The oblong court between the bath rooms and the street on the northeast side was apparently to be laid out as a garden. At the north end the workmen had begun to build pillars for a short colonnade. A large square foundation for a sundial stands near the opposite corner. CHAPTER XXX _THE AMPHITHEATRE_ In the southeast corner of the city, at a distance from the other excavations, lies the Amphitheatre, the scene of gladiatorial combats. The Pompeians called it 'the show,' _spectacula_, as in the inscription, preserved in two copies, that gives us the names of the builders: _C. Quinctius C. f. Valgus, M. Porcius M. f[ilius] duo vir[i] quinq[uennales] coloniai honoris caussa spectacula de sua peq[unia] fac[iunda] coer[arunt] et coloneis locum in perpetuom deder[unt]_. According to this, the Amphitheatre was built by the same men, Valgus and Porcius, who are already known to us as the builders of the Small Theatre (p. 153); and they presented it to the city in recognition of the honor conferred upon them by their reëlection as duumvirs. The Amphitheatre may thus have been finished half a decade later than the Theatre, but in any case it belongs to the earliest years of the Roman colony,--as might be inferred, in default of other evidence, from the archaic spelling of the inscription, and the character of the masonry, which is like that of the Small Theatre and the baths north of the Forum (p. 41). The colonists, however, did not receive from Rome their impulse to erect such a building. The passion for gladiatorial combats was developed in Campania earlier, and manifested itself more strongly, than in Latium. Strabo's statement that gladiators were brought forward at Campanian banquets, in larger or smaller numbers according to the rank of the guests, has reference to the period before the Second Punic War; but it was considered a noteworthy event in Rome when, in 264 B.C., gladiators engaged in combat in the Forum Boarium in celebration of funeral rites, as also when, on a similar occasion in 216 B.C., twenty-two pairs fought in the Forum. Buildings were erected for gladiatorial shows in Campanian towns earlier than at the Capital. As late as the year 46 B.C. the spectators who witnessed the games given by Julius Caesar sat on wooden seats supported by temporary staging; and the first stone amphitheatre in Rome was built by Statilius Taurus in 29 B.C., almost half a century after the quinquennial duumvirate of Valgus and Porcius. The Amphitheatre at Pompeii is the oldest known to us from either literary or monumental sources.