Crossword-Solution: COLISEUMS 9 letters, 4 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 13

You had to ward off consciousness of your own insignificance by conceiving yourselves amid stupendous surroundings, lurid natural effects, flaming prairies, pinnacles, torrents, coliseums, subterranean palaces, moonlit ruins, bandit dens, and as laboring under frightful curses, dire punishments, ancestral sins, etc., etc.

There were places of amusement, and even places of vice, all distinctly noted: the Chalcidicum or Hall of Justice, the Street of the Tombs, Senate-houses, schools, Forums, and Temples, amphitheatres and coliseums--principally, of course, mere ruins, but still showing great beauty of design and finish.

Wherever I have seen these coliseums and open-air theatres, I have always found them most admirably situated for grand and extensive views of the country beyond, and this, I think, must have greatly added to the impressiveness of the performance, and perhaps dignified the cruel and barbarous exhibitions that took place there, as the silent and solemn forest scenery raised the superstitious sacrifices of the ancient Druids to acts of veneration and worship.

And as for buildings and sculpture of stone and marble made by hand tools, we have yet to excel the pyramids, the Parthenon of Athens, which “Earth proudly wears as the best gem upon her zone,” the palaces, coliseums, and aqueducts of Rome, the grand and polished tombs of India, the exquisite halls of the Alhambra, and the Gothic cathedrals.

Perhaps it is a fatal legacy from the time when civilized society gathered in its marble coliseums and amphitheaters to witness the mortal combats of human soldiers or the death struggles of Christians waging a vain battle against famished wild beasts.