Velarium

A velarium ("curtain")[1] was a type of awning used in Roman times. It stretched over the whole of the cavea, the seating area in the Colosseum, to protect spectators from the elements. Precisely how the awning was supported is a matter of conjecture.

"Velaria" redirects here. For the genus of hydrozoans, see Velella.
Velarium is visible in the background in Jean-Léon Gérôme's painting Ave Caesar! Morituri te salutant

The velarium that covered the Colosseum in Rome provided both shade and slight protection from rain, although the main use of the velarium was to create a ventilation updraft, creating circulation and a cool breeze.

Notes
  1. Cf. velum, "veil, sail".

Contemporary references
  • Juvenal iv.121
  • Suetonius, Life of Caligula 26 (Text).
  • "Awning at the Colosseum". Roman Colosseum website. Linda K. Alchin. Retrieved 22 May 2015.


gollark: Important notices with it: it's not that accurate, please manually check after using it; it *might* be (probably isn't, hopefully) against the rules; it works in Firefox, untested elsewhere.
gollark: It's meant to automatically time your eggs' time-of-change-of-hours.
gollark: I finally updated that.
gollark: Also, you can view the code here: https://github.com/osmarks/dragoncave-egg-time-finder
gollark: I've made a v1.7 which drops the fudging behavior *but* still might be inaccurate. You may need to uninstall any previous versions, I'm not entirely sure.IMPORTANT NOTES: always manually check the time of death after using it - it should only take a minute or so to do that since it tells you roughly when it is (should be accurate to within 15 seconds at least); it may be against the rules (*hopefully* not? They're very vague); only tested in Firefox, might work in Chrome.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.