RB Burned Alive

Red Bikes (Won a month in France), Day 14

In 5 B.C. or thereabouts, it was perfectly acceptable for theatrical special effects to cross over into what today we call the snuff genre. At least that’s what the voice recorder I held to my ear while touring the “best preserved Roman theater in existence” in the Provencal city of Orange claimed. Rooster, who until this point had been reluctantly trailing along beside me (he is not the world’s biggest fan of archeological marvels), perked up.

It struck me, as I wandered through the 10,000 person amphitheater marveling at the 118 foot outer wall still intact after 2000 years, that these ancient citizens-- Gauls who had been conquered by the Romans and Roman soldiers who moved to the area during their retirement—were a lot like modern day Americans, at least in terms of their entertainment habits.

The main entertainment of the time was theater. Performances would last all day and into the night. Peasants and nobility would stop in when they could to catch some of the show, sort of like how I turn on the television when I get home from work. The stage – occupied by mimes, masked theater troupes and jugglers – wasn’t always the real reason so many attended the performances. The entire amphitheater doubled as a social setting where gossip was exchanged and refreshment could be purchased from alcoves carved into the upper tiers of the wall. Walking under these archways and into the tiny rooms where the wine vendors sold their wares, it seemed the only difference between our modern day sports stadium refreshment areas and these circa 27 AD ones is that ours are made of concrete, not stone.

Here’s another similarity between modern culture and the culture Rome developed in Orange: like modern day television, theater got progressively racier as the years went on. At first, men in drag played all the female roles. Soon, however, women were allowed on stage to play themselves. Then, just as modern sitcoms went from Lucy and Ricky bidding each other good night from separate beds to the Sex and the City girls rolling into multiple beds, the theater in Orange got a little more risqué. Women began to appear on stage without clothes. From there, things went Cinemax. Live pornography was not infrequent and during at least one known production, an “actor” was burned alive on the stake. Rooster pressed pause on his audio recorder to tell me that people who make such a fuss over Grand Theft Auto ought to listen to some historical tourist lectures to find out what real violence is all about.