The Coliseum is awesome. It’s iconic, and you already know what it looks like, but to come up out of the Metro station and stand there, right in front of it, traffic racing by, knowing that 1900 years ago, it was there…is a tiny exercise in time-travel.

But amid all I learned and saw at the Coliseum that day (more on that in a minute), the sight that stopped me in my tracks was not huge and imposing, but rather simple: the roman numerals etched above some of the arches on the ground level, marking the gate numbers. It transformed the place from an icon to a spot where I could almost see real people, centuries ago, checking their clay tickets, making their way to their seats, just as the modern spectators in today’s Coliseums do.

To see what, though?

The Coliseum evokes mixed feelings in the heart of a Christian, but really, it should in the heart of any human being, period. The engineering is stunning, but the purpose is problematic. A place to entertain the masses with the spoils of war, which then builds support for more conquests and more spoils, in an endless cycle of blood – literally.  The word "arena" is derived from the latin "harena" which means "sand" – the sand that was spread on the stadium floor to soak up blood and then cover it up for the next round.

Now, even this article from the old Catholic Encylopedia, published nearly a hundred years ago, casts doubt on the view that the Coliseum was ever a site of substantial Christian martyrdom. The argument is that there is no lack of evidence about various Roman sites revered through the centuries as places of martyrdom or, more frequently, the burial of Christian martyrs. No such early tradition associated with the Coliseum exists, and there wasn’t any connection made until the 17th century.

But even so, the recent tradition of the papal Good Friday Stations of the Cross at the Coliseum remains evocative and, in spirit, authentic, I think. In the Coliseum, blood was shed for the Empire, not out of self-defense or freely, but by slaves and prisoners, hostages to the state, their lives forcibly sacrificed for the continued power of that state. It is a complex world we live in, but gawking at the marvels of Roman engineering and pondering their genius, the crumbling stone stood as testimony, not just of the normal ravages of time, but of the moral bankruptcy of its lifeblood and the countersign of the Gospel, attested to by crosses etched here and there in the structure.

But it remains a fascinating place, even as it is haunted.

When you go to the Coliseum, you are immediately accosted by tour guides. They will pick you out according to what language you seem to speak, and offer a tour – in our case, for 6E above the normal ticket price, which enables you to avoid the ticket line, if not the security. Why not?

Now, it was not the most detailed tour in the world – it was very basic, but our guide was a character. She was Italian, about my age, and very, very theatrical. I couldn’t figure out how she had learned English, for the accent was unplaceable. Her voice was storng and could plummet to great depths, which it did for dramatic effect, her vowels rounded and strongly framed, as she talked about the wild animals and the gladiators and how the Romans knew how to make bricks. She was a hoot, and actually worth the 6E, just for entertainment value.

And so we wandered – it was a chilly day, and the higher you went in the structure, the more strongly and coldly the wind whipped. We held the baby close, trying to protect him, watching the little boy leap about and talk about the fighters and the swords and the tigers. After the tour was over, I talked to Katie about it all, trying to balance it all out – the marvel of the surviving structure, the energy and genius that produced it and so much of what we’d seen and would see of Ancient Rome, but the ultimate reality that intellect and power are never enough, and are in fact nothing, when the boundaries, such as they were, collapse completely, and people are gathered in mobs to cheer on the shedding of blood as sport, and sent on their way until the next games, waiting for more slaves and more animals to be brought to Rome to die in the din of their cheers.

The images and echoes followed me throughout the remnants of ancient Rome, as I watched my children climb on columns collapsed on the ground, pondered the traffic racing by ruins, unnoticing, fixed on other things, and considered the only thing still really alive from all those centuries ago: the prayers at the martyrs’ tombs, the hands reaching out to brush the martyrs’ graves, the faith that was sprung from the seeds of blood shed, if not in the Coliseum, in other sands, in other arenas, under the anxious gaze of powers that couldn’t believe there was anything stronger than their rocks and the brilliance that shaped and stacked them into structures they wanted to believe, as we all do of our own efforts, would stand forever.