Page:Three Years in Europe.djvu/366

324 place which was probably the market for fruit and honey in olden days. Here Horace used to take his favourite walk as he has told us himself, and Ovid, too, delighted to see the purchases made here in his time. We at last come to the remains of the fountains called Meta Sudans, where gladiators used to wash before entering the Colosseum. Seneca who lived close by complains of the noise made by a showman who blew his trumpet at his fountain! The road now turns to the right and passes under the Arch of Constantine, and is called the Triumphal Way, as Roman triumphal processions used to come to the Forum by this way.

To our front and a little to the left stands in all its solidity and vastness the huge Colosseum of Rome, the vastest monument that antiquity has bequeathed to modern times! This vast structure is an elliptic, its longer axis being 584 feet and the shorter 468 feet, and the arena inside is 278 feet by 177 feet. It was commenced by Vespasian on his return from the war against the Jews, was dedicated by his eldest son Titus in 80, and was completed by his youngest son Domitian. It was calculated to hold about 1,00,000 people to witness those cruel sports which delighted the populace of Rome, 5,000 wild beasts and 10,000 captives are said to have been slain at the inauguration of the structure by Titus; and for centuries after, thousands of prisoners, Christians or gladiators or captives from the far East and West, died a cruel death and stained this ground with their hearts' blood, to make a spectacle for the rabble of Rome.