Pompeii Amphitheater

Location: Regio II

Insula 6

The Amphitheatre of Pompeii is the oldest surviving permanent stone amphitheatre in the Roman world. It was built around 70 BC, soon after Pompeii became a Sullan veteran colony, and was dedicated by the duoviri quinquennales Gaius Quinctius Valgus and Marcus Porcius. Their inscription (CIL X, 852) still calls the building spectacula, not amphitheatrum; the later Greek-derived term was not yet standard. The monument sits in the southeast corner of the city (Regio II), hard against the city walls, so crowds could enter and leave without flooding the civic centre.
Overall dimensions are about 135 m on the long axis and 104 m on the short axis. Capacity is conventionally given as about 20,000, large enough to draw spectators from neighbouring towns as well as Pompeii itself. More detailed seat-by-seat calculations have produced figures as high as about 24,000 if every space is counted tightly.

History

Colonial context and builders
Pompeii had been an Oscan, then Samnite, town. After the Social War it sided with the Italian rebels and fell to Sulla. In 80 BC it was refounded as Colonia Cornelia Veneria Pompeiana and settled with Sullan veterans. Two of those new magistrates, Gaius Quinctius Valgus and Marcus Porcius (the same pair who also paid for the covered Odeon), financed the amphitheatre at their own expense and dedicated it to the colonists. Two marble copies of the inscription (CIL X, 852) stood over the east and west entrances. The gift advertised Roman identity, military culture, and the donors’ liberalitas. The building was oversized for a mid-sized Campanian town; its capacity was clearly meant to draw spectators from neighboring communities as well.

Games
The arena staged munera (gladiatorial combats) and venationes (beast hunts). Wealthy citizens and magistrates sponsored the shows to win popularity. Painted advertisements on street walls announced pairings, dates, and the donor. Graffiti and a famous fresco from the House of Actius Anicetus record both the fights and the crowd’s passions. Weapons, armor, and skeletal remains of fighters with healed combat injuries have been recovered in and around Pompeii. Unlike later imperial arenas, there were no elaborate trapdoors or scenery lifts here; the spectacle was simpler and closer to the spectators.

The riot of 59 AD
The single best-documented event in the amphitheatre’s life is the riot of 59 AD, described by Tacitus in Annals 14.17. Games given by the former senator Livineius Regulus drew a large crowd that included visitors from nearby Nuceria. Verbal abuse between the two towns escalated to stone-throwing and then swords. The Pompeians, fighting on home ground, had the advantage. Many Nucerians were killed or mutilated; the wounded were carried to Rome. Nero referred the case to the Senate, which banned Pompeii from holding similar public gatherings for ten years, dissolved illegal collegia (associations, probably including rowdy fan clubs), and exiled Livineius and other instigators.
The underlying tension was older than one afternoon of insults. Land grants and veteran settlements after the Social War, and a fresh Nucerian colony under Nero in 57 AD, had already poisoned relations. A wall painting from the House of Actius Anicetus shows the amphitheatre itself with figures fighting both inside the seating and in the streets outside. Some later evidence suggests the full ten-year ban was not observed rigidly; beast hunts and athletic contests may have continued, and the ban was formally lifted after the earthquake of 62 AD.

"About this time [AD 59] there was a serious fight between the inhabitants of two Roman settlements, Nuceria and Pompeii. It arose out of a trifling incident at a gladiatorial show....During an exchange of taunts—characteristic of these disorderly country towns—abuse led to stone-throwing, and then swords were drawn. The people of Pompeii, where the show was held, came off best. Many wounded and mutilated Nucerians were taken to the capital. Many bereavements, too, were suffered by parents and children. The emperor instructed the senate to investigate the affair. The senate passed it to the consuls. When they reported back, the senate debarred Pompeii from holding any similar gathering for ten years. Illegal associations in the town were dissolved; and the sponsor of the show and his fellow-instigators of the disorders were exiled."
Tacitus, Annals (XIV.17)

Earthquake, repair, and burial
The earthquake of 62 AD damaged the structure. The magistrate Cuspius Pansa and his son paid for repairs. The work was among the first major restorations in the city, a sign of how important the games were for civic morale. Seventeen years later the eruption of Vesuvius buried the amphitheatre under pumice and ash. The highest parts of the outer wall remained partly visible through the Middle Ages and suffered more weathering than the buried seating. Six bodies were found during excavation.

Rediscovery
The building was first cleared in 1748, then more thoroughly in 1813–1816. Systematic work continued under Amedeo Maiuri in the twentieth century. Because it was never rebuilt in later Roman or medieval times, it remains one of the clearest examples of an early stone amphitheatre. Visitors still walk the same external stairs, stand on the podium wall that once separated the elite from the sand, and can see the sockets for the velarium poles.
The amphitheatre sits at the eastern end of the excavated site, near the Palaestra and the Porta Nocera necropolis. It is usually less crowded than the Forum and the Large Theatre. Combined tickets for the Archaeological Park of Pompeii cover it. Early morning or late afternoon visits give the best light on the oval and the surviving masonry. The building is still used occasionally for modern concerts and events, a living reminder that it was always meant to hold a crowd.

Architecture

Site, earthworks, and structural idea
The design is still close to the wooden arenas of the late Republic. Builders excavated an elliptical pit about 6 m deep for the arena and heaped the spoil into a continuous earthen bank that formed the body of the cavea. On the south and east this bank is retained by the existing city wall. On the north and west a purpose-built circular retaining wall, stiffened by masonry buttresses linked by some 62 blind arcades, holds the fill. The result is a hybrid: half the ellipse is an earthwork braced by the town defences, half is a free-standing masonry drum. That economy of means is the building’s most important architectural fact. Later imperial amphitheatres replace the earth bank with a full radial system of vaults and piers; Pompeii still sits on packed soil.
The outer face of the free-standing half is a ring of shallow, lofty arcades in polychrome tuff ashlar. Light and dark voussoirs alternate, giving a simple decorative rhythm. Behind this façade the terrace wall is Roman concrete faced in opus quasi-reticulatum (small roughly squared blocks in a loose net pattern) and originally plastered. After the earthquake of AD 62/63, brick arches in opus latericium and stretches of opus vittatum mixtum were inserted as reinforcement; those repairs are still visible.

The arena
The arena itself measures about 66.7–66.8 m by 34.5–35.1 m and lies some 6 m below external ground level. Its surrounding wall is about 2.18 m high (ancient sources and early excavators also give roughly 2 m / 6½ ft). The wall was painted, not marble-clad: copies made at the time of excavation show alternating broad and narrow panels, herms between columns, ornamental fields, and scenes connected with the games. A metal balustrade once ran along the top of the podium wall. That barrier was the only physical separation between spectators and the action; there is no deep podium trench of the later Colosseum type.
Two large vaulted tunnels, each about 4.26 m wide, open onto the long axis of the arena from north and south. They served as the main service and ceremonial entries for gladiators and attendants. A circumferential corridor cut into the base of the cavea ran around the arena and gave further access. There is no hypogeum: no underground cages, lifts, or animal pens. Props and waiting rooms occupied modest chambers off the service tunnels. The dead left through a door traditionally identified as the Porta Libitinensis. The nearby quadriporticus of the Large Theatre complex, not the amphitheatre itself, functioned as the gladiators’ barracks and training yard.

Cavea, seating, and social order
Stone seating was added gradually; the earliest phase almost certainly used wooden benches on the earth slope. The surviving tufa gradus total 35 rows, grouped in three horizontal zones:

Podium and ima cavea: five rows of wider, shallower steps, divided into 18 wedges (cunei). Two large terraces on the long sides held four broad, shallow steps for official seating. On the east side a 3 m gap in the second of those steps marked the place of the presiding magistrates and the editor who paid for the games. Podium seats are about 88 cm wide, double the ordinary module, and were intended for bisellia (honorific double chairs).
Media cavea: twelve rows in 20 wedges, for ordinary male citizens.
Summa cavea: eighteen rows in 40 wedges, for the lower classes and, by later convention, women. Remains of an opus incertum wall at the top may belong to a late rearrangement of this zone.

A deep trench and low wall separate ima from media cavea, a physical expression of rank. Slope decreases from the steep lower seats (closer, better view, reserved for the elite) to the shallower upper seats. Inscriptions on the podium wall record magistrates who paid for individual cunei.
At the very top, after the earthquake, a ring of small reserved boxes (about 4 ft square) was added, reached by extra stairways. These cathedrae or tribunalia could hold perhaps 14 people each; theoretical totals for the whole ring run to several hundred spectators. Stone sockets along the outer crown still show where masts for the velarium (canvas awning) were stepped.

Circulation is early and relatively simple.
Elite spectators entered through four vaulted ground-level passages that opened onto the podium and ima cavea. The contrast between the dark tunnel and the sudden light and noise of the arena was already a designed effect.
The rest of the crowd used six external staircases attached to the façade: two monumental double flights and two single flights. These rose to a broad terrace that served as an ambulacrum at the height of the city walls. From that terrace forty arched vomitoria dropped into the summa cavea. Beneath the media cavea a ring of cryptae contained sixteen doorways and internal stairs that led up into the podium and ima zones. Different social groups therefore reached their seats by different routes and rarely mixed on the stairs.
There is no continuous outer portico of the later imperial type. The upper gallery is reduced to the late boxes and the small arched doors that serve them.

Types of Gladiators

Andabatae
Andabatae were among the stranger and less well documented arena fighters of the late Republic. They wore little more than a loincloth (subligaculum) and a closed helmet with no eye openings. Armed with a short sword, they fought almost or completely blind, relying on hearing, crowd noise, and chance. Ancient writers treat them as comic or grotesque rather than as a regular armatura. Some later sources imagine them in mail or even on horseback, but the only certain point is the blind helmet. They usually faced other andabatae. The type fades from the record in the Imperial period.

Bestiarii
Bestiarii (singular bestiarius) fought wild animals, not other men, so they were not gladiators in the strict sense. Early on many were condemned criminals (damnatio ad bestias) given a spear or dagger and almost no chance of survival. As venationes grew popular, trained specialists also entered the arena against lions, bears, leopards, and other imported beasts. Their equipment stayed light: spear, knife, sometimes a small shield. Survival rates improved for professionals, but the spectacle remained bloody and remained a morning or midday attraction rather than the main gladiatorial card.

Dimachaeri
Dimachaeri (singular dimachaerus, from Greek “two-knife man”) fought with a short sword or dagger in each hand. Armor ranged from almost none to scale, mail, helmet, and arm guards. The style favored speed, ambidexterity, and close work rather than a heavy shield wall. The type is poorly attested in art but appears in texts and inscriptions, especially in the 2nd–4th centuries AD, when novelty pairings became fashionable.

Equites
Equites (“horsemen”) usually opened the day’s gladiatorial program and fought other mounted men. They entered on horseback with a spear and a medium round cavalry shield (parma equestris), then often dismounted and finished with a gladius. Typical kit included a brimmed helmet with side feathers (no high crest), scale armor or a sleeveless belted tunic, and a manica on the sword arm. They were among the more “respectable” looking types and were generally matched only against other equites.

Essedarii
Essedarii fought from Celtic-style two-horse war chariots (esseda). The type is widely thought to have entered Roman games after Julius Caesar’s campaigns in Gaul and Britain in the 1st century BC. Inscriptions mention them often, including at Pompeii, but no secure picture of their exact kit survives. They may have thrown javelins from the chariot and then closed on foot. They usually fought other essedarii.

Hoplomachi
Hoplomachi were “hoplite-style” fighters: tall crested helmet (often with a griffin head), small round shield, long thrusting spear, and a short sword in reserve. Greaves and a manica completed the look. They were a heavy, spear-first counterpart to Greek infantry and were regularly paired with Thracians and murmillones so that reach and shield size would contrast.

Thracians (Thraeces)
Thracians took their name and kit from the peoples of what is now southern Bulgaria. They wore a broad-brimmed visored helmet, often with a griffin crest, a small square or slightly curved parmula (about 60 × 65 cm), high greaves on both legs, and the distinctive curved sica. The sica was used to hook around a large shield and strike the exposed back or flank. Classic opponents were hoplomachi and murmillones. Training emphasized circling, feints, and attacking the opponent’s unguarded side.

Murmillones
Murmillones (or myrmillones) carried a short gladius and a large rectangular Gallic scutum. Their helmet bore a stylized fish on the crest (mormylos), a visual joke when they faced the net-and-trident retiarius. Other kit included a manica on the sword arm, a short greave on the left leg, and padded wrappings on the feet. They were a heavy, shield-dominant type, regularly matched against hoplomachi, Thracians, and retiarii. In the Empire they largely replaced the older “Gallus” class.

Praegenarii
Praegenarii were the warm-up act: mock fighters who opened the show or filled intermissions. They wore gladiator-style protection but used wooden weapons (rudes) and staged bloodless, comic bouts, often to music (pipes, cymbals, water organ). They are close to the paegniarii, the arena “clowns” who kept the crowd occupied between real combats.

Provocatores
Provocatores (“challengers”) wore a crestless helmet, a small breastplate (cardiophylax), a greave on the left leg, arm wrapping or manica, and usually a rectangular shield. They fought with a gladius and were commonly paired against other provocatores. The type appears in the late Republic and stays common through the Imperial period. Equipment could vary with the occasion, but the breastplate and crestless helmet remain distinctive.

Retiarii
Retiarii were the most recognizable light fighters: almost naked except for a loincloth, belt, and a metal shoulder guard (galerus) on the left arm, plus a manica. Weapons were a weighted throwing net (rete), a trident (fuscina or tridens), and a dagger. They had no helmet and no large shield. The classic pairing was retiarius versus murmillo or, later, secutor: mobility and reach against heavy armor. A missed cast of the net left the retiarius extremely exposed.

Samnites
Samnites recalled Rome’s old enemies from the central Apennines. They wore a heavy helmet, short sword, and large rectangular shield, with a greave on the left leg. They were among the earliest named gladiator types in the Republic. Under the Empire the name largely drops out; similar heavy equipment is absorbed into the hoplomachus and related classes.

Secutores
Secutores (“pursuers”) were purpose-built to hunt the retiarius. They carried a gladius and a large shield, like a murmillo, but their helmet was smooth, almost egg-shaped, with only two small eyeholes and no projecting crest that a net could catch. Hearing and vision were poor; the design traded awareness for protection against trident and net. They almost always faced retiarii.

Laquearii (Laquerarii)
Laquearii were lightly equipped fighters who used a lasso or noose (laqueus) instead of a net, plus a dagger, short sword, or spear. Armor, when shown or reconstructed, resembles that of the retiarius: galerus and manica, little else. Tactics were similar: snare a limb or the body from a distance, then close for the kill. The type is late and rare; some scholars treat it as a genuine armatura, others as comic paegniarius work. Isidore of Seville is the main literary source.