Financing the Colosseum
Where did the money come from to build this magnificent Roman structure? An extremely unusual inscription—one without any extant letters—points to the spoils from the Jerusalem Temple.
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Footnotes
Square brackets refer to reconstructed and/or assumed text. Parentheses indicate the complete form of abbreviated words.
Parentheses indicate the complete form of words that have been abbreviated; brackets indicate words or letters that are omitted but which are suggested by Professor Alföldy.
Endnotes
Bedae Opera Omnia, Jacques-Paul Miqne, Patrologia Latina 94, p. 543; Bedae Opera (Cologne, 1612), p. 482.
It is referred to as Amphitheatrum in an inscription of the Arval Brethren from the year 80 (Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum 6.2059=32063=Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae 5049) and in the earliest Latin authors who mention the building (Martial, De Spectaculis 1.7 and 2.5; Suetonius, Vespasian 9.1, Titus 7.3, Domitian 4.1).
The first appearance of this name is in the Liber Pontificalis, the life of Stephen III (Pope 768–772), 1.472. On the debate as to whether the word Colisaeus as used by Bede refers to the huge bronze statue (Colossus) of Nero or whether it refers to the Flavian Amphitheater (Colosseum), see Howard V. Canter, “The Venerable Bede and the Colosseum,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 61 (1930), pp. 150–164, who argues convincingly for the latter view.
See Robin Haydon Darwall-Smith, Emperors and Architecture: A Study of Flavian Rome (Bruxelles: Latomus: Revue d’Études Latines, 1996), p. 78.
Paul the Deacon, History of Rome 13.16; Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum 6.32086–89, 91–92, 94. See Lynne C. Lancaster, “Reconstructing the Restorations of the Colosseum after the Fire of 217,” Journal of Roman Archaeology 11 (1998), pp. 146–174.
At the time of Caesar (about 50 B.C.E.) an ordinary laborer earned about a thousand sesterces a year. See Jo-Ann Shelton, As the Romans Did: A Sourcebook in Roman Social History, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1998) p. 452.
Suetonius, Titus 7.3; Eusebius [Jerome] Chronica (ed. Alfred Schoene, Eusebi Chronicorum Canonum, vol. 2 [Berlin: Weidmann, 1876], p. 159); Eutropius 7.21.
See Harold Mattingly, Coins of the Roman Empire in the British Museum, vol 2: Vespasian to Domitian (London: British Museum, 1930), p. lxxvi, nos. 190–191.
Carlo Fea, Notizie degli scavi nell’ Anfiteatro Flavio e nel Foro Traiano (Rome: Nella stamperia di Lino Contedini, 1813), pp. 3–9.
Géza Alföldy, “Eine Bauinschrift aus dem Colosseum,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 109 (1995), pp. 195–226.
See Rosella Rea, Tudor Dinca, Alessandra Morelli and Stefano Priuli, Bulletino della Commissione archeologica communale di Roma (BCAR) 91 (1986), pp. 318ff.
Alföldy, “Eine Bauinschrift,” p. 201. He has suggested several corrections, which we have adopted.
The original inscription was reconstructed by Filippo Magi, “Le iscrizioni recentemente scoperte sull’obelisco vaticano,” Studi Romani 11 (1963) pp. 50–56; see also Alföldy, Der Obelisk aus dem Petersplatz in Rom: ein historisches Monument der Antike (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1990; and Alföldy, Die Bauinschriften des Aquäduktes von Segovia und des Amphitheaters von Tarraco (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1997).
Another famous example of a phantom inscription is in the Maison Carrée in Nîmes in southern France. For the history of the reconstruction of the original inscription see Jean C. Balty, Études sur la Maison Carrée de Nîmes (Bruxelles: Latomus: Revue d’Études latines, 1960) pp. 150–177.
Fergus Millar, “The Inscriptions of Rome: Recovery, Recording, and Interpretation,” Journal of Roman Archaeology 11 (1998), p. 434.
The etymology of this word is disputed. The most likely etymology is that it is derived from manus (hand) and habere (to have). See Peter G.W. Glare, Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), p. 1075, s.v. manubiae.
See Israel Shatzman, “The Roman General’s Authority over Booty,” Historia 21 (1972) pp. 177–205. See now Michel Aberson, Temples votifs et butin de guerre dans la Rome républicaine (Rome: Institut Suisse de Rome, 1994).
Carol H. V. Sutherland (“The State of the Imperial Treasury at the Death of Domitian,” Journal of Roman Studies 25 [1935] p. 158 n. 62), states that an emendation by Guillaume Budé to quadragies, i.e. four thousand million, has been noted by Maximilian Ihm in his editio minor of Suetonius, Vespasian 16.3 (Leipzig: Teubner, 1933) 305; but the unanimous reading of the manuscripts is quadringenties.
So Tenney Frank, An Economic Survey of Ancient Rome vol. 5: Rome and Italy of the Empire (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1940), p. 45.
On the extraordinary use of gold in the Temple, see Joachim Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus (London: SCM Press, 1969), pp. 24–25.
See Salo W. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, 2nd ed., vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1952), pp. 370–372, n. 7; and my Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1993), p. 293.
See Bargil (Virgil) Pixner, “Copper Scroll (3Q15),” Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. David N. Freedman, vol. 1 (New York: Doubleday, 1992), p. 1133. By way of comparison, Appian (Bella Civilia 2.101,421) reports that 60,500 talents of silver (approximately 5500 talents of gold) and over 20,400 pounds of gold (approximately 260 talents) were carried in Caesar’s triumphal procession and then distributed. Pompey (Appian, Mithridates 116, 565), who was by far the richest man in Rome in his day, managed 16,000 talents of silver (approximately 1,455 talents of gold). But this does not take into account the apparently sizable inflation that took place between the time of Caesar and that of the Flavians.
John M. Allegro, The Treasure of the Copper Scroll (Garden City: Doubleday, 1960); Al Wolters, “History and the Copper Scroll,” in Michael O. Wise et al., eds., Methods of Investigation of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Khirbet Qumran Site: Present Realities and Future Prospects (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 722 [1994]), pp. 285–298; Wolters, “Copper Scroll,” in Lawrence H. Schiffman and James C. VanderKam, eds., Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls, vol. 1 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2000), pp. 144–148.
Hegesippus, History, Prologue 1, line 6, in Vincentius Ussani, ed., Hegesippi Qui Dicitur Historiae Libri V, vol. 1 (Wien: Hoelder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1932).
Robert E. Glanville Downey (“References to Inscriptions in the Chronicle of Malalas,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 66 [1935], pp. 55–72) demonstrates, however, that all of Malalas’s references to inscriptions may be derived from literary sources rather than from personal observation.
Remains of a theater built near the end of the first century and presumably to be identified with the one mentioned by Malalas were excavated in 1934–1935. See Donald N. Wilber (“The Theatre at Daphne: Daphne-Harbie 20-N,” in Richard Stillwell, ed., Antioch-on-the Orontes, vol. 2 [Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1938], pp. 57–94), who concludes that Vespasian did, indeed, build a theater at Daphne.
I want to express my sincere gratitude to Géza Alföldy for inspiring this study and for his great assistance. I also thank E. Badian of Harvard University, Boruch K. Helman of Brookline, Mass., Asher S. Kaufman and Israel Shatzman of Hebrew University and Hershel Shanks, BAR editor, for many helpful suggestions.