In the year 70, the Roman Emperor Vespasian commissioned what would become the world's largest amphitheatre.

Approximately 10 years later, it opened a great fanfare and 100 days of games.

No greater amphitheatre has ever been built in the nearly 2,000 years since its construction.

Learn more about the Flavian Amphitheatre, aka the Coliseum, one of the Seven Wonders of the World,

on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Before I go into how and why the Flavian Amphitheatre was built, I should probably explain what an amphitheatre is.

In the Greek world, a theatre was a semi-circular venue with tiered seating, with all of the seats facing a central stage at the bottom.

The Romans, as they did with many things, stole the idea from the Greeks.

Theaters were where music, dancing, and dramatic performances took place.

There are many well-preserved

Roman and Greek theaters around the Mediterranean and many of them are still

actually used as theaters today. Amphitheatre comes from the Greek word

Amphi which means on both sides or to surround, and theater.

So if a theater is a semicircle, then an amphitheatre would be a complete circle.

An amphitheatre served a totally different purpose than a theatre.

For starters, it was mostly a Roman innovation, not a Greek one, despite the Greek name.

Empathyaters were used for games and gladiatorial contests.

They were the predecessors of modern day sports

arenas. So with that, the story of the Coliseum really begins during the reign of Emperor

Nero. Nero had nothing to do with the construction or planning of the Coliseum, but he did build the thing that came before it, the Domus Aria.

If you remember back to the episode I did on the Domus Aria, it was a fantastically large palace that Nero built for himself in the

middle of Rome. After the great fire of Rome, Nero used the opportunity to raise a huge swath of

land in the city to build his palace. Part of this palace was an enormous

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