All Episodes

May 9, 2023 54 mins

It's funny how similar The Colosseum in Rome is to modern day arenas. They really had it figured out. Tune in today to learn all about this early entertainment venue. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
you're 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, Chuck, I think we just broke our record
for earliest edits And yeah, that came quick. You cleared

(00:26):
your throat and we for some reason or cutting it
out because it's not good stuff. Well I want to
hear that, do they? I don't know, maybe weird you're fifteen.
We've established our unprofessional qualities, it is true. Speaking of
unprofessional qualities, you know who is terrible? Some of these emperors.

(00:48):
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

(01:09):
walk outside of a lot of structures that many other
people bay to get into. You didn't have money for
a pottery shard, No, we had no dough to get
in any places. But it's 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. It's
just really humbling and cool. Rome is one of the
very few cities that I've visited and been like I

(01:29):
could totally live here. Oh really. Yeah. It's a knee
town for sure. And part of it is because we'll
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 is kind
of built up on top of everything else, but stuff
has been preserved or accidentally exposed. It's just a really

(01:49):
neat town. I loved it for sure. Yeah, and boy,
just how good looking is everybody? Yeah? Those Italians they
know what they're doing. 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

(02:10):
at the Spanish Steps. It's just like how many good looking,
dark haired people can you get together in one spot?
So I think like our most um dedicated listeners know
that you're just buttering up the Italians because you're gonna
be busting out some Italian accents. You don't want them
to be mad at you. Up. Very nice, that's a

(02:33):
good one. I don't know if that was nice or good,
but I appreciate that the kudos. Yeah, but we're talking Colosseum. Uh.
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 O
Livia put together of how how sort of modern like
modern stadium going experience. It felt like, yeah, and actually

(02:57):
there's there was one fact that stood out to me.
I was like, well, they've got current stadiums beat um
by boy. Supposedly the packed cheek to jowl um 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

(03:21):
that's a slightly dubious claim. But 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 or take a mule
or something like uh, you know, post post traffic experiences

(03:41):
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
they're developing that whole area that like kind of no
man's land. It's like dream tracks and abandoned stuff in between, um,

(04:03):
stay farm Arina and Mercedes Benz Stadium. Yeah, yeah, 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. Okay, there's gonna be stuff to do there, Yeah,

(04:26):
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. I'm
laying everybody your horses. Um, we're talking about the coliseum.
Like you said, Um, that was just kind of one fact,
and I'm calling it a back chuck your you're yeah,

(04:48):
I guess you're poop pooing it a little bit, which
is fine. We can agree to disagree on that, and
I think you're probably right, but still, um, it is.
It kind of underscores how everybody in history has looked
back at the call Seum 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

(05:11):
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 symbolization. Yeah, yeah, I mean,

(05:33):
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 Coliseum. 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

(05:55):
it came from first, how about that? Yeah, so you know,
there was a long history of theaters period in the world.
The coliseum certainly was not the first, but it was
one of the first, you know, built in stone concrete amphitheaters.
And um, if you're confused, like I was, the term

(06:16):
amphitheater these days can can just mean a you know,
a big concert venue. It doesn't necessarily mean it is
just around thing, 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.

(06:36):
It's like it's a 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
ampha amphy 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

(06:57):
amphitheaters are much more like the old theaters, which or
exactly what you describe. It's 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 these venues permanent as permanent structures

(07:18):
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

(07:39):
bronze statues, and they gave out free bobble heads of
nero when you came in. What's up with plenty all
over the place the past few years. Like, if you're
a Storian chuck, especially of that era, you're 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 austerity. I'm sure people who came later are

(08:02):
gonna want to know what we were doing. At this time,
and sure, no because of Pliny, 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 Live a Pompey concert was

(08:25):
found there kind of nobody, which is a very cool,
strange thing to do. And then finally we get we
get Nero as emperor, and he was around during the
Great Fire of sixty four and where a lot of
the wooden stuff obviously went away, including wooden amphitheaters in Rome,

(08:45):
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

(09:07):
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 and uprising against you as the emperor.

(09:28):
So it was something you would want to have. But
because of that fire, a lot of people still to
the state 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

(09:52):
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, uh yeah,

(10:13):
and you know, he took a look around. He had
a couple of kids, a couple of sons, notably Titus
and I guess Domatian 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 we'll not try to

(10:34):
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, all right,
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

(10:54):
about where the name came from the second. But his
son had been out, you know, active as a military leader,
I believe it was Titus, 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

(11:16):
whatever Vespasian wanted as far as building infrastructure and probably
monuments to himself. 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, a successful general. He

(11:38):
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

(11:58):
did the opposite. Yeah, he built a 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 cruddy 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

(12:20):
to just knock your socks off, that's right. At 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 Nero 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

(12:43):
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 a race in Nero'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

(13:07):
rather than it was bronze, and rather than melted down
and reused 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 colosseum until later. No one's ever said

(13:28):
colosium except for me. Yeah, you don't have really threw
me off before we started recording. All right, I'd say
we take a break and then we come back and
talk about the building itself. All right, we're back. We're

(14:10):
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 hundred and twenty
by five hundred and thirteen feet one hundred and fifty
seven feet tall, which about fifteen stories. Obviously, we mentioned

(14:30):
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 would
of course travertine, marble stone. And the reason why you
mentioned the coliseum is still largely standing through earthquakes in
such two thousand plus years later is because this thing

(14:51):
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 an historian of ancient Rome named Garrett Ryan has
got a blog called toll in Stone, and he said
that they built facing walls ten feet thick on each

(15:12):
side that supported a ring of concrete foundation that they
poured one hundred feet wide and forty feet deep. That's
what the coliseum is built on. Though 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

(15:33):
a matter of decades, right, So Romans kind of had
us beat and they figured out that it was because
they mixed quicklime 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.

(15:53):
So just the heat they heated at that quick creat
the heat, My god, the heat. If you love columns,
you would be delighted with the coliseum 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

(16:15):
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 sizeable retractable awning 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,

(16:37):
where there's a circle in the ceiling in Atlanta, of
course that opens and shuts 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, but

(16:58):
all the humans are covered. 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

(17:19):
oval shape of two hundred and seventy two by one
hundred and fifty seven feet. The sandbox. Yeah, it was
covered in sand because it 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

(17:39):
Titus Vespasian's 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 that arena floor about ten twenty feet down. Yeah,

(18:00):
built the hypogeum, 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,

(18:23):
but they're down there all of a sudden with pulleys
and ramps and trap doors and pulley 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

(18:46):
area of like a circus or something, except it was underground.
I think that they betrayed it in Gladiator, if I'm
not mistaken, but they would have. Like there's a production
company that built a replica of this for a PBS
documentary a few years back and actually donated it to Italy,
so it's on display in the Colosseum. But they showed

(19:06):
how like you would put an animal on a cage,
use some pulleys to bring it up, and as it
was coming up toward the floor of the arena, a
trapdoor 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. Hohm.

(19:27):
Now it's like a lion magically appears and starts fighting
with a 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

(19:49):
job in concert. 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 out our

(20:09):
school that couldn't find anyone to go with him, so
I went with him. Um, 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

(20:31):
smoke clears and bon Jovi is just standing there. So
being bon Jovi exactly, he had a horizontal trap door
that would um instead of falling through it, 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, buddy, you better stand exactly where they

(20:53):
tell you to stand on that kind of trapdoor. Platform
would think, so you don't. It went up with some
I think I saw behind this means of it one time.
Even it went up with some speed. I thought that
was fun. Yeah, So one of the things, oh, we
didn't mention that, Like, there were plenty of people who
were in that ring, including animals, that would have liked

(21:13):
to have gotten out of that ring. So they prevented
this by separating the seating area from the arena floor
by 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 was easy, yeah, to get over. But that
seating area was like a snapshot of social hierarchy in

(21:39):
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

(22:02):
in their guests. Um, 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 as a

(22:23):
luxury box and their hangers on. Right, kid, 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. Um,
there there was a social stratum stratum yeah, in Rome

(22:43):
called the Equestrians. Yeah. The Equestrian order were people who
had originally served in the cavalry and then went on
to become extraordinarily prosperous in wealthy business people. So they
were merchants, tradesmen, bureaucrats, sometimes artisans, um. And the reason
that they were ticking up the slack for the business

(23:03):
world in Rome, it's because the Senate was forbidden from
engaging in business, so didn't what 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

(23:25):
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

(23:47):
a member of some sort of guild and 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, the cheap seats,
and it's I don't think it's confirmed, but most of

(24:07):
these were standing room only at the coliseum. Yeah. They
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 remotely. Yeah. Um. And there there
were times where, especially during um events that the Emperor
put on at the Colosseum where you you couldn't leave,
So if you're uncomfortable ts you had to stay there

(24:29):
and watch because the Emperor was putting this on for
your benefit. Who did they ban entirely though? I thought
found 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

(24:51):
is basically untouchable, like societies unwanted but incredibly necessary. That
the way you treat incredibly necessary people. That's how grave
jack 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 then former gladiators.

(25:12):
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 forth with a grain AsSalt. Yeah,
the actressing tracks just because it's been well established that
acting as a profession was not something that was looked
kindly upon her to aspire to for most of its history, right,

(25:36):
but they were 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
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 the fifteenth seventeenth century.

(25:58):
Um that was. I know, 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 a 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 in a seat number inscribed
on a little shard of pottery. Can you believe that
there there? I mean, surely you turn these things back in, right,

(26:21):
I guess. But I didn't see any 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.

(26:45):
There were very much distributed in this sort of the
same way. The seating was very structured in a hierarchical way.
The tickets were distributed fustly 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.

(27:05):
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 um.
One of the other things about it that comes into

(27:26):
play later it was equipped with water fountains and flushing toilets,
so there was running water that could reach the colosseum. 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,

(27:49):
some thing's never change. Some things never change. So I
guess it's finally time we talk about what exactly went
on there, right, Yeah? I mean when it first opened, Uh, 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

(28:10):
much before they die those guys first, but they said,
all right, big grand opening, let's get a 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. Um.

(28:31):
You know, after that first one 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
any ends birthday but you rent it out like a
Chuckie Donald or at the Colosseum. Oh that's funny. But
the very first thing that would happen was a procession.

(28:55):
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 by this whole thing basically
having religious themes throughout, good for them. So, yes, you're

(29:18):
gonna make me talk about the animals. Huh, Well, I
mean I said they killed animals. Okay, I'll go into
somewhat greater details. So what they would do is they
would go procure animals from all corners of the Roman Empire,
sub Saharan Africa, Asia. They would bring in tigers, lions,
bear seriously, if they would bring in elephants, they brought

(29:45):
in alligators, rhinoceri 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 weren't like,
you know, half assed one off, you know, like a

(30:10):
band in the park kind of thing, like this is
a this is like a really huge event, right, yeah,
So I'm really one hundred days is just like crazy impressive. Yes,
there really is. So. Um. 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

(30:32):
either animal handlers or hunters, venatories 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, And

(30:53):
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,
kinds of feral cats in rometsying. Could you imagine someone
getting killed by a one hundred feral cats attacking them though?

(31:15):
That'd be pretty fun. Yeah, I can, I can see
it now. Um. 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, or
an elephant versus a rhinoceros. M I saw a bear
versus python? Really Yeah, dude, they got really weird and disgusting.

(31:37):
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 why
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 Yelp preview of the performance, And no, Python didn't
do much, Bear was disinterested. One star. Yeah, I wonder like,

(31:58):
how many of these animals just didn't fight each other? Well,
and I'm sure they've 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.

(32:22):
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 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

(32:45):
a lion's thigh to keep there in the arena for
the rest of the day until you can take it
home and die. Food poisoning, right, I thought about that too.
That is not a great plan. But they sometimes they
would feed them real lunch. Um. They did have vending
um places like a what do you call them concession stands? Yeah,

(33:06):
where you could buy stuff, and it was it was
like a modern state even a lot of ways. Again, yeah,
I mean exact 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. Um,

(33:27):
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 ray, 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

(33:52):
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 that they were flying
close to the sun and set them on fire like
that kind of stuff. Yeah, crucifixions, hackey to death with
a sword. That these re reenactments are just like I'd

(34:14):
never heard of that before in my life. I mean,
it's bad enough to have a public execution, but then
to make someone reenact some big famous like story from
history where the 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

(34:38):
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 Colosseum right um. But yes they were. They were

(35:02):
persecuted and executed for their fur their beliefs, like it
did happen. One that was documented with saying ignatious of
antioch Um and he was martyred in 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 that in high places

(35:25):
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, their pantheon of gods um, And

(35:48):
so they were and they were also in the minority.
And people on the margins have always been persecuted. Maybe
not fed to the lions, but um persecuted. At least
in Rome was no different. Yeah. When I worked in
New Jersey at the restaurant many years ago that I
worked at, there was a bartender named Pete. And if
the football game was on in the bar and he

(36:09):
walked by and I'm like, hey, what's up with the game,
he would say lines ten Christians 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 right not? 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 Pete was thirty two. It is, though,

(36:33):
it's so old when you're in your twenties. Everybody's so old.
Everybody's so old. Oh have you seen that? Um? That
new nape Ergatsy special. Uh. Yeah, he's talking about being
like forty two and he thinks he's still young hanging
out with the twenty simes. Always like beeted old man.
There's a couple of young guys hanging out over here.

(36:55):
It's good, very good. He's he's but then the punch
line of that you're not gonna do the punch line?
Remember the punchs line. I think I was laughing too hard.
I must not have heard it. Oh, the punch line.
He's like, yeah, you and the young guys just hanging
out over he and then he goes something like uh,
and also maybe let's sit down. That's great. Yeah, that
was a good punch. He's good. If you're a Nate
Bargetsi fan. He was on episode of Movie Crush. We

(37:16):
talked about the movie Scream. Oh that's a good good
pick's good. Check it out here. You're not a Nate
Bargetsi 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 Burn Arena. Wow. On his next show,
it's crazy and it's great. Yeah, and it couldn't have

(37:39):
a new better guy agreed. Uh, speaking of better guys,
maybe we should take a break, work on ourselves a
little bit, work on and then come back better guys.

(38:20):
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 Spartacas episode. We talked about
chariot racing and glad gladiators and stuff like that. Um.
But and that's that's definitely worth going to listen to.
If this is if you're like, Wow, ancient Roma's fascinating,
you want to learn more about it, go listen to

(38:41):
our Spartacas episode. But um, there's a lot of misconceptions still,
one of which, like I mentioned, is that most claudiator
battles were fights to the death. Yeah, and that's just
not how it was, in part because of how gladiators
were um brought into existence. They were used criminals, prisoners

(39:01):
of war, not look not um 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
form not really accurate. But that's not to say that
some of them didn't make like household names of themselves.
The probably didn't have some fans. But it's just not

(39:23):
a really apt analogy. But as I was saying, um,
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 gladier. That's successful. So those gladier schools

(39:44):
were like, we're gonna reguard gladiers. Do not let them
fight to the death. We want them back rewind first two. Yeah,
uh yeah, they're they're trying to put a good product
out there because they're charging while they weren't charging money,
I guess, but it was entertainment. Um. And when they're

(40:06):
all dying, then you're just you know what's going to
happen as all of a sudden it's you know, the
B team, then the C team is out there. And
so yeah, they had a lot of time invested in
these guys. And I say guys because it was one
percent 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

(40:29):
opened an ad a d and they organized this um
like everything else was organized to the tea, you know,
Coloseum 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

(40:50):
and die so quickly it wouldn't be any fun for anybody.
So they organized them by experienced 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 a swordsman.
And then they had they had four different groups, right, yeah,

(41:10):
they had um well five, they have Murmillos, which were
heavily armored, had they had um 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 were Thraxis where they had a smaller shield
than a Thracian sword, the curved sword, but we're very

(41:30):
similar to Murmillo's, that's right. Then you had the un
you were going to leave this to me readi arius
nice I guess um they had lighter armor. Um. 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

(41:50):
in them in the chest. Then you had the chariot battlers,
the chariot fighters, they were the Ecidarius, and then finally,
what do we have the hopolo 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.

(42:13):
I think they had like the shoulder armor. Okay, pretty
sure that's what Russell Crowe 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 put a Hopolo Maucus against a

(42:36):
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
um line them up according to skill level. And one
thing that bears mentioning so that the events of the
call seem were free, but the Gladier school still charged

(42:59):
whoever was on the event or sponsoring the event for
renting the gladiators. Yeah, well, 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

(43:19):
everybody how incredibly wealthy you were, or if you were
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. It was
a way to keep them like kind of sedated in
line like TV today. It's the it's the exact same premise,
if from the emperor's perspective, but it was also a

(43:40):
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,

(44:05):
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 I 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 um the

(44:26):
I said that the gladiator battles have been around for
a while by the time the coliseum was built, been
around for at least three hundred years. They started out
as part of funeral games, and everybody was like, well,
we'd 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

(44:47):
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 Jamma? I I don't, surely somebody did. Okay,
we are from now on. Yeah, So um he turned
down his freedom three different times. They would offer you

(45:09):
your freedom by giving you a rudie, a wooden sword
that was symbolic of your transition back into normal society.
Three times he turned it down, um, and finally died
in a battle at age thirty five. And um it's
blom been considered that he was, you know, just in
it for the money or the glory or the fame.
But somebody, um I read, suggested that he was doing

(45:31):
it because he was trying to um 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. Um, so they suggested that that might
be why he kept fighting. So flamm and Jamma was like,

(45:52):
I'm not taking that wooden sword exactly, that's right. There
was also an emperor who got involved, a gladiator style
m commodus who was a real piece of dudu um.
He reigned from one eighty to one ninety two, and
you know it was he didn't really fight people. He

(46:14):
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 um submit to
him immediately, or they would submit to him and he
would just murder them. M He had like people with
disabilities out there dressed up as monsters with sponges painted

(46:35):
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. Uh.
There's one story where he supposedly shot one hundred bears

(46:56):
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 Coloseum eventually started

(47:19):
to crumble, it was we'll talk about in a second,
but during its heyday and possibly toward the beginning of it.
They they are contemporary accounts of filling the Colosseum 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 Sparticus episode or some other episode,
because it's really familiar. Yeah, it may have happened. It

(47:43):
definitely happened in an artificial lake meat outside of the Colosseum.
But these, some of these contemporary accounts are like, no, no no,
we're talking about the Colosseum itself. Yeah. You know what
my bed is is that they did it at least
once in the coliseum, and we're like, this is what
do they call them? Uhnamachi is namachis Yeah, um that

(48:04):
they would that. They were like, we should build our
own um place to do this, and they built when
y'ar the Tiber River that was exclusively for these montineval battles,
because I think the Colosseum was probably problematic. That would
be my guess. I think you're a historian now, but
you can stop hauling on to that fact that there
was running water that could make it to the Colosseum. Everybody,

(48:25):
that's right, so I said, the Colosseum started to crumble, right, yeah,
I mean quite literally, uh and metaphorically. Um, 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 um,
And you know, people weren't his end of this stuff.
It was. It was a moment in time that it

(48:47):
was super popular, and like anything, yeah, befour undered 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

(49:07):
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 then
it got hit by an earthquake again in thirteen forty
nine and the structure collapsed partially and it ended up

(49:33):
becoming like a stripped for parts. A lot of people
scavenge stone from it. Another kind of works, including artworks,
but also they used it for like building materials too. Yeah,
and they used some of this at the direction of
the various popes over the years because they were taking
the build Christian churches and cathedrals with this. So, because

(49:53):
so much of the Colosseum have been used to build
churches and because so many Christians have been killed there,
the call Sea of itself became kind of a Catholic
holy place and became an official holy place in seventeen
forty nine when Pope Benedict the fourteenth m blessed it.
He said, this is now a Christian holy site, and

(50:15):
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

(50:39):
the how'd you pronounce on 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

(51:01):
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

(51:22):
and I went. That's a lot of people. It is
a lot. Maybe that's why I didn't go in. It's
very neat. Though we didn't make it downe to the Hypogeum.
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 gotta pay to go in this time. Okay, I'll

(51:43):
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 It's skydiving for his thirty second birthday about
ten years ago in New England and had gone once before,

(52:06):
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? Not yet? And I had
a flipper retainer. Do you see where this is going yet? No?
Not yet? Okay, Chuck, I think you went through this experience.
Of course, I remember the flipper retainer. I asked the

(52:27):
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 freefall. I was a
little frustrated by needing to interact and entertained to the camera,
and I really wanted to just enjoy the moment, so
half jokingly, I blew, a kissed and flipped a bird
at the cameraman. As instant Carama would have it, my

(52:49):
fake 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 that would

(53:10):
be magically floating next to me because I flumbled 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 words. Jesus mate. Not my smartest moment, but
desperation took Ober. And this is from Aaron Bogan, and
Aaron sent the video which is on YouTube, and it's

(53:32):
very funny to watch as you can't see the tooth
fly out, but you see immediately Aaron grab her mouth
in 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 Scott five hundred

(53:54):
and seventy three views, two of which were mine, So
maybe we could make Aaron 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
be email at stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff

(54:21):
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.

Stuff You Should Know News

Advertise With Us

Follow Us On

Hosts And Creators

Josh Clark

Josh Clark

Chuck Bryant

Chuck Bryant

Show Links

Order Our BookRSSStoreSYSK ArmyAbout

Popular Podcasts

Math & Magic: Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing with Bob Pittman

Math & Magic: Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing with Bob Pittman

How do the smartest marketers and business entrepreneurs cut through the noise? And how do they manage to do it again and again? It's a combination of math—the strategy and analytics—and magic, the creative spark. Join iHeartMedia Chairman and CEO Bob Pittman as he analyzes the Math and Magic of marketing—sitting down with today's most gifted disruptors and compelling storytellers.

Crime Junkie

Crime Junkie

If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people.

Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2024 iHeartMedia, Inc.