Beware the Colosseum!

Arrive Armed!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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In October 2022, I visited Rome for the third time. In 2007 a friend’s wedding led to my travel to Rome, and in the week around the wedding, I did tour some of the most famous places including the Colosseum with a local licensed guide. On that tour, we heard legends and facts. In 2009, I traveled to Rome as one of the chaperones on a college Spring Break study trip. The lead professor, though an expert in history, art, religion, and six languages, arranged for a local Roman historian to take us through many sites, including the Colosseum. In both of these tours, we heard vivid descriptions of emperors, events, exotic, extravagant, and of excruciating executions.

       Tours in 2007 and 2009, plus historical studies over previous decades, revealed the death of Christian martyrs appeared in the facts of Colosseum executions. Ignatius had a death in the Colosseum because he chose to die in front of thousands rather than face execution in a less public way. According to research studies on the brutality of death in the Colosseum, Christians faced the same tortures and kinds of executions that anyone sent to the Colosseum for punishment could face. They fell to attacks by starving animals, were burned, hacked, and faced these deaths rather than sacrifice to a Roman god. By refusing to join one of the state’s religions, Christians faced a rising wave of distrust, anger, and hate.

        Van de Beek (2020) pointed to the words of Tertullian and added observations about the opposition between Roman culture and Christianity. "If the Tiber rises as high as the city walls, if the Nile does not send its waters up over the fields, if the heavens give no rain, if there is an earthquake, if there is famine or pestilence, straightaway the cry is, 'Away with the Christians to the lion!'" (Tertullianus, Apologist 40). It was not always so severe; the persecution came and went. However, the imperial Roman culture was as fundamentally opposed to Christianity as Christianity was to Roman culture.”

       Tacitus, a historian of Rome, reported that Nero had Christians killed in the Colosseum, though not just for their faith; Christians had beliefs unpopular with Rome. The emperor, Trajan had the Roman equivalent of a “don’t ask, don’t tell,” policy that inhibited denunciations of Christians but many followers of Christ were still brought to trial. Malik and Davenport, researchers, historians, and myth busters reported that Christians, like the apostle Paul, who were Roman citizens, had execution by beheading but those not citizens were crucified, burned to death, and killed by wild animals. The emperor Decius ordered all Romans to sacrifice to the gods and to show proof they had done these sacrifices; Christians who did not follow this edict were seen as unRoman and could face imprisonment, death, being sent to exile, or hard labor.

        Huffman (2016) described the entertainment value of the Colosseum and recounts the ways Christians, men, women, boys, and girls died in the arena. Though the masses enjoyed bloody events, one Christian man died while he tried to stop the deaths of innocents, Telemachus. Records also show the cases of Vibia Perpetua and Felicitas, women put to death in the Colosseum for not accepting the choice to give an offering to any of the Roman gods.

        Estimates show that more than 6 million people visit the Colosseum each year and there are dozens of tour options. My 3rd trip to Rome happened in October 2022. Because I traveled with a person who had never been to Rome, I visited and toured some places I had already seen and we had two different tours that presented the Colosseum. One was a personalized tour all around the city’s most famous sites via Golf Cart, and the other tour included 14 other people that went into and through the layers of the Colosseum following a guide and listening to his information. The two tour companies had no connection other than a shared business focus.

        Both of these tours had guides who repeatedly used the words ‘Fake News,’ before claiming no Christians had been killed in the Colosseum. Both guides said the idea that Christians had faced torture or execution for their faith was religious propaganda. In both tours, I was stunned and ill-equipped to pull out weapons of specific facts to combat the claim of Fake News and religious propaganda. I could only offer that history does present accounts of Christians killed in the Colosseum, but no names came instantly to mind. I was not ready, not well armed with knowledge.

        The guides smiled with pity for the tourist that did not believe it was all Fake News, and said, "It is really just religious propaganda, Fake News."

        At that moment, I could only splutter that based on my experience hearing so many claims about Fake News in the United States, now, when a person claimed over and over that something was Fake News, I was inclined to suspect the news might be true. Certainly, both religious and non-religious sources have presented information on executions of Christians in the Colosseum. No one knows how many Christians were tortured and killed in the Colosseum for refusing to align with Rome’s edicts, but historical evidence shows this did happen though number estimates vary.

       What has happened to the education and training of tour guides in Rome? Facts ignored and unexamined contribute to problems in a culture. Facts belong in education and presentations. After having two very different tours and guides, one in his twenties and one in his thirties, with both using the words, “Fake News” and “propaganda of the church,” I wondered who is writing the scripts for guides talking to tourists about the history of the Colosseum. If you plan to travel to Rome and to take a tour of the Colosseum, beware, listen carefully, and go armed with at least a few names and facts to give to the guides and others in the tour group when they start to proclaim the death of Christians in the Colosseum is Fake News and religious propaganda.

 

                                                         References

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Huffman, J. (2016). Telemachus: One Man Empties the Roman Coliseum. Discerning History.

       https://discerninghistory.com/2016/09/telemachus-one-man-empties-the-roman-coliseum/

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Malik, S., & Davenport, C. (21 November 2016). Mythbusting Ancient

       Rome-throwing Christians to the lions. The Conversation.       https://theconversation.com/mythbusting-ancient-rome-throwing-christians-to-the-lions-67365

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van de Beek, A. (2020). The importance of early Christian thought for 

       theology today. The church in the world. Stellenbosch Theological

      Journal, 6(1),525+. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A674518161/AONE?u=mlin_c_annamc&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=6c826514

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