Dictionary of Greek and Roman antiquities. Ed. by William Smith. Illustrated by numerous engravings on wood.

AMPII ITH EA TRUM. AIPHITHEATRUM. 83
latter; indeed the amLphitheatre itself is sometimes one of the kind until the building of the Flaviain
called circus. The shape of the circus, however, was amphitheatre. It did not satisfy Caligula, who
much better fitted for the chariot races, for which it commenced an amphitheatre near the Septa; but
was at first designed, than for the gladiatorial com- the work was not continued by Claudius. (Dion
bats, and the more wholesale slaughter of animals, Cass. Iix. 10; Suet. Ca(l. 18, 21.) Nero too, in
which, in process of time, came to be the favourite his second consulship, A. D. 57, erected a vast amamusemnents of the Ronians. For these purposes, phitheatre of wood, but this was only a temporalry
the circus was too long and too narrow, and the building. (Suet. Nret. 12; Tac. Aln. xiii. 31.)
spina was a great impediment, so that a new form The amphitheatre of Taurus was destroyed in the
of building was required, which should accom- burning of Rome, A.D. 64 (Dion Cass. lxii. 18),
modate a multitude of spectators in such a manner and was probably never restored, as it is not again
as that all might have a good view of the space mentioned. It is still a question with the topooccupied by the combatants, which space too re- graphers whether any traces of it are now visible.
quired to be of quite a different shape from the (Comp. Becker, Htcedl). d. Ri;mz. Ater. vol. i. pp. 642,
circus, as the combatants were to be kept as much 643, and Urlichs, Beschreibeirg Rioms pp. 53, 54.1-)
as possible in the same place. The idea of such The erection of an amphitheatre in the midst of
a buildine was sum'aested, as the name (from a&lcf, Romne, proportioned to the magnitude of the city,