The expectation exceeded the reality. I am happy I didn't queue for hours as I got there first thing.
San Sebatian Catacombs (under here). November 2017
[from FB post: November 17. 2016]
Two myths busted today:
#1 Christians were probably NEVER put to death in games in the Colosseum. That is not to say the Romans did not persecute them, but the idea that the Colosseum is a place of great Christian martyrdom is just not true.
#2 The catacombs of Rome were not hideouts where Christians LIVED for long periods of time. They were graves... they had some chapels for clandestine worship, but no one ever LIVED down there. The air is slightly sulfuric due to the nature of the rock. Long exposure would have been lethal.
Those are two things I believed more or less solidly...both busted today.
My memory of the Colosseum was mostly of trying to see it without queueing for hours. The whole area by the Colosseum, Forum, and Palatine Hill was the tourist epicenter of Rome and constantly clogged with tourists. Luckily, there were three ticket purchasing points (all very close to each other) and one ticket covered all the sites for two days. I read online that the Palatine Hill entrance ticket booth was rarely crowded and that turned out to be true. Within eyesight of the ticket booths for the Colosseum and the Forum which both had enormous queues, the Palatine Hill ticket booth had no one. I walked up and bought my ticket easily at that entrance and saw both Palatine Hill and the Forum. The Colosseum, however, would have to be for the next day. Even after getting a ticket, the entrance queue to enter the Colosseum was also massive. I noted that and came the following morning right at opening to avoid the crowds. The strategy worked, but there were still a lot of people waiting that gloomy morning.
The Colosseum seen today is largely a Mussolini restoration project. Large parts of the structure had survived into the modern era, but Mussolini was responsible for a huge renovation of it. I entered the place and was amazed by its size, but the state of disrepair was disappointing compared to other surviving Roman arenas. The fact that it used a "false floor" (so what was exposed was actually the basement) led to a confused viewing experience. It didn't look like any kind of arena or stadium. Honestly, the exterior of the Colosseum is probably the best part of any visit.
Luckily, there were a few tour groups around and I floated on their peripheries glomming onto free knowledge (an oft-used strategy) and learned quite clearly, TWICE, that Christians were never thrown to the lions for sport in the Colosseum. Did it happen that some Christians met their end in the Colosseum? yes, but so did countless others of different races and religions. Christians were never singled out for blood-sport in that ancient venue. However, the Colosseum was a place of punishment and extreme brutality for sport. That part of its history was true - maybe I just didn't like the site because of the bad karma of all the suffering that had occurred there. The Colosseum had been a place of human horror.
Later that day, I visited the catacombs. The Catacombs of Rome - the place where early Christians escaped persecution and LIVED in hiding while the pagan Romans hunted them down. Once again - false. Our guide in the catacombs explained that most of the time Christians lived in Roman society quite normally and only occasionally suffered from outbursts of rage from the government during which time they had sought refuge ANYWHERE from the Roman soldiers (including the catacombs). Early Christians most certainly never lived in the catacombs - they were full of sulfurous gases; they would have died. Another myth totally busted.
The early Christians of Rome were persecuted, but in modern terminology they would have been a "marginalized group that suffered from discrimination". Their lives were probably filled with frustration and fear, but they were not forced into long-term hiding and if found, routinely killed for spectacle in the arena. I had never thought much about those stories, but I assumed they were true. It was amazing to be in a city that represented so much to Christianity only to find that some of the most popularly held stories about its early days were not true.
Thrown to the lions? it did happen - just not in the way I always imagined.
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