similar structures in the city. [Illustration: FIGURE 157. EXTERIOR OF AMPHITHEATER AT POMPEII] [Illustration: FIGURE 158. INTERIOR OF AMPHITHEATER AT POMPEII] [Illustration: FIGURE 159. SECTION OF AMPHITHEATER AT POMPEII] §353. The Amphitheater at Pompeii.--The essential features of an amphitheater may be most easily understood from the ruins of the one at Pompeii, erected about 75 B.C., almost half a century before the first permanent structure of the sort at Rome (§352), and the earliest known to us from either literary or monumental sources. The exterior is shown in Fig. 157 (see also Overbeck, pp. 176-180; Mau-Kelsey, pp. 206-212) and a section in Fig. 159. It will be seen at once that the arena and most of the seats lie in a great hollow excavated for the purpose, thus making sufficient for the exterior a low wall of hardly more than ten to thirteen feet in height. Even this wall was necessary on only two sides, as the amphitheater was built in the southeast corner of the city and its south and east sides were bounded by the city walls. The shape is elliptical, the major axis being 444 feet, the minor 342. The arena occupies the middle space. It was encircled by thirty-five rows of seats arranged in three divisions, the lowest (_īnfima_ or _īma cavea_) having five rows, the second (_media cavea_) twelve, and the highest (_summa cavea_) eighteen. A broad terrace ran around the amphitheater at the height of the topmost row of seats. Access to this terrace was given from without by the double stairway on the west, shown in Fig. 157, and by single stairways next the city walls on the east and south (_10_ in Fig. 160). Between the terrace and the top seats was a gallery, or row of boxes, each about four feet square, probably for women. Beneath the boxes persons could pass from the terrace to the seats. The amphitheater had seating capacity for about 20,000 people. [Illustration: FIGURE 160. PLAN OF ARENA IN AMPHITHEATER AT POMPEII]