Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 77, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 June 1901 — Lighting Up the Coliseum. [ARTICLE]

Lighting Up the Coliseum.

The Romans have the hideous habit of periodically lighting the Coliseum during the tourist season with Bengal lights and, what Is more amazing still, usually succeed in making a financial success of it, although no one was ever known to go twice. There is the additional abomination In. these days of a big brass band and a chorus of 100 voices in an invocation to the Flavian amphitheater. The effect is tremendous, but somewhat stunning to those who are accustomed to their Coliseum empty and flooded with peaceful moonlight, where pictures from the past rise with the clearness of second sight, and no sound is heard but one’s own breathing or the song of the nightingale. Contrast with such a scene the red, blue and yellow Bengal lights, the smoke, the confusion, the hundred shrieking throats and the clang of the brazen instruments! Imagination shrinks and curses the Roman of today with whom such a thing is possible. But is it his fault? As I said before, it is a great financial success, and the Italians certainly do not patronize it. Query, Who does?— Rome Letter in Pall Mall Gazette.