When the Colosseum opened its doors in A.D. 80, tens of thousands of Romans had the opportunity to stand alongside each other and watch a cavalcade of gruesome events. Before then, Roman leaders had avoided building permanent entertainment buildings.

Combat events took place at funerals, the Circus Maximus, or bleachers would be put up around the Forum. Romans didn’t want to “become lazy and addicted to shows like the Greeks,” explains Gregory Woolf, the Ronald J. Mellor Chair of Ancient History at University of California, Los Angeles. Romans saw themselves as agrarian, hard-working and militaristic, and thought the Greeks wasted their time in theaters.