Amphitheatre


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AMPHITHEATRE. - This is a word which, even by its compound formation, designated an edifice consisting of two theatres facing each other, and leaving between a void space, called the arena, wherein different kinds of public games and spectacles were exhibited, especially combats of gladiators and wild beasts. The nature of these contests, which obliged the combatants alternately to pursue and be pursued, necessarily required an elongation of ground from the centre, and resulted in producing an oval instead of a circular form. Amphitheatres were peculiar to the Romans: they were unknown to the Greeks. These buildings were not covered in; but during grand displays, an awning was occasionally stretched across from the top to screen the spectators from the intense heat of the sun 's rays. The arena was surrounded with dens (carceres), in which were confined the ferocious animals destined for the different fights. Immediately above these dens, there was a gallery running round the whole arena, and in which the most distinguished persons took their respective places. Behind this gallery, the seats or steps rose in gradation to the summit. The lower tiers were for people of rank; the others were appropriated to the lower classes. The exterior of an amphitheatre was divided into stories, each ornamented with arcades, columns, and pilasters, in greater or less number, and sometimes with statues. Besides the circular rows of steps which served for seats, inside, there were also some which, in the form and for the purposes of staircases, intersected the others from the ground to the highest part of the structure. These formed the baltei, or belts. The portals of the vaulted avenues, through which the amphitheatre was entered, were called vomitaria. The successive rows, comprised within two starcases, bore the name of cunei; because the most elevated steps were broader than those which were nearer the arena the whole presenting the form of a weden (?)

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