Word: colosseums
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...long mid-August Assumption holiday known as ferragosto and, except for tourists, Rome was a ghost town. But inside the big military hospital on the Caelian Hill overlooking the Colosseum, a lone middle-aged woman moved with purpose. Around 1 a.m., she paused in the doorway of Room No. 2, located on the third floor of the surgical pavilion at the rear of the block-long hospital complex. On the door she tacked a note handwritten in Italian: "Please do not disturb me until 10a.m...
Like a Roman emperor at the Colosseum, Zaïre's President Mobutu Sese Seko strutted into Kinshasa's 20th of May Stadium last week to the cheers of 60,000 of his countrymen, many of whom had just snake-danced through the streets of the capital. Waving an elaborately carved cane, he pointed contemptuously at a pair of bedraggled, badly wounded prisoners-the first, apparently, to have been captured by government forces in nearly two months of fighting against invaders in Shaba province (TIME, April 25). Mobutu's gestures brought cries of "Mort, mort," (Death, death...
Public entertainment in the imperial city assumed an influence not unlike that of television today. Armies of Roman unemployed, living on a dole from the state, were diverted by athletic contests and theatrical spectacles. At the Colosseum, some 50,000 watched gladiators in combat with wild beasts. In the Circus Maximus, 260,000 cheered on charioteers as they raced in perilous Ben-Hur style. To supply those circuses, hunters fanned through the empire, caging behemoths and great wild cats. So many animals were rounded up that even then there were endangered species: the hippopotamus was made extinct in Nubia...
TIME must long for the good old days when one could have a picnic at a crucifixion or spend a satisfying afternoon watching the bloody tortures in the Roman Colosseum...
...centuries since Piranesi have demystified both nature and the past modern explorers have excavated the Campo Vaccino (Cow Field), restored the temples and the Colosseum. The Tiber Island has been firmly established as dry land; the Arch of Titus shorn of vines and bushes. Levit's photographs testify to the knowledge and understanding we've gained--and the drama lost. Piranesi, in one of his more imaginative moments, etched a smart temple at Tivoli, surrounded by figures in various melodramatic poses, stalking the ruined stairs, lurking behind the columns. One dark figure assumes a Byronic posture in the doorway...