Gladiators: The Colosseum

Join Dan on an adventure in Rome as he traces the true history of the gladiators. He begins his story in 64 AD with the great fire of Rome that left the city in ruin. From the ashes rose a new Emperor and his dreams for a gargantuan amphitheatre, unlike anything the Empire had ever seen. With the help of leading experts, Dan explores the building of the Colosseum, the biggest stage in the Roman world, and the ingenuity and cruelty of the entertainment that took place there during the inaugural 100 days of games in 80AD. This is episode 1 of a 4-part mini-series 'Gladiators'. Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal Patmore Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign up HERE https://eu1.hubs.ly/H09Dmh10 for 50% off for 3 months using code ‘DANSNOW’. We'd love to hear from you - what do you want to hear an episode on? You can email the podcast at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. You can take part in our listener surveyhere https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Snow?

  Hey friends, if you love this podcast and want to decide what history we cover, then you need to become a Dan Snow's History Hit subscriber. Pitch your topic and if I like it, we'll make it into a subscriber exclusive episode. So far, we've covered the English Reformation, the Hudson Bay Company, the Trail of Tears, all of which have been decided by dedicated subscribers. So take the reins of your favourite podcast by heading over to historyhit.com/subscribe or sign up in your podcast player.

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• 2:31Dan Snow?

  64 AD Roma estaba quemando. Un gran fuego se esparció por la ciudad, destruyendo un tercio de ella. Los académicos se desplazaron a través de las espinas del foro, mientras madres y padres se lavaban en las ruinas de sus hogares familiares. La ciudad era una sombra de su antigua identidad.

• 2:54Dan Snow?

  Para agregar insulto a la herida, lo que surgiría de las espinas era un palacio de oro opulento. No para el pueblo, sino para el emperador.

• 3:06Dan Snow?

  La domus aurea, construida para el emperador Nero, con sus jardines y salas palatialas, tomaría algo como un tercio del huésped de la ciudad.

• 3:18Dan Snow?

  Las rumeos se swirlingan sobre si Nero comenzó el fuego a sí mismo como parte de un trato de tierra. No es sorprendente que cuando murió, cuatro años después, probablemente fuera el emperador más odiado aún. Con su suicidio, Roma se puso en aún más caos y miseria. Tres emperadores temporariamente llenaron la posición, ninguno de ellos presentando una solución duradera. Parecía que la posesión de Roma sobre su imperio podría soltarse con cada cambio de emperador.

• 3:48Dan Snow?

  Pero luego, emergió un nuevo emperador, Vespasian. Un hombre de principios humildes, cuyo juicio y autodisciplina lo marcaban como un potencial rey. Le prometió restaurar Roma a su antigua gloria. Quería crear algo nuevo, algo extraordinario que mostrara al pueblo de Roma que el imperio era tan orgulloso y indomitable como nunca antes. Sería una arena a una escala diferente a cualquier cosa vista antes. Un estadio cincuenta metros por el cielo que podría sostener a cincuenta mil espectadores. Un lugar donde la gente de los alcances más lejos del imperio viajaría por días solo para estar en su sombra.

• 4:32Dan Snow?

  Donde los mayores combatientes competirían por adoración y libertad. Donde Roma podía demostrar su dominio sobre sus enemigos y subordinados. Estaría en el corazón de la ciudad, propósitoiblemente sobre las bases de lo que sería el palacio de Nero. Fue el Colosíum de Roma.

• 4:55Dan Snow?

  You're listening to Dan Snow's History Hit, and for this miniseries, I'm taking you with me to Rome, the eternal city, to explore the ancient streets that whisper tales of great emperors, gladiators, poets and soldiers. I'm here to trace the true story of the gladiators, their brutal journey from the training schools to the mighty Colosseum itself. We'll delve into the ingenuity and the cruelty that defined ancient Roman entertainment, the weapons, the blood sports and the fierce power plays that unfolded from the emperor's box. And since the new Ridley Scott movie Gladiator 2 is out this month, we thought you might need us to bust some myths on how the gladiatorial games really went down to. This is the story of glory in the Roman Empire.

• 5:40Dan Snow?

  Who had it and who would do anything for it? You're listening to episode one, The Colosseum.

• 5:54Dan Snow?

  The early autumn sun is bathing the city of Rome in a golden light. There's an energy here today, and that's the same energy that's drawn people here for millennia. The city cradled between its seven legendary hills that have witnessed a lot of history. The rise and fall of an empire, the birth of legends, the shaping of the Western world. Only in Rome do you find Michelangelo Renaissance masterpieces alongside imperial sites like the Forum, the Pantheon, the Colosseum, and you get mad Baroque wonders like the Trevi Fountain. All of it just a stone's throw away really from the HQ of the Catholic faith.

• 6:37Dan Snow?

  Basilicas like St Peter's, St Paul's. Every corner of this city is a bewitching blend of art and faith and the echoes of distant past. You cannot walk through the streets here without feeling the weight of that history, and I say that everywhere, but it's truer nowhere more than Rome. The people that walked these streets inhabited these palaces and worshipped these temples, shaped the world as we know it today. Rome slowly gained in power over five centuries, from around about 500 B.C. initially as a monarchy, then a republic governed by senators, building wealth through trading wine and olive oil, and doing a bit of fighting as well.

• 7:20Dan Snow?

  By about 27 B.C. it became one mighty empire ruled by a Caesar, an emperor. And it would rapidly go on to rule over an imperium, an empire, which included around a third of the population of the world at the time. That had its ups and downs over two, two and a half, three centuries before finally, and I know I'm stepping on a lot of historical landmines here folks, as a mixture of external enemies, internal schisms, all sorts of problems really, led it into decline. And Rome, much its former empire in the West, was conquered in about the 5th century A.D. by people previously regarded as barbarians.

• 8:01Dan Snow?

  For around four centuries within that story, the Colosseum stood at the heart of Roman life. It is a marvel of engineering, completed in around eight years. It was a feat of astonishing ambition. It was designed by merging two semicircular theatres into one massive amphitheatre, the largest in the Roman world. Gleaming white from limestone, it was once adorned with brightly painted details and colourful. There were statues of Roman and Greek gods, Zeus, there was Jupiter and Hercules, Venus, all standing proudly in their arches in the middle stories, casting their gaze over the crowds below. In the Colosseum, men fought animals, they fought each other, the crowd roared them

• 8:46Dan Snow?

  on. For the Romans, it was a straight old amphitheatre. It only became the Colosseum in the medieval period because of a colossal statue of the Emperor Nero that had once stood nearby. As spectators queued to get in clutching their tickets, they'd have passed by the feet of the gigantic statue. On the other side, the huge fountain, tumbling layers of water. I'm standing in front of it right now, looking up at it, and I'm alongside what seem like millions of tourists. And I know that everyone that comes here is just struck by the magnificence of the Colosseum. Similar emotions, I'm sure, to how our Roman forbears would have felt. And that of course was just the point, the Colosseum wasn't just built as a venue for gladiatorial games. It had an important political purpose. What doesn't, folks?

• 9:30Dan Snow?

  Vespasian, the emperor who began it in around 70, 72 or so AD, thought this enormous building would help to cement his dynasty at the apex of the Roman world. Now I'm going to stroll over to the Forum, I'm so happy I can say that sentence, to meet Dr. Shushma Malik, an expert in Roman history, to discover more about the origins of the Colosseum and the state of the empire in which it was built.

• 10:02Dan Snow?

  Shushma, we're sitting on the Palatine Hill, we're looking down over Rome, over the Forum. This is the view the Caesar's had.

• 10:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's quite spectacular, isn't it? It's an amazing place to be, to get a sense of Rome. I mean, the Forum, yeah, it's the place of the Caesars, but it's also republican, and then there are all these layers of history that talk about the different kinds of cities that Rome is and has been.

• 10:25Dan Snow?

  And up here, there's nice little breeze. This is where Augustus chose to make his home.

• 10:29Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 10:30Dan Snow?

  And most of the emperors followed the tradition?

• 10:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, a lot of the emperors followed that. It's a good place, it's up out of the city, it's, like you say, has a nice breeze.

• 10:39Dan Snow?

  So in 70 AD, what's the state of the empire? Give me a quick audit.

• 10:44Speaker 04

  So in 70 AD, I mean, we talk about the imperial period and we talk about emperors, but actually, most of the Roman Empire was acquired before the emperors, so when Rome was still a republic. So Rome has been expanding, it went south to North Africa, it went east into Greece and modern-day Turkey, and it's got by this point as far as the Middle East. And then also, under Claudius, it went west to Britain as well.

• 11:09Dan Snow?

  So it's the really big empire that we're recognised from all the endless maps. It's near enough, it's territorial peak, not quite, but near enough.

• 11:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's getting there.

• 11:17Dan Snow?

  But the 60s have been a nightmare.

• 11:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, the 60s are difficult because we have at the beginning the Boudiccan revolt in 62 is one of the things that the Emperor Nero has to deal with. I mean, Britain isn't necessarily the heart of the Roman Empire, but it's still something that needs to be sorted out. But actually, when we get into the mid 60s, if we're talking in Rome, there's the fire that happens in 64. There've been fires in Rome before, of course, but this was huge. This was a very big, big fire and it was devastating for quite a lot of the city. So that was a problem again that Nero then had to deal with afterwards. And he poured lots of money into it with a big building programme that helped to rebuild the city, as well as his own palace,

• 12:03Speaker 04

  which gets remembered very well in the histories of the period.

• 12:07Dan Snow?

  Now, Shoshma, I know you're the world's leading expert on Nero. If you would just sum up Nero, does he deserve his shocking reputation?

• 12:15Speaker 04

  So Nero was the last of the Julius Claudian emperors. He ruled from 54 to 68 AD. He's in our history books, as it were, sort of painted as the opposite of the Emperor Augustus. He's very young, he's only 16 when he becomes emperor. He's characterised as being under the thumb of his mother and some powerful advisers. So he gets characterised as a sort of inexperienced person who politically is naive and then politically difficult when we get into his later emperorship. So he is someone who isn't necessarily the automatic choice of someone who would rule, but finds himself in this position and does things that some would say were popular with the people,

• 13:00Speaker 04

  was perhaps a bit difficult for the Senate on various occasions. But ultimately, he was criticised because he was far too interested in luxury. He was far too interested in his own pursuits. He was far too interested in the theatre and far too interested in chariot racing for the likes of sort of Roman senators.

• 13:18Dan Snow?

  Is the shomman not a fighter?

• 13:19Speaker 04

  It seems so, yes. In 68, he's declared an public enemy by the Senate and takes his own life.

• 13:26Dan Snow?

  And then there is the year of the four emperors.

• 13:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, so the year of the four emperors is 69 AD, and that follows Nero's death. And what we have then is what the Senate thought was going to be quite a good succession. So when they decide to declare Nero a public enemy, they do have a plan. And the plan is supposed to be the rule of an emperor named Galba, who is the opposite of Nero in many ways. He's older, he's got a good military experience, he's got, you know, the support of his own legion behind him. But unfortunately, Galba is not particularly popular with the imperial bodyguard, as we sort of call them, the Praetorian Guard in Rome. Our sources say he doesn't pay them enough, he doesn't give them enough gifts.

• 14:08Speaker 04

  So he is deposed, and then we have the Emperor Otto and Vitalius afterwards. And then eventually, the general named Vespasian wins out again with the support of the army, with the support of his legions in Egypt. And he becomes the first emperor of what we call the Flavian dynasty.

• 14:26Dan Snow?

  So Vespasian is going to be a pretty important figure in Roman history, right? Because he was a soldier, he was, in my part of the world, he's famous for being the man who helped subdue what is now southern England, perhaps even conquered the Isle of Wight. But he was born outside royal circles, was he? Was he an aristocrat?

• 14:40Speaker 04

  So he became a senator. He is someone who, like you say, didn't come from a traditional sort of aristocratic background, but was rising in the political elite under the reign of Nero. And he fell out of favour with Nero, it seems, and that's why he was sent to Judea. So there was a war going on with Judea in the late 60s AD, and he went there. But he is someone who has both military experience and some political experience as well. But he's not perhaps what we would imagine as a natural successor to found the next dynasty. But then it's not clear who a natural successor maybe would have been. We're in new territory. But then part of what Vespasian can do is sort of put his stamp on things.

• 15:22Speaker 04

  He can instigate a building programme, he can talk about a rejuvenation, right? So we've had the last of the Judeo-Claudians, we've had this horrifically traumatic period, and now we're coming into the reign of a new dynasty. And that's not easy to see as a transitional point. So part of the way that he made that transition work was through things like buildings.

• 15:43Dan Snow?

  So he launches big building projects.

• 15:47Dan Snow?

  What's he doing there? Is it about actually trying to please the people of Rome? Sort of strengthen his grip on power? Is it about his own prestige? What's going on?

• 15:54Speaker 04

  So part of what Vespasian is probably doing is, well, finishing some of the building projects that Nero had started. So Nero, of course, is rebuilding Rome when he died. He needs to think about kind of what he wants Rome to look like himself. But also he has the money behind it. So that war in Judea, the spoils of that war, which includes selling prisoners of war into enslavement, that is part of what paid for, a big part actually, of what paid for this building programme that Vespasian put into place that then gave the people a different, perhaps, sense of the space in Rome. So the lake of Nero's golden palace was the place where the Colosseum was built.

• 16:36Dan Snow?

  He's allowing the public back into what had been, well, a place where Nero had been planning his slightly grandiose imperial projects.

• 16:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, and there's probably a case to be made that Nero would have opened parts of his house to the public as well, to have sort of spectacles there. But this is giving it, I guess, symbolically back into the public hands. But we shouldn't really overlook the fact that the Colosseum or the amphitheatre is also an immensely political space. So it's somewhere the emperor can be seen. It's somewhere that people can go and shout at the emperor, petitioning the emperor, where they can have visibility but also, you know, contact with the imperial family. So it has a range of functions as a space.

• 17:18Dan Snow?

  Vespasian decides he's going to build an amphitheatre, but unlike any other amphitheatre in the world, this is a ginormous scale. What's he doing there?

• 17:26Speaker 04

  So he's putting his sort of stamp on that space, re-appropriating that Neronian space. There's a whole set of things that go along with the idea of the opening of the Colosseum. Games can be thrown, spectacles can be thrown, the re-enactments of battles that people haven't seen before. And it's also a place where... The empire can sort of be on show as well. So there's sorts of animals that you could get because Rome has an empire. And you can go into the centre of Rome, into the Colosseum and see them.

• 17:55Dan Snow?

  So it brings the empire to the Roman population?

• 17:57Speaker 04

  It does. The really big games do. I'm not saying on a daily basis, but the big games.

• 18:03Dan Snow?

  What's at stake here? Vespasian has witnessed his three predecessors meet terrible ends in a very short amount of time. Is there a sense that you need to keep Rome satisfied, happy, overawed, calm? Otherwise, well, his life, that of his dynasty, could be in danger.

• 18:20Speaker 04

  So one of the things that Vespasian was able to do that's really important to understanding kind of the relationship, I think, between emperors and the people in Rome is that he could show himself to be a good benefactor. So benefaction was a huge way that the emperor interacted, not only with the people in Rome, but also with the wider provinces. So for Vespasian, it's going to be, and is, a very big part. He needs to show himself as worthy, if you like, of that, to have found a new dynasty, to be a successor of some of the Judeclaudians.

• 18:50Dan Snow?

  How unusual was it? I mean, were there other amphitheatre in Rome?

• 18:52Speaker 04

  Not at the time the Flavian Amphitheatre, that we call the Colosseum, was built. There had been temporary wooden structures and then a stone one was built, but it was destroyed in the fire of 64. So also, it's something that Vespasian could do. It's another entertainment space. We have theatres and we have the Circus Maximus, but this is Rome's amphitheatre.

• 19:12Dan Snow?

  We're sitting here on top of the Palatine. The Colosseum is so remarkable from here. Such a, really does dominate the landscape. It was an incredibly ambitious thing to do by Vespasian, wasn't it?

• 19:25Speaker 04

  So part of what emperors do is build things that are bigger and better than their predecessors. So someone like Vespasian is thinking about making something that's spectacular, that's more beautiful than the previous dynasty had. But it is significant, perhaps, that no one else builds an amphitheatre quite like Vespasian did.

• 19:44Dan Snow?

  So the bar was now so high it could not be heightened?

• 19:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, and it lasted as well. I mean, we can sit here now and, yes, there's ruins, but there's also quite a considerable, when you think of what's happened in Rome in the intervening centuries, millennia, there's still quite a lot of it that has survived.

• 20:01Dan Snow?

  It's difficult to comprehend the scale of the task. It's only getting up close that you realise just how enormous and complicated the Colosseum is. But the Romans were ingenious builders. With eighty archways on that iconic external wall, the arena is made up of roughly a hundred thousand cubic metres of travertine stone and over three hundred tonnes of iron clamps to hold it all together. Its foundations plunge forty feet into the earth, into the site of a drained lake. They rely heavily on a substance of the Romans' own devising: concrete. Even their method for lifting the enormous stone blocks onto the higher levels was a feat of engineering in itself.

• 20:45Dan Snow?

  I met Dr Simon Elliott, a leading Roman historian, at the Colosseum to find out just how they did it.

• 20:55Dan Snow?

  Why is it such an amazing building?

• 20:57Speaker 05

  The Colosseum is unique in a sense because it's twice the size probably as any other amphitheatre in the Roman world. Sixty-five thousand people, Dan, it is immense.

• 21:08Dan Snow?

  What technological hacks allowed them to build on this scale?

• 21:12Speaker 05

  Well, it's a great example of the Romans nicking ideas from other people. And one of the ideas they nicked was the vuswar arch. So you have your spring line, your vuswar, the curved sections of the arch, the keystone locking everything together in the middle. And it's such a clever technique for building because you can stack archers on top of archers, on top of archers. And so if you look at the Colosseum, the Colosseum is basically a series of archers. The really interesting thing actually is that in terms of building techniques, they've used lots of different building designs from around the Roman world, all together in one place. So you can see representations of columns between the archers, but on the bottom, they're the most basic kind of column, which is the Doric column, just with a flat plinth.

• 21:53Speaker 05

  And then the second row of vuswar, the columns in the middle, they are Ionian columns, the beautiful scroning at the top. But then, on the third level of vuswar archers, the columns in the middle, are Corinthian columns with a really fancy tops. So you go, basic, all right, amazing. So it's all about showing sort of every aspect of the Roman world.

• 22:15Dan Snow?

  And presumably then those archers, as well as being very strong and

• 22:18Speaker 06

  They let the light in and the air, I mean it doesn't get too stuffy in there.

• 22:21Speaker 05

  I think in actual fact the key thing here Dan is actually letting the air in because actually if you think about it effectively it's a stone bowl in the middle of a country that's not cold. So for the majority of the year it's actually going to be just like it is today with the blazing sunshine. It's going to be exceptionally exceptionally hot in there so you want every means you can of letting air in and of course the archers, classic, so not only did the archers make the Colosseum, they also call the Colosseum.

• 22:48Speaker 06

  How do they make it so high? Are we talking cranes or scaffolding or great ramps of earth?

• 22:53Speaker 05

  A bit of both. So the Romans used two kinds of crane when they're building. So they use an A-frame crane, which is exactly what you find engineers using around the world today. But also they use a tread wheel crane. The tread wheel's powered by a tread wheel, literally a tread wheel in the middle, which is powered by slaves.

• 23:11Speaker 06

  Like a hamster wheel.

• 23:12Speaker 05

  Exactly right. The slaves treading on a wheel. The beauty of the tread wheel crane is scalable. So you can make it as big as you want within reason. So for the majority of the Colosseum you'd be able to get to the top probably using a tread wheel crane. If you had something which was too big, then what they would do is use scaffolding. So smaller A-frame, medium to large tread wheel, very large scaffolding.

• 23:41Speaker 06

  And you can always mount cranes on that scaffolding presumably as well.

• 23:44Speaker 05

  You can Dan, but personally I wouldn't want to work on one of them.

• 23:47Speaker 06

  Is it really the same in many ways in function and form as a modern stadium?

• 23:52Speaker 05

  Absolutely, yeah. So let's take for example the Olympic Stadium in Rome itself. So the Olympic Stadium, home to Roma and Lazio. In the Olympic Stadium you have a roof. You have-

• 24:04Speaker 06

  And the Colosseum had a roof?

• 24:05Speaker 05

  Colosseum did have a roof. It had sails, vela, sails. So it has banks of seating and it has the arena where the football's played. It has exactly the same banks of seating and it has the arena, in this case where people kill each other.

• 24:20Speaker 06

  And getting in and out?

• 24:21Speaker 05

  In a modern arena like the Olympic Stadium, you have big gates, you get in and out of the stadium. The Roman Colosseum is exactly the same. Of course, in the Colosseum they were called vomitorium, because you vomited people in and out. That's where our world vomit comes from today.

• 24:34Speaker 06

  I love that, the vomitorium. The way that we get people in and out of stadiums, sort of through the banks of seats. It's kind of like, that's a Roman idea. Do you know how much this would have cost? And do Roman emperors, a bit like the sort of American Congress, they did just write their own checks? I mean, is there any way in which there's actually linked amount of gold in the imperial treasury?

• 24:52Speaker 05

  Well firstly, the Roman treasury is called the fiscus, and that's the emperor's fiscus treasury. So the emperor is in charge of the treasury. That treasury pays for every public aspect of Roman life. It could pay for building public buildings, it could pay for the games themselves, it certainly pays for the military, which is usually what the emperor needs to keep him in power. So the fiscus treasury is central to the Roman emperor's success. However, there's a double blind here for the spectators in the Colosseum, because the fiscus treasury is filled with money from tax. The people who pay the tax are the people, like the people of Rome. So they're paying the taxes for the emperor to spend the money they give the emperor to show off to them.

• 25:29Speaker 06

  Is there a sense in which though, if a successful military campaign or you loot an enemy's capital, does money flow into that? Do emperors tend to spend big money on, after those kind of fiscal events?

• 25:40Speaker 05

  An emperor would spend bigger and bigger and bigger, the more he needed to secure himself in power. So often you get a series of games taking place when an emperor takes power. So he can show off, I'm the new guy, I'm the rich guy, I can actually really look after you. And also, if he has a military defeat, again, distracting the masses. Or if there's a major event like a plague or an economic crash, he's distracting the masses.

• 26:08Speaker 06

  You're listening to Dan Snow's History Hit. The best is yet to come. Stick with us.

• 26:18Dan Snow?

  This episode is brought to you by TikTok. I never thought about the history of coffee. You make it, you drink it, nothing more to it. Then I've had a TikTok video about how people in the 1700s would pour their coffee into saucers to let it cool before drinking it. I love that sort of discovery. A detail, but suddenly you're imagining how people lived and drank and socialized. Now I wonder what will baffle historians about us. Mugs. It's a ceramic vessel, but crucially, it has a handle. Well, that's the joy of TikTok, folks. You look for one thing and find yourself somewhere completely different. Your next discovery is waiting on TikTok. Learn more at tiktok.com/discovermore.

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• 28:11Speaker 03

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• 28:55Speaker 03

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• 29:11Dan Snow?

  Vespasian wanted the Colosseum built in a mere 10 years. That would require an astonishing amount of manpower. But for the Romans, that wouldn't be a problem. In the first century, the Roman population was roughly 50 million, spread across the empire. It's believed that 10% to 20% of that were slaves. That's 5 to 10 million individuals.

• 29:35Speaker 05

  Slavery was an intrinsic part of Roman society. Slaves were at the bottom of society, then freed men who were freed slaves, then free men who had never been slaves, and then aristocrats. So it's an absolutely normal part of Roman society. In the Roman world, probably 1 in 10 people is a slave, right? If it gets any more than 1 in 10, it becomes a bit problematic because the Romans were terrified of slave revolt. So everyone's heard of Spartacus, but the Spartacus Slave Revolt was the third servile war or revolt. So the Romans were terrified of slave revolt. So about 1 in 10 is the norm.

• 30:07Speaker 06

  Where are these slaves coming from?

• 30:08Speaker 05

  So it depends what kind of slave we're talking about, Dan. So in a Roman household, your kids could be taught by a grammarian who might be a slave from the Greek-speaking world. If you're talking about working in the matala, mines and quarries, there could be prisoners of war. So they're coming from the far north of Britain, what we call today Scotland, or from the far north of Germany, north of the Rhine or Danube, or they could be coming from the eastern frontier, they could be Parthians, or they could be coming from south of the African frontier, they could be Berbers. Basically, there are people who are beyond the fringes of the Roman world who are captured in conflict.

• 30:40Speaker 06

  And would it work a little bit like the Elizabethan slave traders going down to West Africa? Would you not just capture them directly with Roman arms, but would you buy them off trans-Saharan networks and things like that as well?

• 30:50Speaker 05

  Absolutely. It's interesting that Britain in the Roman world was famous for a variety of exports before the Roman conquest, one of which was slaves.

• 31:00Speaker 06

  So Britain's part of this Roman trading network before it's incorporated formally into the empire?

• 31:04Speaker 05

  Absolutely, and part of the trade are slaves. Absolutely normal. Remember when Caesar conquered Gaul, he famously killed a million and enslaved a million. So you can imagine a million enslaved Gauls suddenly start flooding the slave markets in Italy. At the end of the Cimbrian Wars in the 120s and 110s B.C., again, the Cimbrians were Germans, the slave markets in Rome were flooded with German slaves. So this is millions of people being captured and then sold as slaves.

• 31:33Speaker 06

  Obviously, there were loads of different kinds of slaves. Is it possible to say what slaves' life was like?

• 31:37Speaker 05

  So being a slave is not a good thing. You don't exist in terms of your own agency. You have no power over your own future. That being said, in the Roman world, a slave could earn money and a slave could be manumitted, so they could be freed. And they'd get freed for two reasons. One is they would buy their freedom from earning money, or two, because their master decided that he'd free them for good service. So you could be freed. And once you were manumitted, you became a freed man. Now, a freed man could do everything in Roman society. So in the Roman world, a freed man, a freed slave, could become fabulously rich. So... The father of the Emperor Pertinax, the son of a slave who became the Roman emperor.

• 32:20Speaker 05

  His father was a multimillionaire running a logging business in the Po Valley, who had started life as a slave. Now, the interesting thing for these freed men is, they were Roman citizens. They could vote, they could do most things that Roman citizens could do, but they could not stand for public office. Now, for a Roman citizen, standing for public office was a way of showing how successful you'd been. And the freed men, that's a lot of people by the way, couldn't do that. So what they did was monumentalise their success in life through their funerary monuments. So if you go to Pompeii and you go through the Herculeanum Gates, there's row after row, as the road goes towards Herculeanum, of monuments, funerary monuments, mausoleums, tombstones and things.

• 33:05Speaker 05

  Most of them are actually from freed men, freed slaves, to show how successful they've been in life, because they couldn't have the inscriptions around the forum saying, "Oh, I've been this magistrate or that", because they weren't allowed to stand for any magistratecy.

• 33:17Dan Snow?

  The slaves were unable to buy their freedom. I mean, presumably some conditions would have been horrific. Life would have been nasty, brutish and short.

• 33:22Speaker 05

  Certain kinds of slaves had terrible, terrible, terrible lives. So within the Roman criminal justice system, one of the punishments was to be condemned or enslaved to work in the matala, which are mines and quarries, for the rest of your life. Which means you go in the hole and you don't come out.

• 33:45Dan Snow?

  So what extent can we say that Roman imperial might was built on the back of this slave labour? Presumably, you know, the iron ore for weapons being quarried in mines like that. So, I mean, it's, without that slave class, Rome wouldn't have been what it was, what it became.

• 33:59Speaker 05

  In our world, we rely, without thinking, on technology to do things for us. It's just there, and it just happens. I want to make an espresso in the morning, I put the pot in, and I press a button, and I've got a coffee, because the machine's doing the work for me. And I go in a car, which is computerised, a train, which is computerised, or a plane, which is computerised, and I don't think about it. It just happens. It's exactly the same in the Roman world, switching out technology for slaves. It just happens. So I wake up in the morning in my fine townhouse, and it's clean, because the slaves have cleaned it. It just happens. I have an amazing dinner, cooked in the Calina kitchen of my townhouse.

• 34:42Speaker 05

  By the slaves and it just happens. I don't think about it. They are the modern equivalent in a Roman context of our technology.

• 34:51Speaker 06

  And I guess Rome can swell to a million people because fresh water can be brought in, sewage can be pumped out, all because of aqueducts and sewers built by slaves.

• 34:58Speaker 05

  Absolutely, yeah. So they're built by slaves. So you might ask yourself the question, what's in it for me as a slave to build an aqueduct supplying water to Rome? Well, because you have a terrible life anyway. It's because of what happens to you if you misbehave as a slave. So you could end up in the arena or you could get sent down the metalla. Interestingly, crucifixion in the Roman world was an execution specifically designed only for slaves. Only for slaves. So when Christ was crucified, it was deliberately portraying him as a slave. The Romans were showing him as the bottom of society. So you could end up with the most brutal death of many kinds of brutal death, which is a crucifixion.

• 35:42Speaker 05

  And if you go on the far side of the Escheline Hill, outside the Servian land wars, there's a specific area which in the early imperial period was where the bodies of crucified slaves were chucked in burial pits, which all had to be dug up about a century later when the city expanded and they had to dig up the burial pits for crucified slaves.

• 36:03Speaker 06

  Would a lot of the workers on the Colosseum bin slaves?

• 36:05Speaker 05

  I would have thought nine tenths of them.

• 36:07Speaker 06

  And what do you think that experience was like? Would they try and look after them because they were quite skilled? Or were they quite disposable?

• 36:12Speaker 05

  Well firstly, they are disposable and there's a never-ending flow of slaves when you need them. You know, you need 10,000 men to help build the Colosseum. Well, I'll have 10,000 slaves. As many as you want. It's all scalable and it's absolutely normal. So if the button's pressed by the emperor, I need 10,000 slaves to build the new amphitheatre, then you get them.

• 36:32Speaker 06

  Do you have any idea how many people might have died constructing the Colosseum?

• 36:36Speaker 05

  No, but it would be thousands and thousands and thousands. And the really poignant thing is, these are people who live lives in the same way we live lives today and there's no record of them. So it's a really important point I always make down when I'm going around any Roman amphitheatre, which is glorified in modern culture through movies like Gladiator. Most people think it's fun, but it's not. It's a terrible place. It's a place of industrial-scale public murder, effectively. That's just what happens in the arena, but the people building it are dying all the time as well and they don't matter.

• 37:14Dan Snow?

  Slavery is central to the story of the Colosseum. From the labourers who no doubt keeled over in the heat building it, to the victims of the spectacular show deaths. But slaves also played another role in the Colosseum. They were, often, the gladiators, owned by the gladiator schools. Most were killed in battle, died of wounds, or lived a life of indentured servitude to the owner of the school. But the few who were resilient, strong enough to make it to the top, lucky and skillful enough to keep winning, well, they had an opportunity to gain their freedom, granted by the emperor.

• 38:05Dan Snow?

  I've come into central Rome, standing quite literally in the shadow of the Colosseum. It is towering above me now, this spectacular building. And I'm under street level, around me apartment blocks, restaurants, bars that have built up over the centuries. But there's an excavated plot that I'm standing in, I'm about three or four metres below ground level now. It's the Ludus Magnus, which is the gladiator training school. Now, like modern football clubs, there's a training ground for these gladiators, and this one was next to the Colosseum. It would have been a compound, I've got storerooms behind me, and in the middle, here, I can see a giant, well, I've got half an oval shape, this the training arena, the rest of it amazingly extends under all these new buildings. So can you imagine what an archaeological site that is, waiting to be excavated?

• 38:48Dan Snow?

  So this is where the gladiators lived, it's where they trained, it's where they fought their practice bouts, and there was a tunnel connecting this place to the Colosseum itself, which is probably about 50 or 60 metres away, just on the other side of what is now a modern road. I've come to meet Alexander Mariotti, who is an expert in all things ancient Rome, but particularly gladiators, to see what my life would be like if I was a gladiator.

• 39:13Dan Snow?

  Alex Mariotti, good to see you, man.

• 39:15Speaker 06

  Good to see you, Dan. Thank you for being here.

• 39:16Dan Snow?

  Well, you don't have to thank me. It's a sunny day. We're looking at the Colosseum. It's wild. I have to pinch myself every time I come to this city.

• 39:23Speaker 06

  We could be back in time 2000 years ago.

• 39:25Dan Snow?

  So, these gladiators that we'll be about to go and watch today.

• 39:28Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 39:29Dan Snow?

  What's their journey to this arena? Say they've come from Britain, say they've come from Ireland, Scotland, parts outside the empire. They've been traded in. How are they getting here?

• 39:36Speaker 06

  Well, first of all, what a journey. I mean, you're talking about three months' worth of journey to get here. We often forget just how vast the Roman world was and the lengths people traversed to actually get to Rome. First of all, I think, what a culture shock to come from the huts and towns of Britannia and then see Rome. I always loved that line in Gladiator when he said, "I didn't think men could build such things." I think that's so true. When you look at the architecture, Rome was alien to most people. But the Roman Empire was filled with agents, with talent scouts, who were looking for these people. They're going to the slave markets, they're going to the mines. They're really searching out these gladiators because they had a necessity for them. That gladiator then is sold to a school. And, so, you know, your agent will come out and he'll bring the head of the gladiator school

• 40:21Speaker 06

  a series of possible candidates. There's an inspection, a medical, if you will, and then they'll buy the gladiator. The gladiator then has to swear an oath. Oaths are very common things in antiquity. You swear to the gods, to, you know, the Roman state, that you promise to maintain the rules of the ludus. Because effectively, just like in the army, you're being trained. Your freedom is null. And then from then, you're given some very grueling training, which would last about two years. That's about the amount of time it would take to make a gladiator.

• 40:52Dan Snow?

  So they've arrived in Rome, they're in a training school?

• 40:55Speaker 06

  Yeah, in the ludus, where we've been ourselves. So in the ludus magnus, there's various schools, but I think of them as clubs or teams. I mean, they had their factions, they had their fans. So you had the fans of the ludus adius, you had the fans of the ludus magnus. They would often have a rivalry between them, they'll meet up. But that's also part of the games, you know, how exciting. Last time our guy lost, can't wait for the rematch. Oh, I bet this time he's gonna get him, you know.

• 41:18Dan Snow?

  And they've become celebrities?

• 41:19Speaker 06

  They were celebrities. I mean, really, after the emperor, they're not just the most desired men sexually of the empire, but they're also the most loved and adored. And after the emperor, who could command a crowd of 80,000 people to cheer your name? And that's why you get emperors who want to be gladiators. I mean, what does that say that the most powerful, wealthy, pampered and lavish lifestyle person in the world wants to be the gladiator? That doesn't make sense if he's the poor slave who's thrown in the arena to die. If the gladiator was just a nobody that was thrown into the arena, you wouldn't have the wealthiest man in the world wanting to be him. But he does want to be him, in the same way that you get people who are politicians or celebrities who wish they were sports stars. It's not that different.

• 42:02Dan Snow?

  So that emperor being Commodus, for example, used to fight in the arena?

• 42:06Speaker 06

  Caligula, Commodus, Hadrian, yeah, they fought in the arena, they displayed themselves because they want to be... I feel bad for Commodus because, one, he's very young when he becomes emperor, but more than that, you can just kind of feel that he was born into royalty. He's a bit Prince Harry in a way. He didn't really want to be part of it and he kind of does everything to be the opposite. He wants to be a sports star, he wants to be a gladiator. But he can't, he's the Emperor of Rome. And yet, he'd rather be a gladiator than head of sixty million people.

• 42:35Dan Snow?

  And yet, some of these gladiators who are celebrities and fashion icons, sex symbols, they're still owned by somebody else.

• 42:43Speaker 06

  I always find it a little disconcerting. Where the freedman, slave, prisoner of war, when you were in the ludus, whatever you were outside was irrelevant. You became the raw recruit and it is your duty to listen to the doctori, the trainer, and be forged into a gladiator. There's an investment being made in you that has to be recouped.

• 43:01Dan Snow?

  If they fight their way to the end of their career, can they get manumission? Can they become free?

• 43:05Speaker 06

  Indeed, yes. In fact, as a slave, what would be more motivation than to win your freedom? So you could win your freedom, so that was an incentive to get them to going. As a freedman, well, yes, there's the money, but then, once your career was over, you had various options. You could become a gladiator trainer, you could retire to the provinces. I always think it's funny when you see footballers go to sort of lower leagues, right? Gladiators do the same thing. So, you know, you're known in Rome, you're the winner of the FA Cup final of, you know, eighty-two A.D., you've still got a name for yourself, you can go to the lower provinces, you go to the North Africa circuit where they know you. So you're a bit past your prime, but people are still excited because you're the Ronaldo of the Colosseum. How do we know the names of these gladiators? Do you come across them in writing?

• 43:49Speaker 06

  Are their names preserved in stone carved into a building somewhere? It's a great question. Various ways. The sources mention them, like Veris and Priscus. He's mentioned in the poem Marshall. They are the gladiators that battle for the opening of the Colosseum. But actually, what helps us a lot is epigraphic evidence. Tombstones, inscriptions. So we learn a lot about them. And of course, one of the biggest treasure troves of information is Pompeii. I mean, Pompeii, it's such a hard sight because there's such a tragedy to the situation that led to the destruction and the death of so many people. But at the same time, it's been a blessing for us because all we know about the Roman world and the amount we know about gladiators comes from Pompeii. The walls literally tell stories. And they tell us that gladiators don't die. This whole thing about gladiators not dying isn't a theory.

• 44:33Speaker 06

  The walls of Pompeii will tell you that in 36 fights, six people lost their lives. And more than likely, that came about through injury. So it's not a bloodbath? It's not a bloodbath, no. And it wouldn't be entertaining as a bloodbath. Romans saw enough blood and guts and gore to last them a lifetime. It was pageantry. It was skill. Even though death loomed, because you could die from an injury. And that's true of boxing and wrestling. But someone still does it. What courage there is to watch somebody who knows death is staring over, about to cut the thread at any moment, but they don't care. They laugh at it and they keep going forward.

• 45:10Speaker 06

  You're listening to Dan Snow's History. There's more coming up.

• 46:07Speaker 06

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• 46:34Dan Snow?

  Seventy-eight A.D. Two years from completion, the Colosseum already towers over the surrounding buildings. But then tragedy strikes. Emperor Vespasian dies. His vision for Rome and this monumental arena passes to his son, Titus. For the first time in the empire's history, the throne is inherited from a father by a biological son. A powerful bond of blood. It was now the next era of the Flavian dynasty.

• 47:04Dan Snow?

  Titus, determined to honor his father's dream to restore Rome's glory, vows to finish the Colosseum. He promises not just a spectacle, but a triumph of grandeur, a statement heard in every corner of the empire. In eighty A.D., he announced one hundred days of games to celebrate the opening of the Colosseum. Thousands of executions, exotic animals, and of course, the best gladiators from all over the Roman world. In a city accustomed to just a few days of games, this was more than a festival. It was a declaration of Rome's power, ambition, and resilience. A show unlike anything Rome had ever seen.

• 47:48Dan Snow?

  The sun beat down, not unlike today, and the crowds surged through the streets of Rome. They were clutching their shards of pottery with their numbers on them. These are their tickets, the biggest event the city had ever seen, the opening of the Colosseum. An architectural marvel unlike anything they'd ever seen.

• 48:16Dan Snow?

  Among the spectators that day was Marshall, the poet, whose writing gives us the most complete account of a gladiator fight that we have. I can imagine his sandals scraping on the cobblestones, the occasional stop to chatter with the people around him, the feeling of anticipation, the excitement, and already thinking about the words that would etch the Colosseum into the annals of history. Inside the vast arena, the vista stretched out before him. Rows upon rows of stone seats, filled with tens of thousands of spectators, all eyes fixed on the sand below. It was here that Titus, Rome's new emperor, decided to inaugurate the Colosseum with the ultimate spectacle: a fight between the two most celebrated gladiators of the age.

• 49:00Dan Snow?

  Marshall would have taken his seat, perhaps with a scroll tucked under his arm, a steleus at the ready. Statues of gods stood proudly in the arches, their stony eyes gazing down as if they too rigger for the spectacle to begin. The emperor took his seat in the imperial box, his face a mask of controlled excitement, knowing that this day, this event, well, it could well define his reign. The day had already been filled with brutal contests, animals fighting each other, bloodthirsty hunts through fake forests, executions of criminals, and men fighting beasts. One Roman historian recorded that 5,000 animals were killed during the Hundred Day Festival.

• 49:45Dan Snow?

  It's believed that Colosseum employees sprayed perfumes to try and mask the smell of blood. But the big event was the gladiator match in the afternoon, and on this day, it was between two of Rome's most famous fighters, Priscus and Verus.

• 50:02Dan Snow?

  As the sun began to sink towards the horizon, the crowd hushed as they entered the arena.

• 50:10Dan Snow?

  Even from his seat up in the stands, Marshall would have seen their muscles taut beneath their armour, their faces set with grim determination. Men who knew this fight could be the performance of their lives.

• 50:24Dan Snow?

  There could only be one winner. The two men took their places, weapons at the ready. They circle each other like predators.

• 50:38Dan Snow?

  Blow after blow they strike, the fight dragged on. The sun dipping lower, neither man showed any willingness to surrender. They fought, like men proud of skill they'd honed over years of training, and to maintain their record of victories. Exhaustion set in, their movements slowed. They struggled to keep their weapons up, but their determination didn't waver. Every eye in the arena was now fixed on Titus. The emperor, known for pragmatism and relative benevolence, rose from his seat. The Colosseum fell silent. He would make a decision. One that would define the day, and help shape the legacy of the Colosseum itself. The crowd waited in anticipation.

• 51:23Dan Snow?

  The two gladiators stood before their emperor, sweating, exhausted. Then, in a gesture that could well have shocked the entire arena, Titus stood up, looked at both men, and proclaimed that today there would be two winners. It was an unprecedented decision. And not only that, he ordered that they should both be given the wooden sword, the rudis, a symbol that gladiators had been released from the blood-soaked sands of the arena. Titus had given them both their freedom. Martial captured this moment as the crowd's cheers would have echoed through the vast amphitheatre. The poet immortalised the day the Colosseum opened with not one, but two champions,

• 52:04Dan Snow?

  and the emperor's name forever linked to an act of grace that no one had expected.

• 52:19Dan Snow?

  It's late afternoon here in Rome, the sun is setting on the Colosseum, and I love standing here on the north-east side of the Colosseum, because the sun's beams slice through the arches. It looks like the sun is coming from within the building. This is what it would have looked like to those spectators who were attending the games here at this time of day, 2,000 years ago. Perhaps they'd have been leaving the Colosseum, they'd have spent the day watching the games put on by some emperor. Spectacular gladiatorial contest that cemented the reputation of the Colosseum as the greatest amphitheatre in the empire, but also shored up imperial power and prestige with the all-important populace of the capital.

• 53:05Dan Snow?

  You can imagine people leaving here after an event like that with much the same feeling as when we leave a football match today or a gig that we've loved. A sense of elation, a sense of belonging and pride. A very real sense that you're just a small part of something much, much bigger. I bet they've never been so proud or so conscious of being a Roman citizen.

• 53:29Speaker 05

  It's all part of a confidence trick by the Roman emperors. Keep the masses happy, because if the masses were happy, then they were less likely to revolt against the fact that they've got very little wealth and the very small majority of people at the top of Rome's society have got a lot of wealth. And it's what we call today bread and circuses.

• 53:51Dan Snow?

  The opening ceremony really set the bar high, and Titus, and eventually his brother, and his successor Domitian, knew they had to keep upping the ante, to keep the excitement growing, to keep the sensation real. The Colosseum had become the setting for the greatest show on earth. Join me for next episode, I go behind the scenes and discover how the Romans pulled off spectacles that would astonish us even today. From elevators and pulley systems that changed the arena from a lush African jungle to Greek temples and spat out wild animals at a moment's notice, to, well, some accounts suggest anyway, to maritime extravaganzas.

• 54:31Dan Snow?

  Gallons of water pumped in, naval battles recreated in front of astonished crowds. If I could see one thing in history, friends, it would be that. Also, I'm there at the Glade School, see if I'm cut out to go into the ring. And my producer, Mariana, follows what it would have been like to attend the Games as a fan of mine, naturally, a role she's very suited to play. You don't want to miss it. Make sure to follow on your podcast player to get it on Wednesday. See you next time.

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• 56:18Dan Snow?

  Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history? Sign up to History and watch the world's best history documentaries on subjects like how William conquered England, what it was like to live in the Georgian era, and you can even hear the voice of Richard III. We've got hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, and there's always something more to discover. Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.