for other uses: therefore I believe, in the main, it is as perfect as most abroad, if not so alluring to the eye; whence we may suppose it has so long escaped common observation, though close by a great town and road. An amphitheatre is properly a double theatre, or two theatres joined together. A theatre is a semicircle wherein are the seats of the spectators; the _apparatus_ of the actors, or scenes, filling up the diameter before it. But if we would be more exact, we shall observe, it is half as long again as the _radius_; for they cut off the fourth part of a circle, then the rest became the form of their theatres. Now two such as these joined together, throwing away the scenic part, constituted an amphitheatre; taking its name from circular vision, and because the seats were continued quite round, the faces of the people being all directed to the centre of its excentricity: so its use required, different from that of the theatre, where the company look all one way toward the stage. But then, as Lipsius takes notice in discoursing upon this topic, the lines, at the ends where they are conjoined, must be drawn outward a little, approaching more to strait lines, than it becomes a true oval, well expressed by Cassiodorus; “for, (says he) the _area_ includes the figure of an egg, which affords due space for combatants, and more advantage to spectators to see every thing by its long curvity or relaxed circle.” These were not put in practice at Rome till the end of the commonwealth, and appropriated to the hunting and fighting of wild-beasts, to gladiators and the like; and at last to sea engagements, represented in gallies floating upon the water, which they introduced for that purpose. First of all, they made them _pro tempore_ of timber, being two theatres, each fixed upon a wonderful _axis_, and so contrived, that when they pleased they could turn both together, with all the people on their seats, and make an amphitheatre; of which Pliny, xxxv. 15. speaks with a note of astonishment, as it really was. This was done by C. Curio, one of Cæsar’s party. It is worth while to read the great naturalist’s descant upon it. This I suppose gave occasion to the building of regular amphitheatres, of which Cæsar made the first in the _Campus Martius_, but of wood, when he was dictator. The first of stone was erected in Augustus his time, by Statilius Taurus, in the place of the former, which was the only one till Vespasian, whose work was the monstrous _Colissæum_, but finished by his son Titus. This has afforded materials for many public buildings in Rome, and still boasts its immense ruins, as one of the greatest prodigies of the imperial city.