I guess for those of you who have seen the movie Quo Vadis? (1953) you will be familiar with the scene in which Nero contemplates how Christians are devoured by wild beasts in the Colosseum. Otherwise, a brief synopsis of the film:the Roman general Marco Vinicio returns victorious from the battlefront and, as a reward, the emperor Nero -played by an extraordinary Peter Ustinov- gives him the Christian slave Ligia, from whom he fall in love Meanwhile, Nero's excesses in power are increasing. In his delirium, he orders the burning of Rome and blames it on the Christian sect, whose fame is growing and the Romans feel more and more threatened by it. To avoid reprisals, Marco goes in search of Ligia and her family, but they are all captured and Nero condemns them to death in the Colosseum to be devoured by beasts. Petronius, Marco Vinicio's uncle and adviser to the emperor, warns Nero that he is making a mistake because with this decision he will turn the Christians into martyrs. However, the emperor is in the grip of delirium, and with his despicable acts he will seal his fate. And this is the sequence that I told you about at the beginning:
On the other hand, the Colosseum owes its name to the Colossus, a bronze statue of more than thirty meters erected by the emperor Nero that was located next to the amphitheater.
Having detailed the links between Nero and the Colosseum, one cinematographic and the other nominal, I will tell you that the same reasons that link them are the ones that can mislead you and make you think that the question is impossible to answer. Well, no, the answer is that Nero did not sacrifice any Christian in the Colosseum... because when he died, construction had not even begun .
The Last Prayer of the Christian Martyrs (Jean-Léon Gérôme)
After the great fire of Rome in 65 -by the way, Nero was not in Rome-, the emperor planned to build a palace worthy of his megalomania and his love for art. And so began the construction of the most extravagant building in the history of Rome:the Domus Aurea (the House of Gold). Fifty hectares of luxurious halls covered with frescoes, gold, ivory and precious stones, roofs with hatches through which slaves poured flowers and perfumes, a huge hall covered by a golden dome and which rotated continuously moved by the force of the water, gardens and arcaded patios, more than three hundred rooms in the private area alone and a large artificial lagoon, the Stagnum Neronis . In addition, a bronze statue representing Nero with the attributes of Helios, more than thirty meters high, was erected in the arcaded vestibule of the Domus Aurea . Nero died in 68 without seeing his magnum opus finished.
His successor Vespasian , the first emperor of the Flavian dynasty, ordered the construction of an amphitheater in 72 precisely on the previous location of the lagoon of the Domus Aurea . In the year 80, his son Tito inaugurated the amphitheater called Flavio . Over time, the amphitheater became popularly known as the Colosseum , due to the proximity of the Colossus, in Italian Colosseo , going into Spanish as Colosseum.