bottom, move on up to the ionic on the second level, and then finally, of course you get to the very fancy Corinthian columns on the top. And they even had a little, not a little, a pretty sizable retractable awningeah
that went all the way around it. And if you've ever been to the Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta, it sort of is like that, where there's a circle in the ceiling in Atlanta, of course that opens in huts like a camera shutter wood or I guess an old film camera shutter wood. So in Atlanta it has a circle around above like to where the field could possibly get rained on. Of course, they don't open it when it's going to rain, sure, but all the humans are covered.
And that was the same deal as there was a circle in the center that always stayed open because you know, they didn't have retractable roofs, but they did have a retractable partial awning to keep everyone else dry.
Yeah, and then the so the building was huge. The actual like floor, the ground that the action took place on the arena floor, it was an oval shape of two hundred and seventy two by one hundred and fifty seven.
Feet the sandbox.
Yeah, it was covered insand because they would soak up like blood and they needed it because a lot of blood was spilled there. And like I said, it took eight years to build, and apparently it was finally dedicated under Emperor Titus Vespasian son under his watch, and he was actually a pretty short lived emperor, although much beloved. And his little brother Domitian. Yeah, when he became emperor, he excavated that arena floor about ten twenty feet down. Yeah,
built the hypogium, which means basement or below ground. And it was here where suddenly this thing became like this magical marvel of special effects and technical wizardry.
Yeah, totally. This is where like you could really kick it up a notch when you could have six hundred dudes and a lot of you know, most of these were slaves obviously, but they're down there all of a sudden with pulleys and ramps and trap doors and fully operated elevators, and you could do all kinds of crazy
magical things down there. At the least, you've got a holding area for animals and gladiators and people, and you know, it was sort of like you would think of any sort of backstage area of like a circus or something, except it was underground.
I think that they portrayed it in Gladiator, if I'm not mistaken, but they would have. Like there's a production company that build a replica of this for a PBS documentary a few years back and actually donated it to Italy,
so it's on display it in the coliseum. But they showed how like you would put an animal in a cage, used some police to bring it up, and as it was coming up toward the floor of the arena, a trap door would open, and then all of a sudden, there's just a lion sitting there that wasn't there before, So I mean imagine watching like a man fight a lion to begin with. Before it was like here comes the lion walk in, and here comes the man walking in. Pohum.
Now it's like a lion magically appears and starts fighting with the guy. This was like the kind of stuff that they were throwing at the citizens of Rome at the time, and from what I can tell, almost all of the citizens of Rome were eating it up. There were some people who are like, this is an awful barbaric place at the time, but most citizens of Rome were super into it.
You know when I saw bon Jobi in concert, well, I saw them a couple of times, both by accident. They opened up for thirty eight Special when I was like in the eighth grade, when they were a very small band.
Wake up like after having been drugged in like a bon Jovi concert.
No. The second time was my senior year in high school. Sort of a long story, but there was somebody at our school that couldn't find anyone to go with them, so I went with them. But bon Jovi in that second one, you know, when they were the headliner at the beginning of the show, there's like, you know, the band is kind of coming out and they start off their song and I'm like, where's John, Where's John? And
boom smoke. A smoke blast happens on stage and the smoke clears and bon Jovi is just standing there.
So being bon Jovi exactly.
He had a horizontal trap door that would instead of falling through it, it would shoot him up Nate in an instant, and I was, even though it's not like I was dying to go to that show, I was. I was pretty knocked out.
I gotta say, for sure, buddy, you better stand exactly where they tell you to stand on that kind of trapdoor play.
I think, so you don't want to. It went up with some I think I saw behind this of it one time. Even it went up with some speed.
I'll thought that was fun.
Yeah.
So one of the things, oh, we didn't mention that the like, there were plenty of people who were in that ring, including animals, that would have liked to have gotten out of that ring. So they prevented this by separating the seating area from the arena floor a rather large stone barrier, twelve foot stone barrier with a bronze fence on top of that and then on top of that they lined it with elephant tusks, so it do it, yeah,
to get over. But that seating area was like a snapshot of social hierarchy in Rome because they had it very much divided up socially.
Yeah, and this, Like reading this, I was kind of like, it's sort of exactly how it is today. You've got your very very special people are sitting courtside. Yeah, down there on the hardwood floor, but they can yell at Jimmy Butler or Lebron or whoever. Sure, senators families obviously, and their guests. They could bring their own folding chairs, which is pretty special at the time, I think, sure. But they also had their box seats, you know a little higher up what would we would call like a
luxury box today. And this is where you know, usually see the emperor and emperor's guests, just just like you would today any rich or famous person who has a luxury box and their hangers on.
Right, kit you imagine those senators to just like assert their individualism, like bedazzled some of their seats right that they brought. Sure, So after that I had not heard of this group. There there was a social stratus stratum yeah, in Rome called it equestrians. Yeah, the equestriane order were people who had originally served in the cavalry and then went on to become extraordinarily prosperous and wealthy business people.
So there were merchants, tradesmen, bureaucrats, sometimes artisans. And the reason that they were ticking up the slack for the business world in Rome, it is because the Senate was forbidden from engaging in business, so didn't want the senators tainted. So all of that fell to these equestrians who made up that I guess wealthy class, but not senators or the emperor.
Yeah, so they're like in the what you would call the one hundred level seats, you move up to the two hundred level as far as modern arenas go, and then you've got your middle class. But within that middle class in the coliseum it was subdivided more than three hundred times for very specific areas, for very specific social groups, like you know, ambassadors are in this section. If you're a soldier on leave, you're over here. If you were a member of some sort of guild, in middle class guild,
then you're sitting over here. And then of course you've got your three hundred level those bleeds. It's always been that way. It'll alway these be this way. You have the cheap seats, and it's I don't think it's confirmed, but most of these were standing room only at the coliseum.
Yeah, they're just basing that on the fact that they are so steep and the seats so shallow. It's like this has to be standing room only. Yeah. And there there were times where, especially during events that the emperor put on at the coliseum, where you couldn't leave. So if you're uncomfortable ts you had to stay there and watch because the Emperor was putting this on for your benefit.
Who did they ban entirely though? I thought's done this interesting?
Yeah, they banned grave diggers actors and former gladiators. And I'm just high or low for you know what that what the reason was. And grave diggers is pretty obvious that you know, plenty of societies around the world in different times have looked upon grave diggers is basically untouchable, like societies unwanted but incredibly necessary rights. The way you treat incredibly necessary people, that's how grave dig have been treated. Actors.
I saw a stack exchange explanation that said that they were viewed as like lowly and untrustworthy and dangerous even maybe and the former gladiators, I saw that they were worried that they might attack other people out of revenge or something. But the person who gave that answer doubted it well after worth with a grain of salt.
Yeah, the actress in tracks, just because it's been well established that acting as a profession was not something that was looked kindly upon or to aspire to for most of its history.
Right, but they were considered lowlier than slaves then because the slaves were allowed to go sit in the cheap seats, the actors couldn't even come in. Yeah, it's strange. And I know that Rome had a much different view of their slaves than the West African slave trade that started
by the Portuguese in theeenth seventeenth century. That was I know, it's it's still a lot different, but that's still pretty surprising, right, of course, I'm with you, So, Chuck, I mentioned that you didn't have enough mind to get a pottery shart. That wasn't some random weird thing I was saying earlier. That's actually what the tickets were. They had a gate, a section, and a seat number inscribed on a little shard of pottery.
Can you believe that they're I mean, surely you turn these things back in, right, I guess.
But I didn't see any examples of any that had survived. But surely there must be a couple left. As many events as were held there.
I can't imagine they carved, you know, fifty plus thousand of these for every single event that they had, But you know, maybe so who knows. It was free to get in. That's kind of cool. You didn't have to pay any money. But they were not just anyone could get the tickets. They were very much distributed in this sort of the same way the seating was very structured in a hierarchical way. The tickets were distributed thusly as well. And you know that's how you got in. You got
in with your little ticket. Your little ticket said what gate to go in, just like today, to get you in as quickly as possible. And like you said, they've got people out of there, it seems like pretty quickly. The only reason I said was dubious because anytime they say something like very specific like fifteen minutes, and it was two thousand years ago. I'm always like, who was timing this back then?
Right, That's why I was going up to eighteen minutes.
Yeah, you know, I bet it was super speedy.
Though, so one of the other things about it that comes into play later. It was equipped with water fountains and flushing toilets, so there was running water that could reach the coliseum. Yeah, but then your hat for later, okay.
Yeah, and that also means that during the games there were drunk dudes at urinals barking out their sports opinions.
Yeah, for sure. Essentially, some thing's never change, something's never changed. So I guess it's finally time we talk about what exactly went on there, right.
Yeah, I mean when it first opened, Titus, do you know if if Dad was still around to see it open at least, or was he dead or was he just out of power.
I don't know. I don't think they really curious, like stepped out of power much before they died, those guys, the emperors.
But they said, all right, big grand opening. Let's get one hundred straight days of action going every single day for one hundred days. We're gonna have a big show and a show at the coliseum. Was kind of an all day thing. You know. After that first hundred days, it looks like they basically had stuff during the winter and then like special events like to celebrate the emperor or for big you know, the birthdays and not you know, just anyan's birthday, but you can rent it out like.
A Jackie Donald or at the coliseum.
That's funny. But the very first thing that would happen was a procession. It was known as a solemn procession, had music, sort of religious themes, and then they started killing animals.
Yeah, I saw that they kind of they kind of I guess justified or you know, put some sort of veneer of sanctity on this. By this whole thing basically having religious themes throughout, good for them. So, yes, you're gonna make me talk about the animals.
Huh, Well, I mean I said they killed animals.
Okay, I'll go into somewhat greater detail. So what they would do is they would go procure animals from all corners of the Roman Empire, some Saharan Africa, Asia. They would bring in tigers, lions, bear seriously, if they would bring in elephants, they brought in alligators Rhinocera just anything you can think of, any massive exotic animal that's deadly.
They went and got a bunch of them and brought them back for these events, which we should say took months of planning and a lot of people working on every single one. They were like, you know, half assed one off, you know, to like a band in the park kind of thing, like this is a this is like a really huge event, right, Yeah, So I'm really.
Say one hundred days is just like crazy impressive.
Yes, there really is. So they would take these animals and then they would they would convert the arena floor into something like a jungle with potted plants or shrubs or something like that, and then they would bring in either animal handlers or hunters venatois or bistiari who would hunt the animals in front of everybody. And it wasn't like any kind of equal stuff, but the animals did sometimes kill some of the humans, and apparently the the spectators just love that kind of thing.
Sure, yeah, I mean they brought them in from all over the world as sort of like a big show of hey, look at where we've been, look at how vast we are. We're not just bringing in local The cats of Rome. You know, there's kinds of feral cats in Rome, unsatisfying. Could you imagine someone getting killed by one hundred feral cats attacking them though? That'd be pretty fun.
Yeah, I can I can see it now.
And then sometimes they would have the animals fight one another. They would match up, you know, a cheetah versus a tiger or something like that, sure, or an elephant versus a rhinoceros.
I saw a bear versus python. Really yeah, dude, they got really weird and disgusting.
I wouldn't think that would even work. You can't go to python into fighting, can you?
I saw it written down on the internet chuck. Yeah, I can't remember where I saw it, but I think it was a legit source.
Yeah. No, I'm not saying it didn't happen. But did you see the Yell review of the performance. No, Python didn't do much, Bear was disinterested. One star.
Yeah. I wonder like how many of these animals just didn't fight each other.
Well, and I'm sure they forced them to do whatever, you know, I'm sure they prodded and goaded them and you know, injured them and did whatever they had to do. Yeah, but they would also just have animal tricks and stuff like that, a little more circus like atmosphere at times when they weren't killing them or making them kill each other.
So after this is done, enslave people come out and they clean up hundreds and hundreds of dead animals, and I guess rake the sand around to mix the blood in and sure the guts and make sure everything was nice and tidy. Sometimes they would butcher the animals and give out the meat right there, so you could be out there for a show in the early afternoon and get a lion's thigh to keep there in the arena for the rest of the day until you can take it home and die of food poisoning.
Right, I thought about that too. That is not a great plan.
But they sometimes they would feed them real lunch. They did have vending places, like what do you call them concession stands where you could buy stuff, and it was it was like a modern state em in a lot of ways.
Again, Yeah, I mean like it's it's so much so that I was like, oh, okay, is football and all like professional sports just all descended from the coliseum And.
How did you sneak in your weed?
I don't think they had to sneak it in back then.
Yeah, probably so.
So after that, after they got all the animals cleaned up in the sand raked and all that stuff, it was about noon, and noon was the time for public executions, because hoy, they would most people think that gladiator battles
were to the death. That was actually infrequent as far as gladiator battles, as we'll see, but they gave them plenty of death of humans with these public executions, and they would really go to town creating these elaborate deaths like this is a person's death, but they would dress them up like Icarus and pretend they were flying close to the sun and set them on fighter like that kind of stuff.
Yeah, crucifixions hack you to death with a sword. These reenact reenactments are just like I had never heard of that before in my life. I mean, it's bad enough to have a public execution, but yeah, then to make someone reenact some big famous like story from history where the hero dies or whatever, it's just like, it's pretty unbelievable as far as Christians being fed to the lions go. That's something that you've heard over and over throughout history.
That surely happened but it wasn't like every single time the Colosseum had a show they would just throw, you know, fifteen Christians out in the middle of a bunch of lions. Persecution of Christians in Rome was happened over the course of a long time in a lot of places here and there. But it wasn't like that was what was always happening at the coliseum.
Right, But yes they were. They were persecuted and executed for their for their beliefs, like it did happen. One that was documented was saying Ignatious of Antioch, and he was martyred in UH one ten and he was mauled by animals, like he was torn to pieces by half starved wild animals that were released on him. And he apparently had asked friends in high places not to intercede on his behalf. And he didn't fight back, by all accounts,
he just stood there and took it and died. And that happened a lot like there was a There was a lot of Christian and Jewish persecution in Rome because they didn't conform to the Roman mythological beliefs, right right, They're pantheon of gods and so they and they were also in the minority, and people on the margins have always been persecuted. Maybe not fed to the lions, but persecuted at least, and Rome was no different.
Yeah. When I worked in New Jersey at the restaurant many years ago that I worked at, there was a bar tender named Pete. And if a football game was on in the bar and you walked by and around, like, hey, what's up with the game, he would say, line's ten, Christian's nothing. That was like his go to line for anybody that asked the score.
Oh wow, I guess two thousand years later, it's not too soon, right Bright.
He always got to chuckle out of most people, Yeah, but probably offended some people. Sure, looking back, I thought Pete was so old. It's funny. I was twenty five that that Pete was thirty two.
It is, though, it's so old. When you're in your twenties. Everybody's still old.
Everybody's so old.
Oh have you seen that that new naporghatsy special.
Uh.
Yeah, he's talking about being like forty two, and he thinks he's still young hanging out with the twenties. Something. Some forty five year ol comes over. He's like beat it, old man. There's a couple of young guys hanging out over here. It is good, very good.
He's but then the punchline of that, you're not gonna do the punchline?
Remember the punch line. I think I was laughing too ardor must not have heard it.
The punch line. He's like, yeah, you and young guys just hanging out over and then he goes something like uh, and also maybe let's sit down.
That's right. That was a good punchline. He's good.
If you're a Nate Barghetti fan. He was on an episode of Movie Crush. We talked about the movie Scream.
Oh that's a good, good pick, so go check it out. You're not a Nate Barghesi fan, goes some of that and go watch his specials.
Yeah, he has blowed up since that Movie Crush appearance.
That's awesome.
He's doing arenas now what Yes, dude, he's doing Phillips Arena or State Barn Arena.
Wow.
On his next show, it's crazy and it's great.
Yeah, and it's going to half a new better guy.
Agreed. Speaking of better guys, maybe we should take a break work on ourselves a little bit.
Work on our segs and then come back better guys. All right, Chuck, it's time to talk about gladiators, gladiators, gladiators.
Let's do it.
There's a lot of misconceptions, and we talked about this in the Spartakuss episode. We talked about chariot racing and gladiator gladiators and stuff like that, and that's that's definitely worth going to listen to. If this is if you're like, wow, ancient Rome is fascinating, you want to learn more about it,
go listen to our Spartakuss episode. But there's a lot of misconceptions still, one of which, like I mentioned, is that most gladiator battles were fight fights to the death, and that's just not how it was, in part because of how gladiators were brought into existence. They were usually criminals, prisoners of war, not look not not looked highly upon. That's another big misconception too, that they were like today's modern mma fighters with all these fans that are like
crazy for them. Not really accurate. But that's not to say that some of them didn't make like household names of themselves and probably did have some fans, but it's just not a really apt analogy. But as I was saying, the the reason why you didn't want to fight to the death is because it took a lot of time and effort and investment to train a prisoner of war or a criminal who had been condemned to fight like well and be a gladiator that successful. So those gladiator
schools were like, we're gonna regular gladiers. Do not let them fight to the death, We want them back rewind first too.
Yeah, uh yeah, they're they're trying to put a good product out there because they're charging well they weren't charging money, I guess, but it was entertainment. And when they're all dying, then you're just you know, what's going to happen is all of a sudden, it's you know, the B team, then the C team is out there, right, And so yeah, they had a lot of time invested in these guys.
Uh and I say guys because it was one men, except for when they occasionally had like, hey, let's bring some women out here to fight as sort of a novelty act kind of thing. But the Colosseum opened in ady A, d and they organized this like everything else was organized to the team. You know, Colosseum. Wise, these these gladiator battles were organized because they also didn't want to throw in you know, Russell Crowe with you know, with me, because I would get pummeled and die so
quickly it wouldn't be any fun for anybody. So yeah, they organized them by experience level, by their skill, maybe by how they fought, Like, you don't want a grappler in there with a swordsman, although that could be interesting, who knows, but they wanted a swordsman against the swordsman. And then they had they had four different groups, right, yeah.
They had well five. They have Murmillos, which were heavily armored. They had a full helmet, they had a big old shield, they had the gladiator sword that you think of, and then kind of like Murmillo two point zero or Thraxis, where they had a smaller shield and a Thracian sword, the curved sword, but were very similar to Murmillo's.
That's right. Then you had the and you were going to leave this to me Reddiarius nice I guess they had lighter armor. These guys had a net and a trident, so there was some sort of a nautical theme going on so they could like throw a net over someone and tried it in them in the chest. Then you had the chariot battlers, the chariot fighters, they were the Esidarius, and then finally, what do we have the Hoppolo Maccus. Nice job.
I think these are the ones that you think of when you when you think of a gladiator. They had a helmet that had a plume on it. They had a spear, they had a short sword, they had a small round shield. I think they had like the shoulder armor. Okay, pretty sure that's what Russell Crow would have been a gladiator.
I haven't seen I saw that once back then. I haven't seen it since then.
I think I've seen it twice, but it's been a while for sure. Yeah. I think it was on TNT once when I was watching TNT.
I think I thought it was pretty good back then.
But they would so like you said, they would, they sometimes they would they'd put a Hoppolo Maccus against a Ruddiarius or something like that, just to see what happened with one guy with a net and another guy with a spear, you know, So they would have them fight like that. But like you were saying, they they did
line them up according to skill level. And one thing that bears mentioning so that the events of the coliseum were free, but the gladiator school still charged whoever was on the event or sponsoring the event for renting the gladiators.
Yeah, how did the money work if they weren't making any money? Did the state just fund it all?
Yes? Either so, holding an event at the coliseum free to everybody who could get a ticket fifty thousand people was a really good way of showing everybody how incredibly wealthy you.
Were, right or because he collected so many taxes.
Pretty much, or if you were the emperor himself. It was a way of it was like a gift to the citizen. Why it's a way to keep them like kind of sedated in line like TV today. It's the exact same premise from the emperor's perspective, but it was also a way to like generate belovedness and adoration from the populace by putting on a really good event at the coliseum.
Yeah, I'd be curious about and we probably will never know these specifics, but coming from a world of like TV and film production, I would love to know how it literally worked. As a production, like a big production like this, with budgets and production managers essentially whatever they called them. Yeah, I mean they had to have people doing all that, and I'm sure there were fights over
you know, what they could afford and what they couldn't. Yeah, like how much money did that got to have that elephant?
Exactly?
So he tried it out. Alligators three days in a row. I can't get another alligator in there.
We have ninety seven more days to go.
Wow, amazing.
So I said that the gladiator battles have been around for a while by the time the Colosseum has built, been around for at least three hundred years. They started out as part of funeral games, and everybody was like, well, we like this, so it kind of became like a thing that wasn't just part of funerals, right, Yeah, and some I said, some gladiators were like well known, And there was one who might have been the most well
known of all time. His name was Flamma the Flame, and apparently he was a captured Syrian soldier.
Did they call him play my jama don't?
Surely somebody did. Okay, we are from now on. Yeah, So he turned down his freedom three different times they would offer you your freedom by giving you a rudies, a wooden sword that was symbolic of your transition back into normal society. Three times he turned it down and finally died in a battle at age thirty five. And it's blong been considered that he was, you know, just in it for the money or the glory or the fame.
But somebody I read suggested that he was doing it because he was trying to stand for his culture, because the Romans viewed Syrians very lowly, very cowardly, and Flamma, the Syrian soldier, is like the greatest gladiator in all of Rome. So they suggested that that might be why he kept fighting.
So flamm and Jamma was like, I'm not taking that wooden.
Sword exactly, he can, that's right.
There was also an emperor who got involved a gladiator style Kommodis, who was a real piece of doo doo. He rained from one eighty to one ninety two, and you know it was he didn't really fight people. He would go out there, you know, to boost his own ego, apparently hundreds and hundreds of times as a quote unquote gladiator. But you know, they would submit to him immediately, or they would submit to them and he would just murder them.
He had like people with disabilities out there dressed up as monsters with sponges painted like rocks, you know that, supposedly throwing at him, and he would hunt them with arrows. He would come out in public with their blood smeared on him. He would kill animals. He was just a real awful human being. There's one story where he supposedly shot one hundred bears in one morning. Yeah, and he was terrible.
Yeah. To make it even worse, he would charge the Roman treasury twenty five thousand pieces of silver per appearance that he said, I'm going to appear, and so give
me twenty five thousand pieces of silver. And then there's one other thing that I want to mention, because the Colosseum eventually started to crumble, as we'll talk about in a second, but during its heyday and possibly toward the beginning of it, the air contemporary accounts of filling the Colisseum with water five or six feet deep, putting ships in there, and staging mock naval battles. I'm pretty sure we talked about that in the Spartacus episode. Or some
other episode because it's really familiar. Ye may have happened. It definitely happened in an artificial lake meat outside of the Colisseum. But these some of these contemporary accounts are like, no, no, we're talking about the Colisseum itself.
Yeah, you know what my bet is is that they did it at least once in the Colisseum. And we're like, this is what do they call them? Nomachias? Nomachias? Yeah, that they would that. They were like, we should build our own place to do this, and they built one near the Tiber River that was exclusively for these mocker naval battles because I think the Colisseum was probably problematic. That would be my guess.
I think you're a historian now, but you can stop holding on to that fact that there was running water that could make it to the Colosseum. Everybody, that's right, So I said, the Colosseum started to crumble.
Right, Yeah, I mean quite literally and metaphorically. You know, when the rise of the Christian Church in Rome, obviously they would come along and say this kind of brutality can't stand. The decline of the Roman Empire period and you know, people weren't as into this stuff it was. It was a moment in time that it was super popular and like anything, yeah four hundred, your moment in time.
But that would wane, and the first earthquake hit in four forty three, which damaged it, but it still being used like as an amphitheater I think, you know, into the sixth century, and then the medieval period comes along and for about five hundred years they made it into sort of like a like a live work play space.
Yeah, exactly, with shops, warehouses, the common area, the arena floor became a common area and then it got hit by an earthquake again in thirteen forty nine and the structure collapsed partially and it ended up becoming like a stripped for parts. A lot of people scavenge stone from it and other kind of works, including our works. But also they used it for like building materials too, and they used some of this at the direction of the various popes over the years because they would take in
and build Christian churches and cathedrals with this. So because so much of the Colisseum have been used to build churches, and because so many Christians have been killed there, the coliseum itself became kind of a Catholic holy place and became an official holy place in seventeen forty nine when Pope Benedict the fourteenth blessed it. He said, this is now a Christian holy site, and that protected it from any more pillaging or destruction and actually led to some early restoration projects.
Yeah, so they started to get to work on it to protect it a little more. After the unification of Italy in eighteen seventy it became you know, a legit national monument. They you know, of course, Mussolini comes along and fully uncovers the how'd you pronounce that hypogeum?
That's where I'm going.
Yeah, and you know, further rebuilt it, further stabilized it, brought out some of the you know, restored some of the history for sure, and then you know, I think it wasn't until like the late twentieth century that it, you know, modern restoration, like really nice techniques came along to make sure that it was not only safe for tourists, but like a robust place to you know, keep making money off of or not keep But I guess, you know, for some of the first times making money.
Off Yes, some people consider it the greatest tourist traction of Rome. Apparently it brings in six million visitors a year, and I think there were six million people there when you, me and I went.
That's a lot of people.
It is a lot.
Maybe that's why I didn't go in.
It's it's very neat. Though we didn't make it down to the Hypogium. I don't know if it was open yet for visitors. Yeah, no, twenty twenty one. No, we definitely weren't able to. I would like to go back and go down there.
Yeah, I got to pay to go in this time.
Okay, I'll cover your admission. How about that?
Thank you?
Well, since Chuck thanked me everybody, that means it's time for listener mail.
This is a good one. This is about skydiving. It's like, hey, guys, got a good story. I took my boyfriend now husband and skydiving for his thirty second birthday about ten years ago in New England and had gone once before, so the nerves were gone. But I was just full of pure excitement and adrenaline. I was in the middle of having my front tooth replaced. Do you see where this is going yet? No?
No, yet?
And I had a flipper retainer. Do you see where this is going yet?
No? No yet?
Okay, Chuck, I think you went through this experience. Of course. I remember the flipper retainer. I asked the staff if I should remove it, but they said, no, it's pretty snug in there. You'll be fine. I was feeling vain and didn't want my toothless face in the video. And guess what happened during the free fall. I was a little frustrated by needing to interact and entertain to the camera, and I really wanted to just enjoy the moment, so half jokingly, I blew a kiss and flipped a bird
at the cameraman. As instant karma would have it, my faith tooth flew out. Had panicked and motioned to the gap in my mouth to the cameraman, and he just gave the thumbs up. All good, And I remember thinking, no, not all good. This just got so much more expensive and I have no tooth. And you can even see me sort of looking around for it in midfall.
Which I did not see that coming.
I hope it would be magically floating next to me because I plumbled to the earth. I just say plummeled. I think that's pummeled and plummeted at the same time.
I think that's a great new word. Jesus made.
Not my smartest moment, but desperation took over. And this is from Aaron Bogan, and Aaron sent the video which is on YouTube, and it's very funny.
To watch airs.
You can't see the tooth fly out, but you see immediately Aaron grab her mouth and motion around and sort of looking around, and it's just very funny. So let me see if I can even find how you would skydive. New England presents colon Aaron's skydive from nine years ago and it's got five hundred and seventy three views, two of which were mine, So maybe we could make Aeron a little more famous.
Take care, thanks a lot, Aaron. That was a indeed Chuck like Chuck said a good email. Thank you for that. Sorry that happened, but at least you got a great story out of it. And if you want to be like Aaron and tell us one of your great stories, we want to hear it. You can send it to us via email at Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Stuff you should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.