Wow Place #283: Roman Colosseum
Growing up, I was an avid fan of the Oakland Athletics baseball team, which played their home games at the Oakland-Alameda “Coliseum.” I vividly recall that June of 1973 when I went to summer camp and begged my parents to send me newspaper clippings of the A’s games I’d be missing. Talk about dedication!
The A’s were a championship team back then, their players sporting colorful nicknames like Catfish Hunter, Blue Moon Odom and Campy Campaneris. Sadly, over the next 50 years, the A’s never again reached those lofty heights, apart from an outlier World Series victory in the fall of 1989 – the same year an earthquake stopped one of the games and collapsed a segment of the Bay Bridge.
As the A’s fortunes waned, so too did the condition of their stadium. By the 2000s, the Coliseum was a pretty down-trodden place. State of the art in its day, the arena was all but crumbling by the time the team decided (a couple of years back) to pick up stakes and move to Las Vegas.
My point? Huge sporting “Coliseums” aren’t really made to last.
The Roman Colosseum must have been equally futuristic in its heyday, back when gladiators fought each other (and lions!) for the favor of the Emperor. A few fun facts about the arena:
1) It’s over 1900 years old, dating back to 80 AD. That means it’s 1500 years older than the Taj Mahal and 500 years older than China’s Great Wall
2) Gladiatorial fights weren’t usually “to the death.” Contrary to popular belief, the bouts usually ended when one gladiator was too injured to continue. It makes sense, given that the fighters received expensive training; their promoters didn’t want their cash cows to die needlessly.
3) The Colosseum is the largest ancient amphitheater in the world. Over 50,000 spectators might have attended a marquee match, streaming in through one of the stadium’s 80 entrances.
4) The arena was often flooded to recreate naval battles. That is, until the Emperor Domitian added an underground section, the hypogeum – kind of like a green room where gladiators and animals could wait their turn before matches.
5) The Colosseum is one of the New 7 Wonders of the World, along with Chichen Itza, Christ the Redeemer, the Great Wall of China, Machu Picchu, Petra and the Taj Mahal.
Visiting the Colosseum today is something of a wistful experience. The exterior façade is still there in all its glory, but inside – it’s truly a crumbling, rock-filled ruin. You really need to look at a re-creation diagram to fully comprehend what it must have been like back in its first-century heyday. Still, if you close your eyes and squint just right – perhaps you can glimpse a ghost of a chariot or a phantom of a gladiator… the echoes of a roaring crowed caught up in blood lust whispering in your ears. That is, if you can block out today’s incessant loudspeakers and irritating tour-group megaphones.
Myself, I’d love to sneak into the Oakland Coliseum one last time and see if any ghosts of the A’s championship era are still lingering about the place, taking batting practice and shagging flies. For me, Oakland’s grand “Coliseum” will always be my Field of Dreams. Minus the lions, of course.
Ozymandias, By Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
(The Roman Colosseum and Shelley’s Ozymandias ruins remind us of the passage of time – that nothing lasts forever, that everything returns to dust…including ourselves. And yet, somehow, we deny this reality, choosing to believe that *some* things surely last forever – our youth, our status, our relationships. Perhaps a mindset shift is in order. As an experiment, spend a day looking at everything in your life as a slow-moving process, evolving from birth to death to rebirth. That rock in your garden? It’s come on a long journey, from larger boulder to its current state; someday erosion will render it a tiny pebble. That giant sunflower in your neighbor’s yard…it’s moved from seedlet to mature plant, and soon it’ll fade and die, only to be reborn from its seeds as a new, vibrant sunflower. Depressing? Maybe…but also freeing. If everything is temporary, then we don’t need to waste our time trying to “possess” things that aren’t going to last anyway. AND, there’s no dire situation that might “permanently” entrap us. It’s all an ever-changing, ever-evolving, temporary process…like a whisp of smoke…like the Colosseum)
365 Wow Places:
If you like these posts, click here to subscribe. (It don’t cost nuthin’.) And feel free to pass them along to your friends, family and colleagues!]