Amphitheatre, with the Romans, an open elliptical building, with an elliptical space in the centre called the arena, from the low wall surrounding which rose tiers of seats, supported on arches, receding to near the summit of the outer wall. These buildings were used for public games or combats between men or beasts, and in later times also for exhibitions of mimic sea fights, and of crocodiles and other amphibious animals, by filling the arena with water. The arena was so called because sand (Lat. arena) was usually employed to give a firm footing and to dry up the blood. The wall around the arena varied in height from 8 to 18 feet. On a level with its top spread the first platform, where the chairs of the more honored spectators were placed. From the top of the wall that formed the back of this space rose the first tier of seats, reaching to another platform with another wall at its back, and so on to the top. The box (suggestus or cubiculum) of the chief magistrate or emperor was on a conspicuous part of the first platform {podium), as was that of the vestal virgins. A raised seat on the same was also assigned to the giver {editor) of the games. At each end of the arena was a large door for the entrance and exit of men and beasts.

The latter were kept in dens under the platforms and seats, and were sometimes forced upon the arena through small doors in the side of the wall surrounding it. Sometimes also, if not always, there were vast substructions beneath the floor of the arena containing dens from which the animals might be suddenly sent up through trap doors. Excavations in the amphitheatre at Pozzuoli have shown most clearly these arrangements. On the top of the wall of the arena was a railing of bronze or iron to protect those who sat on the first platform from any sudden spring of the wild beasts. As a further defence, ditches called euripi sometimes surrounded the arena. An awning (velarium), supported by ropes and pulleys from strong ! masts set in stone sockets around the top of the building, appears to have been sometimes | extended over the spectators. When the wea-ther did not permit the velarium to be spread, broad-brimmed hats or a sort of parasols were used. The first amphitheatre in Rome seems to have been that of M. Curio, described by Pliny. It consisted of two wooden theatres made to revolve on pivots, in such a manner that they could by means of windlasses and machinery be turned round face to face, so as to form one building.

Gladiatorial shows were first exhibited in the forum, and combats of wild beasts in the circus; and it appears that the ancient custom was still preserved till the dictatorship of Julius Cassar, who built a wooden theatre in the Campus Martius for the purpose of exhibiting hunts of wild beasts. Most of the early amphitheatres were merely temporary and made of wood; such as the one built by Nero at Rome, and that erected by Atilius at Fidenae in the reign of Tiberius, which gave way during the games and killed or injured 50,000 persons. The first stone amphitheatre was built by Statilius Taurus, at the desire of Augustus. This building, which stood in the Campus Martius near the Circus Ago-nalis, was destroyed by fire in the reign of Nero, and it has therefore been supposed that only the external walls were of stone, and that the seats and other parts of the interior were of timber. A second amphitheatre was commenced by Caligula; but by far the most celebrated of all was the Flavian amphitheatre, usually called the Colosseum, which was begun by Vespasian and finished by his son Titus, who dedicated it A. D. 80, on which occasion, according to Eutropius, 5,000, and according to Dion, 9,000 beasts were destroyed.

The following table has been compiled to show the proportions of some of the chief amphitheatres:

Amphitheatre at Verona.

During the middle ages, the amphitheatres were used as castles or as quarries, according to the exigencies of the times; but, in spite of all assaults of man or time, their ruins are among the most stupendous monuments of Roman antiquity.