There are historic monuments that don’t hold up to personal inspection, that rattle around inside the grandiose imagery built up by cultural myth. The Alamo is one such place. You watch the 1960 movie and the fort is a distinct and memorable character holding its own against the enormity of John Wayne and Richard Widmark. The movie makes you believe the place is large enough to hold thousands.
Go to San Antonio, ask a cop where it is, they don’t know, even though the image is right there on the patch on their arm. After wandering around a bit, turn the corner on a narrow street by a mall, and you’ll stumble over it in the center of a small square, tiny and inconsequential, as if ashamed of its elevated place within the American Mythos.
The Amphitheatrum Flavium, the Flavian Amphitheatre, has no such issues. This place is fucking HUGE. It was built to party, hard. Just you, 50,000 of your closest friends and a pride of lions. Stand next to it in line to get tickets and the stone oozes gravitas, leaning over you like the front line of the high school football team hungry for pig.
Why do I call it the Flavian Amphitheatre? Because it was built by the three emperors of the Flavian Dynasty between 72 and 80 A.D. The name we know it by now, Colosseum, refers to a bronze Colossus of Nero that was placed nearby and eventually torn down for the metal.
It’s easy to just stop and stare at the place and get lost in the fact that all that finished and intricate detail was done two thousand years ago. Think of that for a minute, TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO. Eighty generations of humans have lived and died since the first stone was laid down. Kind of puts all of your petty little worries, grievances and mortal sins into one hell of a perspective, doesn’t it?
And we can’t even keep our streets, bridges, etc., in repair.
Talk about rattling your bones, yours and so many more for centuries to come, I hope.