The daily morning journal and courier., 1894-12-03
The Awning over the Colosseum in Anoisn
 Rome.


 Henry T. Blake in Scientific Ameriean.l
 In a late issue Of the Scientific Amer
 can your correspondent, writing fror
 Rome. alludes to the awnings or eanop
 which is said to have been stretche
 over the interior of the Colosseum b
 the ancient Romans. The existence O
 such a canopy is matter of general be
 modern authorities. The "Encyclope
 dia Britannica" Crit. Amphitheater) am
 the American Encyclopedia" (Tit. Col
 osseum) and Chambers Encyclopedia | Crit. Amphitheater) refer to it withou
 question. In your paper of Decembe
 27. 1890. you print an extract from tn, St. James Gazette. under the heading Ancient Engineering Feats." as fol
 lows:
 'Is Mir. Effel prepared to put an avn ing over Trafalgar square when the sun shines and remove IL promptly, without the aid of a central support or steam engines, or even chains? The area of the Colosseum Is certainly not less This may seem trihng matter to the thoughtless. because they have never considered 1t. Roman engineers GOV cred that vast expanse with some wool en material. and they worked the pom derous sheet so easily and smoothly that it was drawn and withdrawn as the sky changed. The bulk of 1t must have weighed hundreds of tons, all de- pending by ropes from the circumfer- ence. But the ancients thought so little of this feat that they have left us only one trivial detail of the method"
 The writer of the above does not men, tion the author by whom this trivial detail of the method" is referred to-, and l have been unable to discover the passage. The only allusions of the awnings Velaria or vela) in the ann phitheater which I have been able to find with the aid of a distinguished scholar in Roman literature are the fol- lowing: Two or three lines in Juvenal Qv., 122) speak of an admiring spectator of the games as follows: He applauds the cuts and thrusts of the gladiator, and the stage machinery by which boys are raised up to the awnings" (velara).
 Pliny CNat. Hist. xix, 29 tells how certain fabrics came to be first used in Rome for awnings vela) over thea ters." He also says they were placed at one time over the Sacra Via and the Forum of Augustus, but he gives no description of their arrangement and makes no special reference to the Col osseum. And finally, Lampridius ("Life of Commodus." xiii, ID makes the fol- peror: At one time when he was fighting in the theater the populace ap- plauded him as god, but he, suppos- ing they were mocking him, ordered them to be set upon and slain by the sailors who managed the awnings (vela) in the amphitheater."
 It is from such meager allusions ap- parently that the theory has been de- vised that an immense canopy, five and half acres in area, was stretched across the amphitheater and drawn and withdrawn as the sky changed" It seems to be supposed also that these changes were effected by manual power alone; but the American Encyclope- dia" suggests that machinery may have been employed, which was located in the upper part of the building
 A very little reflection will show that the stretching and maintaining of such a canopy, to say nothing of drawing and withdrawing it, as the sky changed would be physical and mechanical im- possibility. The strain of such an enormous fabric shaking in the wind would speedily have torn it loose from all supporting arrangements or have pulled the supports themselves out of place. Certainly the poles around the top of the wall, by which it is supposed to have been held, would have been to- tally inadequate. To draw the canopy to anything approaching a plane would have been impracticable by any ma chinery whatever, still more so by man. ual power. It would inevitably sag in the center, and every rainfall, however slight, would add immensely to it's weight, while in case of heavy shower. an insuprortable body of water would collect in the middle, and if there were an opening there, would descend in a cataract upon the performers in the arena. Imagine also the terrific noise of such canopy Tapping and pounding in the wind and the constant fear of the spectators that it would break away and fall on them.
 If withdrawn,it it must have been pulled across from one side, which would cause the other to descend upon the audience: and how and where would such an im- mense bulk find storage room? If. on the other hand, we suppose it to ve been divided into triangular sections, with their apices meeting in the center, we shall encounter not only most of the difficulties already referred to- but oth- CTS equally insuperable. In such case the sections, being separated, could not support each other, and nearly one- half the weight and strain of each