Gladiators!

Today our school arranged an excursion for us to the Roman ruins of Italica outside of the city, so are you ready for a history lesson? Here's some information you can put to use in Jeopardy and/or a crossword puzzle in the near future:

Italica is one of the oldest Roman cities in Spain, even though it wasn't the biggest. The Romans came in to the Iberian peninsula for its awesome location and its natural resources/gold and basically conquered it completely from the native Iberians, Celts, and Carthenogens that had immigrated in as well. They named it Hispania, which is where España, or Spain, derives.

At the ruins you can see an old house structure that used to be where a wealthy family lived. They ate in the atrium towards the center and front of the house, where they didn't have a roof so the sun could come in. Our wonderful tour guide demonstrated how Romans ate on the floor, always with wine, and usually took hours to dine and socialize.

Around the atrium is where the slaves lived, and the family lived further back within the house for safety.

You could also see the communal baths, which was the gathering spot for socializing with others in the village. Once a day, usually in the evenings, they would go to the baths to chat with the other people of the town. There were hot baths, heated by the sun, called caldariums (where the Spanish word "calor" comes from, meaning heat), and there were cold baths, hidden from the sun, called frigidariums (Where we get the word refrigerator).

The coolest part, though, of the entire place, is the ampitheatre, where Italica used to host gladiator shows where thousands of people from all over would gather to basically see brute violence and bloodshed. The slaves would be forced to fight animals, and middle/upper class people would fight the animals as well, but they would fight for valor or social recognition. The animals usually won, but when a citizen won, they would basically become a celebrity.

The pit in the middle would have been covered when the ampitheatre was used, and there would have been doors that opened down to it to toss the dead.

The sun started to come out while we were there and it turned into a really pretty day. Tomorrow is our trip to Cordoba, and despite the very early morning that will require, I'm really excited.