The Roman Colosseum

11 Pages 2813 Words

lt to apprehend with mere words .The city that held the great structure was full of great examples of the use of arches, columns from every order, and of course sheer size. When traveling in the city to the Colosseum the whole area had been paved and railed off. The approach was taken by cobbled slabs of lava, and then one entered an area paved with travertine more than five thousand feet wide and surrounded by huge boundary stones. To a spectator at the time the Colosseum from the outside is described by the romantic poet Johann Wolggang von Goethe: ?When one looks at it all else seems little; the edifice is so vast, that one cannot hold the image of it in one's soul- in memory we think it smaller, and then return to it again to find it every time greater than before?. As one looked at it from the city, there were many sights to behold, but the Colosseum stood out nineteen centuries ago, and still does to this date. Near the end of the Emperor Nero?s rule and the triumph of the Flavia...