Military Amphitheatre: Eight Thousand Seats beside the Legion
Listen at the stop, then read the transcript and follow the sources behind the story.
Listen
Transcript
This amphitheatre belonged to a different urban world from the civilian arena you saw earlier.
LEH-gee-oh fifteen ah-pol-lee-NAH-ris built or rebuilt the amphitheatre between 72 and 77 AD, according to an inscription found near the east gate. The arena measured about 72 by 44 metres. Around 8,000 spectators could be accommodated, and the venue may also have served drills, equestrian exercises and executions.
Compare its location beside the military complex with the civilian amphitheatre outside the city walls.
The evidence level here is excavated standing monument.
The Roman army here was simultaneously a fighting force, employer, customer, construction organization and magnet for civilian settlement.
What looks like one archaeological attraction is really evidence for a city operating at several social levels at once.
For someone already familiar with kar-NOON-toom, the useful detail is scale: the object in front of you belonged to a network much larger than the surviving ruin.
Do not let the modern quietness mislead you. The ancient setting depended on traffic, labor, maintenance, noise and repeated social routines.
One of kar-NOON-toom's strengths is that archaeology can test the attractive story against material evidence—and sometimes force us to tell a better, less convenient story.