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Updated: June 9, 2025
The Romans shaded the spectators in their theatres and amphitheatres by means of a velarium or awning, but it is extremely doubtful whether even this expedient was in use in Greek theatres. The Openings. The most important characteristic of the openings in Greek buildings is that they were flat-topped, covered by a lintel of stone or marble, and never arched.
It would have been as interesting, perhaps, to have watched him beneath the shade of the velarium pleading the cause of Masintha against the Numidian king. Before him was a crowd that covered not the Forum alone, but the steps of the adjacent temples, the roofs of the basilicas, the arches of Janus, one that extended remotely to the black walls of the Curia Hostilia beyond.
Then he perceived that it came in through the black velarium with which they had closed the open roof of the room through which he was passing. In the anteroom a young freedman had hurried silently past him had vanished like a shadow through the dusky rooms.
A light as of sudden sunshine broke on Caesar's face, and he was perfectly cheerful again, though a fearful clap of thunder rattled through the building, and one of those deluges of rain which are known only in the south came pouring down into the open theatre, extinguishing the fires and lights, and tearing the velarium from its fastenings till it hung flapping in the wind and lashing the upper tiers of places, so as to drive the spectators to a hasty retreat.
His deep, ringing tones sounded above the voices of the insurgents in the upper rows, and there was silence. Not a sound was to be heard but the long-drawn howling of the wind, and now and then the flap of a strip of cloth torn from the velarium by the gale.
Where was the great crocus-coloured robe, on which the gods fought against the giants, that had been worked by brown girls for the pleasure of Athena? Where the huge velarium that Nero had stretched across the Colosseum at Rome, that Titan sail of purple on which was represented the starry sky, and Apollo driving a chariot drawn by white, gilt-reined steeds?
The vault, some thirty feet high, formed a sort of azure velarium bordered with long yellow palm-leaves. On the walls the symbolical globe spread its mighty wings and the royal cartouches showed around.
That face became bright with a smile; a ray of light, as it were, encircled that forehead; his eyes were uplifted before death, and after a while two great tears which had risen between the lids flowed slowly down his face. And he died. At that same moment a resonant manly voice high up under the velarium exclaimed, "Peace to the martyrs!" Deep silence reigned in the amphitheatre.
Then, turning swiftly to one of the officers who accompanied him, he ordered him to provide what was necessary. When, soon after, in the impluvium, the tempest tore the velarium that covered the open space from its rings, and the ladies endeavoured to detain Hermon, Philippus silenced them with the remark: "A disagreeable ride is before him, but what urges him on is pleasing to the gods.
Where the huge velarium that Nero had stretched across the Colosseum at Rome, on which were represented the starry sky, and Apollo driving a chariot drawn by white gilt-reined steeds?
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