The Colosseum opened a year after Pompeii was buried, under the same emperor.
Titus came to the throne in the summer of 79, Vesuvius erupted that same year, and in 80 he inaugurated the amphitheatre.
The events
- The Colosseum opens80 · Rome. The Flavian Amphitheatre opened under Titus on the drained lake of Nero's Golden House. Romans called it simply 'the amphitheatre'; the name Colosseum came later, most likely from the colossal bronze statue of Nero that stood beside it.
- Eruption of Vesuvius79 · Pompeii. Vesuvius buried Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae under ash and pyroclastic flows; the scholar Pliny the Elder died in the disaster. The entombed towns preserved a frozen snapshot of everyday Roman life for archaeologists.
More amazing facts
- 79 · 200 A little over a century after Vesuvius buried Pompeii, across the ocean in Teotihuacan the Pyramid of the Sun rose — one of the largest pyramids in the world.
- 79 · 1752 The only library from antiquity to survive whole was saved by Vesuvius.
- 79 · 1592 · 1748 Pompeii was first struck in 1592, and tunnelled straight through.
- 79 · 600 The Americas have their own Pompeii, five centuries younger than Italy's. Vesuvius buried Pompeii in AD 79; volcanic ash buried the Maya village of Joya de Cerén in El Salvador around AD 600.
- 80 A vomitorium was not a room where Romans threw up at feasts.
- 80 Gladiators were nicknamed hordearii, 'barley-eaters'. They lived on a nearly vegetarian diet of barley, beans and dried fruit thought to build strength, while legionaries got barley instead of wheat only as a punishment.