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| Excitement at the Colosseum! |
On Sunday, we visited the place I was most looking forward to seeing...The Colosseum! Out of all of the amazing, beautiful and historic places, this is the one I wanted to see most. The reason I am so fascinated with the Colosseum is because I had to create a 25 minuet presentation on it. I'm not sure if you have ever made a 25 minuet presentation before, but it takes a ton of research and time put forward to really dig in! That being said, I was really excited to see this amazing monument in person, because of all of the research and things I already knew about it.
I love so much about the Colosseum but I am just going to pick a few things to tell you about! If you want to learn more--hope on over to my blog site and learn more about it!
One of the first things I think is really cool and rather unfortunate is all of these crude holes you can see all through the Colosseum. When the Colosseum was first build, they did not sure mortar like we typically see. Instead they used iron clamps. Great idea until they decided they needed this iron for other purposes and mined the Colosseum to get it. When you pull out the things that are helping to make a structure stable, it makes it really vulnerable and unstable. All it took was an earthquake and down half the Colosseum went.
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| Cool view of the levels from the damage that has occurred over the years |
The next most interesting thing to me was the hypogeum depicted below:
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The hypogeum, underneath the playing field of the Colosseum
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This was once covered with the arena's playing field but now it is visible to everyone who visits! The word hypogeum literally means "underground" from the Greek words hypo (meaning under) and gaia (meaning earth). It pretty much refers to a network of rooms, cells, tunnels and passage ways under the Colosseum. I thought this was fascinating! They used it to house the animals, for gladiators to warm up and pretty much as a back stage for the games. A fun fact I learned from my research and presentation was that the workers down below would hoist an animal into an elevator in the hypogeum though a trap
door in the arena floor. The animal would pop out from behind a blind into the
arena during part of the games. The hunter didn’t know where, when or by what he would be attacked and people loved this!
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| Beautiful day for a visit! |
Ah yes the Colloseum was a beautiful place to visit! I was really surprised to see that the floor was no longer in tact; but I really enjoyed learning about the hypogeum and also being able to visualize it. It's kind of eery in a way, and sad to think of how many people have lost their lives in the Colloseum, I feel like a lot of people forget about those details when they think of the Colloseum and just view it as this grand place, do you agree? I mean I understand these deaths happened ages and ages ago, but it's still something to think about. I learned a lot from your presentation, and even a little more from your blog, so thank you!
ReplyDeleteHi! Thanks for the question! I am not 100% sure how to answer that question but I would say yes. Most people look at the colosseum, in my opinion as this amazing first of it's kind thing that the Romans built. And then don't take a second to remember what really went on in the Colosseum. Is that a bad thing or not? I cant really say. But when I think of the Colosseum, yes I think of the grandness but I also think of the gruesome things that took place there and how that affected Rome during the time.
DeleteYour presentation was awesome Ellie! This was the place I was most looking forward to seeing as well. I love the whole idea of it, and especially the gladiatorial games. I remember hearing somewhere that the animals are popped up through the trap doors but had forgotten about it until you mentioned it in your presentation. It was really amazing to try and imagine yourself in the Colosseum during one of its many events! Great post!
ReplyDeleteYour presentation was really good! I also thought the hypogeum aspect of the colosseum was really interesting. Mostly because Lisa mentioned that it was like the hunger games, and once i heard that it just clicked in my mind. I also heard someone mention something about having to torture the animals to get them to want to hurt humans. Do you have anymore information on that, or do you know anything in particular about that aspect? Great blog post!!
ReplyDeleteHey! So I had not read much about the torturing of animals before someone asked that, but as I dug a little bit further, I did find one source that said often times animals were taught how to be aggressive or taunted or even hurt in some cases to get them riled up to kill humans. But when animals are abused, most times it makes them less aggressive and more timid, so honestly, im not sure which is true!
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