Colloseum or Coliseum, the name says it all?

Janice commented on this photo she posted at Facebook, from which I got the answer of why it was called Colosseum by Romans.

“Incidentally, it was originally called the Flavian Amphitheater, named for the family of emperors who had it built. But there used to be a giant statue of Nero outside of it that stood over 100 feet tall. Given the colossal size of the statue, the building was eventually referred to as the Colosseum.”

I often ponder the words of colosseum and coliseum, which are interchangeable.  Americans generally use coliseum as a stadium, instead of colosseum, such as West Virginia University (WVU) Coliseum.

Colosseum is Latin

Coliseum is Medieval Latin

Coliseum is modern American English (one ‘s’ is somehow dropped)

colossus (original meaning is a huge statue; Greek is kolossos)

As Janice said Colosseum is originally called Flavian Amphitheater, I wonder why it was called Colosseum after Vespasian/Titus.  Some say Colosseum was the largest amphitheater the Romans ever built, but I think it was not quite true.  The following is from Will Durant,

“Circus Flaminius in the Field of Mars, or, more usually, at the Circus Maximus as rebuilt by Caesar between the Palatine and Aventine hills.  This was an immense ellipse 2200 feet long and 705 feet wide, with wooden seats on three sides for 180,000 spectators.  We may judge the wealth of Rome by noting that Trajan rebuilt these seats in marble”

“By comparison the Colosseum was a modest structure, seating only 50,000.”

So it is safe to say the name of Colosseum came from the giant statue [colossus] of Nero outside the amphitheater, not because of the ‘colossal’ (huge) size of the building itself.

By the way, the ‘huge” (or is it?) WVU Coliseum seats 17,000 spectators.

My virtual travel writing: Colosseum Series 5 (based on Janice, Joy & Edwin’s photos)

You’ve seen Will Durant’s Caesar and Christ (Vol 3 of his The Story of Civilization) has become my travel book.

Not all the events were violent and bloody in the Colosseum; there were exhibitions of exotic animals.  Will Durant wrote,

 

These animals “gathered from all the known world, elephants, lions, tigers, crocodiles, hippopotami, lynxes, apes, panthers, bears, boars, wolves, giraffes, ostriches, stags, leopards, antelopes and rare birds were kept in the zoological gardens of emperors and rich men, and were trained to skillful exploits or merry pranks; apes were taught to ride dogs, drive chariots, or act in plays; bulls let boys dance on their backs; sea lions were conditioned to bark in answer to their individual names; elephants danced to cymbals struck by other elephants, or they walked a rope, or sat down on table, or wrote Greek or Latin letters [smarter than most of us].  Animals might be merely paraded in bright or humorous costumes.”

 

Romans had everything we have in modern time; they had zoos, circus and Sea World; in a much more grand scale.

My virtual travel writing: Colosseum Series 4 (based on Janice, Joy & Edwin’s photos)

Will Durant wrote,

“At the dedication of the Colosseum [Emperor] Titus had its arena flooded, and reproduced that battle of the Corinthians and Corcyreans which had brought on the Peloponnesian War.  The combatants in these engagements were war captives or condemned criminals.”

 

“Most Romans defended the gladiatorial games on the ground that the victims had been condemned to death for serious crimes, that the sufferings they endured acts as a deterrent to others, that the courage with which the doomed men were trained to face wounds and death inspired the people to Spartan virtues, and that the frequent sight of blood and battle accustomed Romans to the demands and sacrifices of war.  Juvenal, who denounced everything else, left the games unscathed; the younger Pliny, a highly civilized man, praised Trajan for providing spectacles that impel men “to noble wounds and the scorn of death”; and Tacitus reflected that the blood spilled in the arena was in any case vilis sanguis—the “cheap gore” of common men.”

 

 

And you wonder why these cruel Games lasted for some many hundreds of years.  However, Cicero was revolted by the senseless slaughter; he asked,

“what entertainment can possibly arise, to a refined and humanized spirit, from seeing a weak species cruelly mangled by an animal far greater strength?”

My virtual travel writing: Colosseum Series 3 (based on Janice, Joy & Edwin’s photos)

The platform of the Colosseum was dynamic to enhance the theatric performance; Will Durant wrote,

“The games reached their climax in the contests of animals and gladiators.  The arena was an immense wooden floor strewn with sand; parts of this floor could be lowered and then quickly raised with a change of scene; and at brief notice the whole floor could be covered with water.  Large chambers beneath it held the animals, machines, and men scheduled for the program of the day.  Just above the arena’s guard wall was a podium or marble terrace on whose ornate seats sat senators, priests and high officials; above this was the suggestum, a high loge where the emperor and empress sat on thrones of ivory and gold.”

“Bands of musicians performed in the interludes and accompanied by the cries of combatants with exciting crescendo strains.”

Thus born our “Halftime” shows.

My virtual travel writing: Colosseum Series 2 (based on Janice, Joy & Edwin’s photos)

Vespasian’s Colosseum seated 50,000 spectators.  There were 80 entrances, 2 reserved for the emperor and his entourage.  Senators and other dignitaries (our VIPs) had special seats of marble, ornamented with bronze.  Behind the imperial box was a suite of luxurious rooms, surpassing the luxurious suites in Pittsburgh Heinz Field.

Will Durant described one of the numerous exciting events in Colosseum,

“The usual length of a chariot race was seven circuits, about five miles.  The test of skill lay in making the turns at the goals as swiftly and sharply as safety would allow; collisions were frequent there, and men, chariots, and animals mingled in fascinating tragedy.  As the horses or chariots clattered to the final post the hypnotized audience rose like a swelling sea, gesticulated, waved handkerchiefs, shouted and prayed, groaned and cursed, or exulted in almost supernatural ecstasy.  The applause that greeted the winner could be heard far beyond the limits of the city.”

I wonder whether Janice, Joy and Edwin heard those shouting when they were there.  I know what I would ‘see’ or ‘hear’ when I go.  Super Bowl is going to New Orleans Superdome again; we’re indeed the ‘descendants’ of the Romans!

 

My virtual travel writing: Colosseum Series 1 (based on Janice, Joy & Edwin’s photos)

The amphitheater built by Roman Emperor Vespasian was called Colosseum, it was completed by his son, Emperor Titus in AD 80.

The Romans built with wood, brick, stucco, concrete, stone and marble.  Their using concrete was unrivaled by none until our modern time and made part of Colosseum last for 2000 years.

Will Durant wrote,

“The Colosseum is not a beautiful building, and its very immensity reveals a certain coarseness, as well as grandeur, in the Roman character.  It is only the most imposing of all the ruins left by the classic world.  The Romans built like giants, it would have been too much to ask that they should finish like jewelers.”

 

 

Michelangelo on his Pieta

This photo of Michelangelo’s Pieta was posted by my nephew from St. Peter’s Basilica.  Will Durant wrote in his The Renaissance (Vol. V of the Story of Civilization).

“The greatest product of this first stay in Rome was the Pieta that is now one of the glories of St. Peter’s. . . . There are some blemishes in this glorious group of the Virgin Mother holding her dead Son in her lap:  the drapery seems excessive, the Virgin’s head is small for her body, her left hand is extended n an inappropriate gesture; her  face is that of a young woman clearly younger than her Son. To this last complaint Michelangelo, as reported by Condivi, made answer:

‘Do you not know that chaste women maintain their freshness far longer than the unchaste?  How much more would this be the case with a virgin into whose breast there never crept the least lascivious desire which would affect the body! Nay, I will go further, and hazard the belief that this unsullied bloom of youth, besides being maintained in her by natural cause, may have been miraculously maintained to convince the world of the virginity and perpetual purity of the Mother.’

It is a pleasant and forgivable fancy.  The spectator is soon reconciled to that gentle face, untorn by agony, calm in her grief and love, the bereaved mother resigned to the will of God, and consoled by holding for some final moments the dear body here cleansed of its wounds, freed from its indignities, resting in the lap of the woman that bore it, and beautiful even in death. . . .”

Pompeii ruin reveals the ancient culture and civilization

These two photos are posted by my nephew from the Pompeii ruin; I am adding the ancient culture and civilization through Will Durant’s writings (from his Caesar and Christ—Vol. III of the Story of Civilization).

Will Durant wrote about Pompeii,

“Pompeii was partly destroyed by an earthquake in A.D. 63 and was being rebuilt when Vesuvius destroyed it again.  On August 24, A.D. 79, the volcano exploded and hurled dust and rock high into the air amid clouds of smoke and flashes if flame.  A heavy rainfall turned the erupted matter into a torrent of mud and stone, which in six hours covered Pompeii and Herculaneum to a depth of eight or ten feet. . . . The exhuming of Pompeii began in 1749 and has gone on at intervals since.  Today most of the ancient town has been uncovered and has revealed so many houses, objects, and inscriptions that in some ways we know ancient Pompeii better than ancient Rome.”

“The art recovered from Pompeii or near it suggests that not only the aristocrats of the villas, but the merchants of the city enjoyed the cultural accessories of life.  A private library unearthed at Herculaneum had 1756 volumes of rolls. . . . Many dwellings had excellent sculptures, and the forum contained 150 statues.  In the Temple of Jupiter a head of the god was found which Pheidias himself might have carved. . . . In the Temple of Apollo was a statue of Diana. . . . In one Herculanean villa enough first-class bronzes were found to fill a famous room at the Naples Museum.  Presumably the masterpieces in this collection—the Resting Mercury, the Narcissus or Dionysus, the Drunken Satyr, and the Dancing Faun—were of Greek origin or workmanship; they reveal the skillful technique, and the shameless joy in the healthy body, characteristic of Praxitelean art.”

“His [Emperor Titus’] misfortunes were disasters which he could have little control.  A three-day fire in the year 79 destroyed many important buildings, including again the Temple of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva; in the same year Vesuvius buried Pompeii and thousands of Italians; and a year later Rome was stricken with a plague more deadly than any her history had yet recorded.”

In the section of Rome and its art Durant wrote,

“The most powerful of all the pictures recovered from these ruins is the Medea found at Herculaneum [buried along wit Pompeii in AD 79], and preserved in the Naples Museum—a brooding woman, magnificently draped, meditating the murder of her children; apparently this is a copy of the painting for which Caesar paid the artist, Timomachus of Byzantium, forty talents ($144,000).”

Galileo’s dropping ball at Pisa Leaning Tower is a “legend” and an anecdote

My cousin posted this photo of Pisa Leaning Tower at Facebook from the Leaning Tower.  Here is my comment: 

I thought you would stand slanting 3.99 degrees in line with the Tower.

Did you stand at the spot where Galileo stood dropping the ball to conduct his experiment on the velocity of falling objects?  Will Durant tells the “legend” as an anecdote in his The Age of Reason Begins (Vol. VII of The Story of Civilization).

The story first appeared in an early biography of Galileo, written by his friend Vincenzo Viviani in 1654 (12 years after Galileo’s death),

“. . . repeated experiments from the height of the Campanile of Pisa in the presence of the other teachers and philosophers, and the whole assembly of students . . .”

Durant had his doubt, he wrote,

“Galileo himself nowhere mentions the Pisa experiment in his extant writings; neither is it mentioned by two of his contemporaries who in 1612 and 1641 reported their own experiments in dropping objects of diverse weight from the top of the Leaning Tower.  Viviani’s story has been rejected as a legend by some scholars in Germany and America.”

Santa Maria del Fiore: the Mother of the dome

My nephew posted this photo of Santa Maria del Fiore from Florence, Italy.

The story of Santa Maria del Fiore began in 1296.  It was only so called after 1412, though. The dome came from Brunellesco who marveled at the dome of Agrippa’s Pantheon in Rome and “conceived the idea of crowning with such a dome the unfinished cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in the city of his birth [so Brunellesco is a native of Florence]”.

“When Michelangelo, a century later, planned the dome of St, Peter’s, and was told that he had an opportunity to surpass Brunellesco’s, he answered: ‘I will make a sister dome, larger, but not more beautiful’ [great man often is also humble]. The lordly colorful cupola still dominates, for leagues around, the panorama of a red-roofed Florence nestling like a bed of roses in the lap of the Tuscan hills.”

After reading Will Durant’s the Story of Civilization, I think it is safe to say that the dome of Pantheon is “the Mother of the dome”—to that of Santa Maria del Fiore, St. Peter’s and the Capitol at Washington D.C.

The everlasting Patheon

This photo of Pantheon was posted by my nephew from Pantheon.

Will Durant wrote in his Caesar and Christ (Volume 3 of the Story of the Civilization),

“At the top of the dome an opening (the oculus, or ‘eye’), twenty-six feet in diameter, gave the interior its sole and sufficient illumination. From this majestic dome, the largest in history, an architectural lineage descends through Byzantine and Romanesque variations to the dome of St. Peter’s, and to that of the Capitol in Washington.”

The pantheon you saw is not the original one; it is the one rebuilt by Emperor Hadrian nearly 2000 years ago.  Agrippa (son-in-law of Emperor Augustus) built a temple to Venus and Mars (before the Christ), which was rebuilt by Emperor Hadrian.  Its portico still bears the words, “M. AGRIPPA . . . FECIT”.

Durant wrote, “Like Leonardo he [Agrippa] was a scientist, an engineer, an inventor of military projectiles, and an artist.  His early death at the age of fifty (12 B.C.) was among the many sorrows that darkened the later years of Augustus, who had given him his daughter Julia in marriage, and had hoped to bequeath the Empire to him as the man best fitted to govern it honestly and well.”

The Renaissance masterpieces one may miss in Rome and Florence

One may not see all the masterpieces of Italian Renaissance art even if one goes to Rome and Florence.  Some are in private collection. A December 21, 2012 Wall Street Journal article (Christie’s Tests China’s Appetite for Renaissance Art), using Sandro Botticelli’s “Madonna and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist” to test the appetite for the Renaissance art for the new rich in China.

Botticelli's "Madonna and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist"

Head of a Young Apostle

One may recall the Sotheby’s auction of Raphael’s “Head of a Young Apostle” sold at $47.8 million in 1996 (?).  When you tour the Raphael's Room at Vatican City, you may try to figure out how much money the pope can fetch if Sotheby's can hand a hand on them.  Of course, we know they are priceless!

Sotheby's auction of Raphael's "Head of a Young Apostle"

Do not despair for those who’re going to Florence, you will still see Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus” at Uffizi Gallery in Florence. It was commissioned by Lorenzo de Medici (is it stretched too far to say Florence and Medici are synonymous?).  This is how Will Durant described “The Birth of Venus”.

“A demur nude rises from a godden shell in the sea, using her long blonde tresses as the only fig leaf at hand; on her right winged zephyrs blow her to the shore; on her left a pretty maid (Simonetta?), clad in a gown of flowered white, offers the goddess a mantle to enhance her loveliness.  The painting is a masterpiece of grace, in which design and composition are everything, color is subordinate, realism is ignored, and everything is directed to evoking an ethereal fancy through the flowing rhythm of the line.  Botticelli had taken the theme from a passage in Politian’s La giostra. . . .”

I believe Bill Gates collected some of the art works of Michelangelo or Da Vinci.

Michelangelo’s David-Apollo is at the National Gallery of Art

David-Apollo (from WSJ)

For those who’re going to Florence Italy, they’ll miss Michelangelo’s mysterious unfinished David-Apollo at the National Museum of Bargello at Florence as it is being displayed at the National Gallery of Art at Washington, D.C., kicking off the nationwide celebration 2013 —The Year of Italian Culture.

However, they’ll be more than compensated by seeing many of the Renaissance work, not only of Michelangelo, but also of the likes of Da Vinci, Raphael and Titian.  They’ll marvel at Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel and indulge the feminine tenderness walking through Raphael’s Room. Like Westminster Abbey, the Basilica of St. Peter or all those Renaissance masterpieces are not just made by stone and marble, they are made up by words and history.  I am jealous; I can always take comfort in reading Will Durant’s The Renaissance (Vol. V of The Story of Civilization)

An article in today’s (Jan. 10) Wall Street Journal (“An Incomplete Mystery”) mentions that Michelangelo is supposed to have said that he simply “carved away everything that wasn’t the sculpture.” That’s all there is to it.

Throwing coins in the Fountain of Dreams — Trevi Fountain

This is also from the same article in a book of The Best Travel Writing from The New York Times: Italy.

“Before you leave Rome — if you really must leave — remember to toss a coin in the Trevi Fountain. . . It ensures that you will come back.”  (Legend had it that tossing two additional coins will supposedly bring the promise of love and marriage with an Italian.  So, count your coins carefully.)

The fountain was built between 1699 and 1751, inspired by sea and Roman Mythology.  The central figures are Neptune, flanked by two Tritons, one trying to manage a wild seahorse, the other tamed one, contrasting the mood of the sea.  One can this fountain in the movies, the like of “Three Coins in a Fountain”, “Roman Holiday” and Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita”.

For those who’re going to Rome

I usually do not read travel book unless there is a good travel writing.  The following is an excerpt from an article in a book of The Best Travel Writing from The New York Times: Italy.

“John Keats died in a house at the foot of the Spanish Steps.  James Joyce spent one winter of his discontent on the banks of the Tiber.  Rome’s streets and Vatican have been trod by Robert Adam, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Thackeray, Hans Christian Andersen, Lizst, Buffalo Bill, Queen Christina of Sweden, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Rubens, Stendhal, even the pope-baiting poet, John Milton (he attended theatrical performances in the palace of the Barberini popes surrounded by red-robed cardinals).  And the sad-faced Sigmund Freud, for many of his last years, wrote about “going home to Rome . . .” Romans can better explain what he meant than most Freudians can!  The truth is that all these people, as you, could feel at home in Rome.  For Rome is not Italian.  It is uniquely itself. And universal.”

We certainly can add Ralph Waldo Emerson and Charles Dickens to the list.  If you know the above-mentioned people or better yet read what they wrote about Rome, then you’ll be well prepared for the trip to Rome, whichever way you take; all roads lead to Rome. And when in Rome do as Romans do; don’t act as if you’re a tourist.

(The photo shows The Piazza di Spagna and The Spanish Steps, in which one will find the Keats memorial house.)