After the greater part of this chapter was written and in type, I thought it necessary to go to Capua and Pozzuoli again to examine the remains of these amphitheatres, and I did so in November, 1875; it was my intention at the same time to have gone to Pompeii, to examine the amphitheatre there also, but the weather was so bad at that time I found it quite impracticable to do so; I therefore did so in May, 1876, and I find that the amphitheatre at Pompeii is of the time of Sylla the Dictator, and that the arrangements are not the same as those of the Roman amphitheatre; there are no substructions under the arena, and it appears there never could have been any, as in the centre there is the top of an original well, and the floor seems always to have been of earth only; there are no preparations for _Naumachia_, and the dens for the wild beasts are on the same level as the arena, and behind the _podium_. In the principal entrances there are sockets for a wooden balustrade, to separate the people from the wild beasts. The corridor round at the back of these dens has the original walls of brickwork, of good hard bricks, but rather thick, somewhat similar to those of the Pantheon at Rome, but much thicker than those of the time of Nero; the brick vaults of this corridor, or passage under the lower gallery, are modern or mediæval repairs. Many of the seats have been preserved or restored, they are of stone of volcanic character, the stone of the country, in fact, but they are of a convenient height, and comfortable to sit upon, though closely packed; the seat is raised two or three inches above the place for the feet of those in the next seat above. The construction of the outer wall is of blocks of lava, about the shape of English bricks, but rather larger, and with _opus reticulatum_, the pattern of large size, enclosed in a sort of framework of these quasi-bricks, very similar to the Muro Torto at Rome. The fresco of the first century found on a wall here, and now preserved in the Museum at Naples[243], is a caricature of the building; and the _vomitoria_, which form a conspicuous object in the front of the picture, are greatly exaggerated, made much more lofty and more long and narrow than they really are. They are said to be the ladies’ entrance to their gallery, which was the upper gallery at the back; but as the slope was very gradual, and the building not nearly so high as the Colosseum, they would be able to see perfectly well, and their entrance and exit being entirely on the exterior of the building, while that of the men was from the interior, was a very convenient arrangement. It seems probable that Scaurus, the step-on of Sylla, had seen this building in progress, and as the Romans always had the idea of making Rome the most magnificent city in the world, he built the far more magnificent amphitheatre in Rome; but as the upper part was built of wood, though magnificently decorated with columns of marble,