Gladiator

Cirius: Hey Spartacus. Did you hear that your old girlfriend sneaked down to the Arena last night to see that new Retiarius from Thrace? She went in the wrong door and the new lion got her.

Spartacus: Are you serious? I can take it. I’m Gladiator.

Well, feeling in need of some Roman ruins we decided to rendezvous to Nimes, about 25 km from Uzes. Driving to, and parking in large French cities is not a lot of fun, so we all took the bus from Uzes to Rimes. Only 3 Euros return, centre ville to centre ville.
The Arena in Nimes is the best preserved of all 400 known Roman arenas, along with the Colluseum. It was built in the first century AD, and used for gladiatorial and other exhibitions for about 400 years. It is now used for bull fights.
The Romans of course were brilliant engineers. They moved and placed exactly huge quarried blocks of limestone to make supporting arches that held up tiered galleries and seats. In Britain, after the great land grab by Henry VIII and the Nobles that is commonly referred to as the Dissolution, the great abbeys were used as quarries for stone to build new manor houses and farm houses. But in the four hundred years that followed the erection of the great Roman structures, coinciding with the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, engineering skills were lost. It wasn’t that the Visigoths didn’t need the stone – they just didn’t know how to pull the buildings down and move the stone.
But the Arena wasn’t just abandoned. During the Renaissance it was actually a teeming city, with hundreds of houses jammed into the flat surface and into the galleries – the first high-rise accommodation if you like. It wasn’t till the French monarchy gained real power and with it the need to establish a national identity that buildings such as the Arena were cleared and restored.
The building is indeed remarkable. The galleries, entrances and seating are exactly the same as one sees at the MCG or any other modern stadium. And the shouting one hears in echoes is not for Spartacus, but for Collingwood or the Red Sox.
My favourite line from Red Dwarf comes when Rimmer starts musing on the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. How could mankind build such huge structures – was it Divine intervention, was it extra-terrestrials, was it some secret power? No, says Lister, They had whips. They had great big whips.
Chris