Feasts, board games and brawls — life as a Colosseum spectator

Times

16-07-2025

For every Flamma, a Syrian gladiator who fought during the reign of Hadrian (34 matches, with 21 wins, nine draws and four reprieves) there was a flop. And when the answer to the question 'are you not entertained?' was 'no, not really', the Colosseum took matters into its own hands.
A new exhibition in the underground tunnels of ancient Rome's great bear pit turns our gaze away from the gladiators and wild animals to focus on the spectators who spent hours in the amphitheatre, not just enjoying the bloodshed but munching on elaborate meals, playing board games, and carving graffiti of what they had seen.
Among the highlights of the display, which completes the renovation of the underground area of the arena, is a lead tablet, the tabulae defixionis, bearing curses thought to be aimed at an unloved gladiator. The 50,000 spectators who filled the seats of the world's largest amphitheatre — the construction of which was ordered by the Emperor Vespasian in 72 AD and completed by his son and successor, Titus, eight years later — were known for the ferocity of their cheering, for betting on the outcome of fights and embracing the heroes that emerged, as slaves fought to the death for glory and, possibly, their freedom.
However, for every rock star of the arena — Flamma turned down his freedom four times, beholden to the adulation — there were gladiators who cost the crowd money. A surviving example of the tablet ended up in the sewers and has been recovered two millennia later by archaeologists. Researchers strained to work out the content, which appears to contain an image of a shield, an abbreviation of a Latin word for pig and lightning bolts around a dried up tree. Undoubtedly, researchers concluded, an unfriendly message dating from the 3rd or 4th century AD and directed at a particular gladiator.
The exhibition, which is open to the public in the eastern underground section of the Colosseum, complements a display on the life and equipment of the gladiators which opened in 2023 under the western side of the arena. The clues to the lives of ordinary Romans were recovered from 70 metres of drain excavated by archaeologists and speleologists working together in challenging conditions in 2022 and are now on display for the first time.
'We filtered the archaeological earth for every kind of refuse, even the smallest and apparently least significant,' said Federica Rinaldi, the director of the Colosseum site.
The record of the daily pursuits of the Roman public was preserved in part because of declining standards of sewer maintenance in later years and by damage to underground structures from earthquakes in the 5th and 6th centuries.
With games lasting for hours and sometimes for several days in a row, objects filtered from the earth reveal that women passed the time by weaving, sewing and attending to their personal appearance. A wooden loom shuttle, needles, hairpins and wooden combs were among the items found.
Men devoted themselves to board games, carved on to the marble of the cavea — the semi-circular seating area — with lost dice and coins believed to have bounced off the stone and found their way into the nether regions of the amphitheatre. The smaller coins that were common in the last years of the empire, when inflation was rampant, were particularly easy to lose.
In contrast, a larger gold-like orichalcum coin, an amalgam of copper and zinc, testifies to the munificence of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, struck to celebrate the tenth anniversary of his reign, which lasted from 161 AD until his death in 180 AD.
The writer Suetonius recounts that Domitian, the emperor from 81 AD to 96 AD, had baskets of food distributed to the public between performances, while the poet Martial described the plebs consuming pork, chicken, pigeon, bass and moray eel on the steps of the amphitheatre.
On display are oyster and clam shells, small animal bones, fruit pips and melon seeds, confirming that anything from a snack to a full meal was part of the games experience.
Barbara Nazzaro, the technical director of the Colosseum, said a day out at the games was not unlike modern families going for a picnic. It was likely that people took food from home as well as consuming street food bought near the amphitheatre.
But a family outing to watch the bloodsports didn't mean it was always a family-friendly affair. Fans could be agitated in support of their chosen gladiator school and public order at times a problem. 'There were certainly brawls from time to time. The amphitheatres were generally built outside the city walls, as a security precaution,' Nazzaro said.