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Hotel piranesi rome5/16/2023 Valerii Martialis Liber Spectaculorum, trans. Foster (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 311.ġ9 Kathleen M. Quenemoen, eds., A Companion to Roman Architecture (Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2014), 290.Ĥ Ulrich and Quenemoen, Companion to Roman Architecture, 292.Ħ Amanda Claridge, Judith Toms, and Tony Cubberley, Rome: An Oxford Archaeological Guide (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 314.ħ Claridge, Toms, and Cubberley, Rome, 314.Ĩ Ulrich and Quenemoen, Companion to Roman Architecture, 295-96.ĩ Ulrich and Quenemoen, Companion to Roman Architecture, 290.ġ4 Ulrich and Quenemoen, Companion to Roman Architecture, 295.ġ6 Ulrich and Quenemoen, Companion to Roman Architecture, 292.ġ7 Ulrich and Quenemoen, Companion to Roman Architecture, 292.ġ8 Cassius Dio Cocceianus, "Book 66," in Historia Romana, trans. 20ġ Keith Hopkins and Mary Beard, The Colosseum (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 36-37.Ģ Filippo Coarelli, The Colosseum (Los Angeles: J Paul Getty Museum, 2001), 28.ģ Roger Ulrich and Caroline K. A series of lift systems and trapdoors provided dramatic and unexpected entrances for gladiators and animals into the arena. 19 The hypogeum was divided into chambers and tunnels that were used for various purposes including storing scenery and props. 18 If this is so, then the deeper, more intricately divided hypogeum that is visible today was built later, many believe by Domitian. Many scholars believe that the substructures beneath the arena, the hypogeum, were much simpler when first built, 17 based on the account of Cassius Dio, a Roman historian, that states that "Titus suddenly filled this same theatre with water". 13ĭigital rendering from Rome Reborn depicting the elevators of the Colosseum's "hypogeum" substructures. 9 From the time when spectators entered the arena, 10 to the corridors they could take to their seats, 11 to the seats themselves, 12 spectators were filtered based on their social status. Spectators were not free to walk anywhere they wanted, but were carefully funneled throughout the structure based on their social status. This segregation was so complete that the corridor systems made it impossible for Senators and Equestrians to run into each other, and it was possible for plebs only to meet other plebs. 8 The vaulting within the arena was crucial not only for the structural integrity of the building, but also to provide easy access and free circulation for spectators. 7 Spectators were seated based upon their social status, with the most elite viewers closest to the arena, and the lower class citizens higher up. Contemporary estimates claimed the Colosseum could seat up to 87,000 people, 6 though modern, more conservative estimates put that number closer to 50,000 people. Within the Colosseum, those four levels that are visible from outside provide huge amounts of spectator seating. Giacomo Lauro Colosseum cutaway diagram revealing the interior passages and seating, from Splendore dell'antica e moderna Roma (Rome, 1641).
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