The Jewish Colosseum: Revising the Memory of Rome’s Flavian Amphitheater

Originally known as the Flavian Amphitheater, the Roman Colosseum is oftentimes directly associated with the death of Christians; however, as Keith Hopkins and Mary Beard point to in The Colosseum, there is no authentic evidence from the first century to support the notion that Christians were ever martyred within it:

The fact is that there are no genuine records of any Christians being put to death in the Colosseum. It was only later…that Christian writers invested heavily in the Colosseum as a shrine of…