I went to bed in Juan Les Pins and woke up in 80 A.D…. It must have been a reaction to the Spedifen and Pringles. With my head pounding and air fogged, I woke up in the midst of the crowd. With less then knee-high Dockers and checkered sailboat socks, it wasn’t hard to tell I was not from around there.

The year was 80 A.D. and the colosseum was newly finished. Vespasian said goodbye just the year before, but Titus was there to see the opening. The work of 12,000 Jewish captives and 6,000 tons of concrete only created the tallest ancient roman structure, 160 feet tall, which ultimately set the bar for future stadium structures and proved that Rome was the leader in power, engineering and wealth. But it’s only right; it was the amphitheater of the capital.

Carnage, pure carnage, and blood and slaughtering and mangled guts of human and beast alike piled as the 60,000 people in the crowd cheers. Animals from every corner of the world were transferred to Rome for the spectacle, and a spectacle it was.

5000 animals and thousands of gladiators a day was the norm, the first 100 days were the hardest. It was an all day slaughter and no joint was speared. In the morning, men would kill or be killed by animals, noontime was the watching of the execution of prisoners, and the evening was the main event, gladiators vs. gladiators. Even though this was a big hit, the flooding of the sublevels of the stadium by means of aqueducts to showcase live naval battles…with battleships…on water, just might have been just as popular. This proved to be an outstanding engineering triumph but it was a fleeting trend. Within a decade flooding operations were abandoned and a new renovation would change the games, forever.

The hypogeum was a 2-story structure built under the coliseum made of elevators, trapdoors and pulleys. It would bring up the tigers or armed gladiators in certain areas and allow them to slaughter their un-expecting guest. But under the hypogeum is where the raw action happened. Vicious tigers and lions were being taunted by animal keepers, gladiators made sparks sharpening their weapons and criminals were encaged, awaiting their near-coming doom.

It was an enlightening trip to Rome. The histories of all of the remains were amazing.