From abc.net.au: Roman ‘gladiatorial combat’ site unearthed in Spain.
Archaeologists in the southern Spanish city of Cordoba have uncovered the third-largest known Roman amphitheatre measured by ground surface, after Rome's Colosseum and Carthage in Tunisia, municipal authorities said.
The elliptical site is 178 metres at its widest point, just ten metres less than the Colosseum which was built 40 years later.
"With an estimated capacity of 30,000 to 50,000, it was built for gladiatorial combat during the reigns of emperors Claudius and Nero in the first century, some 50 years after Christ," Desiderio Vaquerizo Gil, professor of archaeology at the University of Cordoba said.
Mr Vaquerizo said the site was ransacked at some point between the fourth and seventh centuries before Arab forces conquered the southern region of Andalusia early in the eighth Century.
The ruins first came to light last November during construction of a car park at Cordoba's University of Veterinary Science but only now has it become clear that the site is a major find.
Various epigraphs have also been discovered, including the largest collection of gladiator epitaphs known outside Rome, as well as references to a gladiator school, the only one known to have existed in the Roman province of Hispania, according to Mr Vaquerizo. [continue]
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