A View from the Heitz

When I arrived for our tour of the Colosseum I had many questions.  Having studied Ancient Rome extensively during school I thought I had a pretty good understanding of it all.  We had just visited the Tower of London where I was reminded of its bloody past; here again I was encountering a culture that made the monarchy look tame by comparison.  Over 500,000 people met their deaths in the Colosseum.  There was plainly no respect or value of life.  The main distinction in Roman society was whether you were slave or free without regard to race.

What I discovered, thanks to our well educated guide, was that the Colosseum was really the main vehicle for communication in Ancient Rome.  If you are an emperor with a population of over one million people how do you tell everyone of the heroic battles you’ve just won far away?  And if you are really subduing nations how do you communicate your power without CNN?  You need the violence of the games and events in the Colosseum to reenact and reenforce the power you have.  The Colosseum was in reality state controlled propaganda.

Think of the labor involved in daily games at the Colosseum or in the building projects in and around Rome.  Fortunes were spent on these things, today we spend them in media, advertising, and public relations and likely in similar proportions.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 13th, 2008 at 9:19 am and is filed under Arts & Culture, Travel.