Anfiteatros romanos en la Bética: Reflexiones sobre su geometría, diseño y traza

Abstract

Baetica's Roman amphitheatres have not been examined in depth; we know a small sample of those which really existed. Of the five known, the Berja's one belongs to a small village; that of Carmona can be a military amphitheater, and the three biggest, Itálica, Écija and Córdoba, are large buildings with similar characteristics in the design and built in a short time span. They are based on a four-point oval with a Pythagorean triangle relation between the focal points. The long axis focal points are 120 Roman feet away while the focal points in the short axis are the arena width, 160 Roman feet. The number of bays in the façade is the result of multiplying the radius, the semiaxes average, by 40 and dividing all by the cavea width, 40R/C. This can be applied to most of the great imperial amphitheatres except the Colosseum and Capua whose arches are obtained from 50R/C. The façade height, from the arena level, was 44/7 by the intercolumniation width.