Amphitheater
The remains of the amphitheater are located under the old Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, nowadays Rector’s office of the University of Cordoba. It was built in the western suburb, just 200 meters away from the walled perimeter, and next to the Hispalis-Corduba way, fossilized in the current Medina Azahara avenue. The building had elliptical plan, with masonry foundations structured in large caissons for the support of the stands. Its construction can be dated in the Julio-Claudian period (mid 1st century AD), and could have been in use until the late third of the 3rd century or until the beginning of the 4th, when it is abandoned and sacked.
During the different excavations effected it has been documented a complete section of the stands base, from the podium or wall that delimited the arena to the façade, as well as an ambulacrum or perimeter corridor, and another transversal or vomitorium. Some other structures from the same complex, excavated in a solar nearby, have allowed an approximate calculation of 178 meters for its major axis.
The cordubensis coliseum would host the “blood games”: gladiator fights (munera), venationes (wild animal hunts) and public executions. In some amphitheaters it has been also confirmed the celebration of naumachiae or naval battles, which required flooding the arena.
The large number of gladiatorial funerary inscriptions recovered near this building -among which it can be distinguished one of a doctor retiariorum, that is to say, a coacher for retarii or gladiators who fought with net and trident-, has been linked to the possible existence of a ludus gladiatorius hispanus in Cordoba. This would have been only school of gladiators in Hispania, which would have supplied the whole Empire.
Bibliography
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GARRIGUET MATA, J.A. (2010): “El anfiteatro de Colonia Patricia Corduba en el marco de la ideología imperial” en D. VAQUERIZO y J.F. MURILLO (Eds.), El anfiteatro romano de córdoba y su entorno urbano. Análisis arqueológico (ss. I-XIII d.C.), MgAC, nº 19, vol. II, 466-480.
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MURILLO REDONDO, J. F. (2011): “El anfiteatro cordubense”, en Córdoba reflejo de Roma. Córdoba. pp. 236-239.
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VAQUERIZO GIL, D., RUIZ OSUNA, A. (2010): “In amphitheatro. Munera et funus”. Análisis arqueológico del anfiteatro romano de Córdoba y su entorno urbano (ss. I-XIII d.C.). Quarhis: Quaderns d’Arqueologia i Història de la Ciutat de Barcelona, Nº. 6, pp. 204-206.
VAQUERIZO, D., MURILLO, J. F. (eds.) (2010): El anfiteatro romano de Córdoba y su entorno urbano. Análisis Arqueológico (ss. I-XII d.C.). Córdoba.
