The Colosseum is the most recognizable monument of ancient Rome, and for most of Christian history it has been venerated as the site of countless martyrdoms. Christians were indeed thrown to wild beasts in the amphitheaters of the Roman Empire. Whether any of them died in the Colosseum itself is a different question, and the honest answer is that we do not know.
This page examines what the Colosseum actually was, what happened inside it, and how it came to be associated with the martyrs. It ends with the story of Telemachus, the monk whose death in the arena is traditionally credited with ending the games for good.
The Building
The Colosseum — the Flavian Amphitheater — was begun by the emperor Vespasian around 70 AD, using the spoils from the Jewish War, and completed by his son Titus in 80 AD. It was dedicated with a hundred days of games.
It was the largest amphitheater ever built: an ellipse about 620 by 513 feet, standing 157 feet high, with seating for roughly 50,000 spectators. The arena floor was about 280 by 165 feet. Underneath the arena floor was a complex of tunnels, cells, and elevators that housed animals, gladiators, and equipment.
The games included gladiatorial combat, wild-beast hunts, executions of criminals, and (occasionally) mock naval battles by flooding the arena in the earliest years. The spectacles were free, paid for by the emperor as a form of public entertainment and political patronage.
Did Christians Die in the Colosseum?
The honest answer is that we do not know of a single documented case. This is not the answer that most Christians expect, and it is not the answer the tourist industry has encouraged. But it is the answer the evidence supports.
The British ancient historians Keith Hopkins and Mary Beard, in their book The Colosseum (2005), state the position bluntly: “we know of not one single Christian martyr who met his finish here.” The Norwegian scholar and others who have studied the question have reached the same conclusion. There is no ancient martyr act that is set in the Colosseum, and no late antique Christian graffiti marking the monument as a site of martyrdom.
This does not mean no Christian was ever executed there. It means we cannot name one.
What we can say is this. Christians were executed in amphitheaters across the empire, including in Rome. The Colosseum was the largest amphitheater in Rome. It is entirely plausible that Christians were among those executed there, especially during the great persecutions of the mid-third and early fourth centuries. But the sources do not name them, and the specific traditions that identify individual martyrdoms with the Colosseum are late and unreliable.
What the Evidence Supports
How the Myth Grew
The association of the Colosseum with Christian martyrdom is not ancient. It developed in the medieval and early modern periods, and it was amplified in the nineteenth century by romantic writers, tour guides, and popular histories. The image of Christians thrown to lions in the Colosseum became a symbol of the persecution of the early church, and it has been used ever since as a shorthand for the suffering of Christians under Rome.
The symbol is not false. Christians were persecuted. Christians did die for their faith. But the specific location of the Colosseum as the primary site of that persecution is a later tradition, not an ancient one. Naming this honestly does not diminish the martyrs. It clarifies what we actually know.
The End of the Games
The gladiatorial games were not abolished in a single moment. The Christian emperors Constantine and Constans issued edicts against them in the fourth century, but they continued in Rome and elsewhere. The games at the Colosseum continued into the fifth century, though the empire was by then officially Christian.
The traditional end came in 404 AD, under the emperor Honorius, and it is tied to the death of a monk named Telemachus.
Telemachus
The primary source for Telemachus is Theodoret of Cyrrhus, a fifth-century church historian. His account is short, and the details are debated. But the core of the story is preserved in multiple ancient sources, and it has been accepted by the church since late antiquity.
Theodoret on Telemachus
“Honorius, who inherited the empire of Europe, put a stop to the gladiatorial combats which had long been held at Rome. The occasion of his doing so arose from the following circumstance. A certain man named Telemachus, who had embraced the ascetic life, came from the East to the city of Rome, and, on a day when the games were being held, went down into the arena and tried to separate the combatants. And when the crowd, in their fury, rushed upon him and stoned him to death, the emperor Honorius, on hearing of it, admired the man’s courage and issued a decree forbidding the gladiatorial combats.”
Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History 5.26
The date of Telemachus’s death is disputed. The traditional date is 404 AD, but some scholars place it earlier, around 391 AD, in the reign of Theodosius or Valentinian. The year does not affect the substance of the story. What matters is that a monk, from the East, came to Rome to protest the games, and that he was killed for it.
The Colosseum is full. Fifty thousand spectators are watching two gladiators fight in the arena. A monk steps out onto the sand. He is not a gladiator. He is not a prisoner. He has come, from the East, to stop the slaughter.
He runs between the combatants. The crowd is confused for a moment, then furious. They shout at him. They throw things. And then they are on him, and he is stoned to death in the sand of the arena.
The emperor is in the stands. He watches. And when the crowd has finished, he leaves, and issues a decree. The games are over.
Why the Colosseum Matters
The Colosseum is a reminder that the early Christian martyrs did not die in the catacombs. They died in the arenas, in front of crowds, as public spectacles. The arenas were not hidden places; they were the most visible spaces in the Roman world. To die there was to die in front of everyone, and the point of the spectacles was to make the executions visible.
The Colosseum is also a reminder that the story of the martyrs is not a story of the church triumphant. It is a story of ordinary people — including a twenty-two-year-old mother and an obscure monk from the East — who refused to deny what they had seen. Their deaths were not the end of the movement. They were the seed.
See the Martyrs page for the primary sources on the earliest martyrdoms, and the Persecution page for the legal framework.
