+PLACES OF AMUSEMENT.+ The earliest Roman theatres differed from the Greek in having a nearly semicircular plan, and in being built up from the level ground, not excavated in a hillside (Fig. 61). The first theatre was of wood, built by Mummius 145 B.C., and it was not until ninety years later that stone was first substituted for the more perishable material, in the theatre of Pompey. The +Theatre of Marcellus+ (23-13 B.C.) is in part still extant, and later theatres in Pompeii, Orange (France), and in the Asiatic provinces are in excellent preservation. The orchestra was not, as in the Greek theatre, reserved for the choral dance, but was given up to spectators of rank; the stage was adorned with a permanent architectural background of columns and arches, and sometimes roofed with wood, and an arcade or colonnade surrounded the upper tier of seats. The amphitheatre was a still more distinctively Roman edifice. It was elliptical in plan, surrounding an elliptical arena, and built up with continuous encircling tiers of seats. The earliest stone amphitheatre was erected by Statilius Taurus in the time of Augustus. It was practically identical in design with the later and much larger Flavian amphitheatre, commonly known as the +Colosseum+, begun by Vespasian and completed 82 A.D. (Fig. 62). This immense structure measured 607 × 506 feet in plan and was 180 feet high; it could accommodate eighty-seven thousand spectators. Engaged columns of the Tuscan, Ionic, and Corinthian orders decorated three stories of the exterior; the fourth was a nearly unbroken wall with slender Corinthian pilasters. Solidly constructed of travertine, concrete, and tufa, the Colosseum, with its imposing but monotonous exterior, almost sublime by its scale and seemingly endless repetition, but lacking in refinement or originality of detail and dedicated to bloody and cruel sports, was a characteristic product of the Roman character and civilization. At Verona, Pola, Capua, and many cities in the foreign provinces there are well-preserved remains of similar structures. Closely related to the amphitheatre were the circus and the stadium. The +Circus Maximus+ between the Palatine and Aventine hills was the oldest of those in Rome. That erected by Caligula and Nero on the site afterward partly occupied by St. Peter’s, was more splendid, and is said to have been capable of accommodating over three hundred thousand spectators after its enlargement in the fourth century. The long, narrow race-course was divided into two nearly equal parts by a low parapet, the _spina_, on which were the goals (_metæ_) and many small decorative structures and columns. One end of the circus, as of the stadium also, was semicircular; the other was segmental in the circus, square in the stadium; a colonnade or arcade ran along the top of the building, and the entrances and exits were adorned with monumental arches.