was one man to an oar and they sat at different levels so the oar blades wouldn't interfere with each other. In the stern sat a man who gave the rowers the time with a drum and two overseers with whips walked up and down platforms running fore and aft to make sure everyone was doing his best. The ships were built long and narrow for speed and were very unseaworthy craft, although they were ideal for a battle on a lake. They were almost identical with the Greek galleys of a thousand years before. All the Romans added, except for the corvus, were foot ropes for the men to stand on while reefing the sail, and shrouds so they could climb the mast. The Greeks had to use a ladder.
The combined fleets passed in review and as they came within hearing distance of the royal dais, the men gave the traditional cry of 'Hail, Caesar, we who are about to die greet thee!' Claudius shouted back gaily, 'That depends on you, my friends,' meaning that if a man put up a good fight he wouldn't be killed. However, the crews yelled, 'Good Caesar! If it depends on us, we won't bother to fight' Then the two fleets sailed away together, the crews shouting congratulations to each other.
The mob howled protest and Claudius, jumping off his throne, ran down to the shore, yelling insults at the crews and swearing to have the soldiers set fire to the ships and burn them alive if they didn't fight. Claudius was crippled (he may have been a polio victim) and was also weak in the head. He used to go into insane rages, and this was a typical one. The crowd laughed themselves sick at his antics but finally the crews got the idea and, dividing into two fleets, made ready for the battle. Agrippina led the emperor back to his throne where Claudius, seeing the crowd laugh, began to laugh too, and got hysterical.
When the royal family finally got Cladius quieted down, he gave the signal for the fight by dropping his handkerchief. Instantly the war trumpets of both fleets blared out and the galleys began to move, the drummers building up the stroke as rapidly as possible, for it was of vital importance for the ships to have the maximum amount of momentum when they met.
When galleys fought, they first tried to ram each other with the iron beaks in the prows. If this manoeuvre succeeded, the rammed galley sank with a few minutes and nothing more needed to be done. If the ramming failed, then each galley tried to plough through the oars of the enemy. As the oars were forced back, the handles crushed the rowers at their benches and the disabled galley could then be rammed at leisure. If this manoeuvre also failed, then their was nothing for it but to board with the aid of the corvus and slug it out man to man.
On the first onslaught, nine of the Rhodian galleys were sunk by ramming and three of the Sicilian. Many of the Rhodian galleys had lost one or more banks of oars and could not manoeuvre. They managed to crowd together at one end of the lake and the Sicilian fleet surrounded them and attacked by boarding. The fight, which had started at ten in the morning, went on until three in the afternoon. The Sicilian triremes put up a desperate resistance, Tacitus saying: 'The battle, though between malefactors, was fought with the spirit of brave men.' Several of the Sicilian single-banked galleys, however, did their best to keep out of the fight. At last 'when the surface of the lake was red with blood,' the last of the Sicilian fleet surrendered. Three thousand men were killed. The fight had been so exciting that Claudius pardoned the survivors on both sides except for the crews of the three Rhodian galleys who had been rammed, because he thought that they hadn't charged into the fight fast enough, and the crews of six of the Sicilian single-banked galleys, who had been gold-bricking.
This exhibition was such a success that four months later, Claudius gave another show. As he was out of fresh prisoners (all the Roman jails had been swept clean to provide crews for the galleys) he had to be content with a less elaborate production. This time he had a bridge on pontoons stretched across the lake, widening in the middle to a platform about a hundred yards wide. Two armies of about five thousand men each were raised from prisoners of war, newly arrived jailbirds, and slaves. One was dressed up like Etruscans and the other as Samnites. Each side was given the appropriate arms, all the Etruscan weapons having to be made especially for the event as the Etruscans had ceased to exist as a nation three hundred years before. However, some of the old Etruscans' double-headed battle-axes and bronze lances were still in museums and these were carefully duplicated by the Roman smiths.
While the bands played, the two armies marched across the bridge from opposite sides of the lake and met in the middle. Claudius had given orders that no one was to be allowed to swim ashore. If he fell off the bridge, he had either to drown or climb back. At first the Samnites seemed to be winning, pushing the Etruscans back and holding the wide central part of the bridge. But the Etruscans rallied and finally drove the Samnites off the span. All the Etruscans, and a few of the Samnites who had shown outstanding courage, were given their freedom.
CHAPTER FOUR
The first century of the Christian era probably marked the high point of the games. The spectacles had grown to such an extent that it seemed incredible that they could ever be surpassed. The dictator Sulla (93 b.c.) had exhibited one hundred lions in the arena. Julius Caesar had four hundred. Pompey had six hundred lions, twenty elephants and 410 leopards which fought Gaetulians armed with darts. Augustus in 10 a.d. exhibited the first tiger ever to be seen in Rome and had 3,500 elephants. He boasted that he had ten thousand men killed in eight shows. After Trajan's victory over the Dacians, he had eleven thousand animals killed in the arena. The cost of the games also steadily increased. In 364 b.c., the total cost of the games was Ј3,826. In 51 a.d., they cost Ј32,690. This was the sum paid by the emperor; no record has been kept of the games put on by private individuals or politicians, but Petronius speaks of a magistrate who was going to spend Ј7,000 on a three-day show to keep him in office.
I am computing the Roman Sesterce as having the purchasing power of about 1s. 10d. today.
The buildings designed to hold these shows have never been surpassed either for size or for perfection of functional design. The oldest and largest of these vast structures was the Circus Maximus. Although I've described what the arena looked like I haven't said much about the building itself. It was built in the Vail is Murcia, a long valley between the Palatine and Aventine Hills which had been used for chariot races from remote antiquity. Eventually wooden stands, which could be removed after the races were put up on the slopes of the hills for the audience. The first permanent stands were put up in 329 b.c. together with stalls for the chariots. Only the first tier of seats was of stone; the rest continued to be wood. As a result, the stadium was burned down several times, one of the times being when Nero burned Rome. After each burning, it was rebuilt with fresh splendour. Julius Caesar enlarged it to such an extent that some historians date the true Circus Maximus from his time. Caesar put in a ten-foot moat which protected the people from the wild beasts in the arena. A stream was diverted from the hills to feed this moat and still runs near the Via di Cerchi. Augustus is generally given credit for having completed the circus although later emperors continued to enlarge the building. Claudius had the wooden chariot stalls replaced by marble and the cones made of gilt bronze. During the time of Antonius Pius, the stands were so crowded that the upper wooden tiers collapsed, killing 1,112 people. As a result, the stadium was rebuilt completely of stone. Trajan covered the whole building with white marble inside and out, relieved with gold trim work and paintings. He also added columns of coloured Oriental marble and statues of marble and gilt bronze. Eventually the Circus Maximus came to measure 2,000 feet long by 650 feet wide and held 385,000 people— a quarter of the population of Rome.
Constantine gave the Circus three additional tiers of marble seats supported on concrete arches. These arches still remain and form part of the foundation for the church of Saint Anastasia. They were made seven feet thick to support the great weight of the stands. The circus continued to exist through the Middle Ages but it was used as a vast quarry, and many of the early churches in Rome were built with stone taken from it. As late as the sixteenth century part of the structure still stood but now only the site and a few of the seats can be seen.
The Colosseum, started by the Emperor Vespasian in 70 a.d. and completed by his son, Titus, ten years later, was the most perfectly equipped amphitheatre that the Romans or anyone else ever built. As Vespasian and Titus were members of the Flavian family, it was known to the Romans as the 'Flavian amphitheatre' and it wasn't until the Middle Ages that it was called the Colosseum because of its size. Unlike the Circus Maximus (which was open at one end), the Colosseum formed a complete oval. It measures 615 by 510 feet and the arena alone is
