DISINTERMENT OF THE COLISEUM.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 156, 3 December 1874, Page 3

DISINTERMENT OF THE COLISEUM.

[From the Spectator.'] A correspondent of the Times has written a singularly interesting account of what may fairly bo called the disinterment of the Coliseum, now proceeding under the direction of Signor Rosa; and the picture which it presents of tho engineering ingenuity, as well as architectural splendour, which the Romans devoted to their truculent sports is rather awful. The excavations have now laid bare part of the arena, which is proved to have been a solid floor, paved with herring-bone work, and not a movable platform. Upon the arena converged a number of large, tunnel-shaped corridors, having a series of lateral chambers, vast enough to accommodate scores of animals, and with an adjustment of gates such that, without danger tothekeepers, even thehundredlions,recorded by Vopiscus as having bounded on its floor together, might be admitted to the view of the 87,000 lords of creation in the Amphitheatre. A magnificent corridor, not yet perfectly cleared, but having evidently no lateral galleries, doubtless represents the passage through which the gladiator emerged to his duel and the martyr to his cross. Through it, too, it would seem, were removed the slaughtered corpses and carcasses, while the applause of the audience and the bellowing of the other beasts waiting for their gates to swing round, must have made terrible harmonies. The King of Bavaria ought to induce Wagner to saturate himself with the genius of the place, and reproduce some echo of them in modern music. Humanity, using the word in its strictest sense, must have made some progress since those days, or we should not all feel so horrified at the account of a single combat before select spectators between a dwarf and a dog.