Book description
In the Year AD 80 the Colosseum opened with quite the longest and most
nauseating organized mass orgy in history. It was a mammoth celebration
on the grandest scale, a fitting inauguration for an arena built to
epitomize all the majesty and power of the Roman Empire, a building
which also held the seeds of that Empire's decay and destruction. As
well as his vivid account of the erection of the Colosseum, Mr Pearson
discusses the origins of death spectacles and their evolution into
highly organized games intended to enhance imperial prestige and provide
the populace with an effective substitute for politics and war.
'Butchered to make a Roman holiday', the victims of this lust for
slaughter were slaves and criminals, the human surplus of their day,
coached for an almost certain death. One chapter highlights the
perverted death-wish of many early would-be martyrs and decisively
establishes that there is no evidence for the death of a single
Christian martyr in the Colosseum. The book concludes with a brief
survey of the building's subsequent history; looted and despoiled yet
still the embodiment of Rome's spirit and greatness, it became a sublime
romantic ruin, now exposed by slum-clearance as a gigantic traffic
island. Mr Pearson is acutely aware of the violence that was endemic in
Roman society, and in his shrewd analysis he draws disturbing parallels
with the twentieth-century situation. In the Year AD 80 the Colosseum
opened with quite the longest and most nauseating organized mass orgy in
history. It was a mammoth celebration on the grandest scale, a fitting
inauguration for an arena built to epitomize all the majesty and power
of the Roman Empire, a building which also held the seeds of that
Empire's decay and destruction. As well as his vivid account of the
erection of the Colosseum, Mr Pearson discusses the origins of death
spectacles and their evolution into highly organized games intended to
enhance imperial prestige and provide the populace with an effective
substitute for politics and war. 'Butchered to make a Roman holiday',
the victims of this lust for slaughter were slaves and criminals, the
human surplus of their day, coached for an almost certain death. One
chapter highlights the perverted death-wish of many early would-be
martyrs and decisively establishes that there is no evidence for the
death of a single Christian martyr in the Colosseum. The book concludes
with a brief survey of the building's subsequent history; looted and
despoiled yet still the embodiment of Rome's spirit and greatness, it
became a sublime romantic ruin, now exposed by slum-clearance as a
gigantic traffic island. Mr Pearson is acutely aware of the violence
that was endemic in Roman society, and in his shrewd analysis he draws
disturbing parallels with the twentieth-century situation.
