Archaeology Magazine - March/April 1982 - 64

building which was used over the course of several
centuries, there may have been changes in the design of the awning mechanism.
There is no solid evidence for the imaginative
designs which Carpiceci has put forward in either of
his texts, and indeed his suggestions give rise to
some serious problems. To begin with, a trellised central ellipse is impractical because it would have
been too heavy regardless of whether it was made of
wood or metal. So would an oculus of linked metal
rods. Moreover, having the interior of the oculus
covered might make troubling air currents even more
dangerous than they would be if the air were allowed to circulate. Likewise, Carpiceci's cobweb of
ropes is also awkward. Sailors would be likely to
use a system of deployment that had already proved
successful, most notably the method used on Roman
ships- running ropes along one side of the cloth
through metal rings called "fairleads." These ropes
were then attached to the bottom end of the cloth
and came down over a top beam.
Such a system, called "brailing," would have
enabled sailors on top of the Colosseum portico to
pull back the strips without leaving the terrace. And
if from each mast two ropes were extended parallel
to each other, instead of just one, each piece of
cloth could be sent out individually, since each
would be operated by independent ropes. In this
case, however, the strips would have to be rectangular
and of uniform width, as Cozzo proposed, again
with the result that the cloth would have hung in
dips nearer the oculus. The Roman poet Propertius
has described an awning lying in sinuous curves
in just this manner. And in the Pompeian painting,
the tiny black dots along the ridges of the cloth
made by the rope supports underneath seem to be a
clear indication of metal rings, and the cloth almost
does seem to lie in a double ridge.
What does a man who works with awnings today
have to say about the Colosseum awning problem?
Mario Contoguris is a modern tent and awning
manufacturer in the Detroit area. As a craftsman
accustomed to dealing with the practical problems of
sewing, packing, storing, extending, and retrieving
large sections of cloth, Contoguris agrees with
Carpiceci about the width of the strips: they should

The Colosseumruins still
display the corbels between the pilasters of the
fourth story with matching holes in the stone
cornice.
64

Archaeology

be triple-width to facilitate covering a wide area with
a minimum of effort. On the other hand, he would
have constructed the oculus of rope; its elliptical
shape, he says, could have been easily maintained by
means of central guy lines, as in Fontana's drawing,
as well as by means of the radiating ropes. This
way there would be no need for a heavy central trellis
or oculus made of metal. Contoguris also believes
that the system he would use to send out and retract
the sails would consist of metal rings gliding on
ropes which would have extended over , and not
under, the awnings- the same system possibly suggested in the Pompeian painting. Such rings would
serve to hold the canvas to the ropes and provide
fairlead traction at the same time.
The idea of a rolled awning does not seem practical to Contoguris, who claims that an awning
pulled into accordion folds could then have been
stored on the roof of the portico, perhaps under a
tarpaulin, ready to be extended for the next games.
There remains the problem of how to let down the
sail. A ship's sails fall by gravity, but in the amphitheater there would only be a slight slope to the
center, not enough to cause the awning to fall by
its own weight. The line on the right side of the
Pompeian painting might provide a clue here: perhaps it was used to help extend the awning manually.
It is also possible that a pulley system existed at
the oculus not unlike today's laundry lines let out
over a courtyard from one apartment to another.
Finally, Contoguris agrees with the idea of deploying
two parallel ropes from each mast to allow each
panel to be managed independently. He estimates
the weight of the total apparatus, fully extended, to
be about 24 tons, given the weight of a square
yard of average- weight cloth at one pound, and ropes
of about one inch in diameter, the size suggested
by Cozzo.
Rainer Graefe, whose work Vela Erunt is the
latest in the long line of Colosseum studies, has suggested an ingenious solution to the problem that
has vexed so many scholars. It consists of long
wooden poles extending out from the bottom of the
vertical masts, tied by diagonal ropes from the
top of the masts to the tips of the poles. Strips of
cloth could then be extended or retracted by means

Archaeology Magazine - March/April 1982

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Archaeology Magazine - March/April 1982