Over the summer, I visited the third-largest colosseum of ancient Rome, in Pozzuoli, Italy. I was alone that day, accompanied only by the oppressive heat. Standing at the center of the ruins where drama unfolded, I noticed the remains of small creatures—scattered feathers and bones. For a moment, I imagined them as relics of a long-forgotten battle.
The air spoke of memory. My mind pulled the Colosseum back to its height—stone by stone with echo, frenzy, and roar. I could see the crowd’s hunger and hear the clang of metal. But what interested me most was not what I could see or hear—it was what I imagined I could smell.
I imagined the sour tang of sweat, metallic blood, and the dust of the earth. From below the arena came the lions, pulled from the dark with the weight of their own scent—animal musk and fear intermingling with the men they would soon meet. The crowd itself—bodies baked and breathing under the blaze. Around them, the rank sweetness of spoiled meat and cheese, the wine turning potent in the sun.
The ancient world must have smelled stronger than ours—penetrating, decayed, and reeking. To survive such an assault on the senses, perfumers were enlisted. The Romans perfumed their theaters and their games. Water-infused saffron, rose, and balsam were released into the air, veiling the odor of carnage, sweat, and dying things. They perfumed the audience to soothe and cool—to make beauty out of horror.
What does it mean to hide such scents? To drown the truth of fear and gruesome death in fragrance? In masking the stench of violence, the Romans masked their own reality. Scent became a deceiver—a sweetened accomplice convincing the crowd that what they witnessed was entertainment, not suffering. The nose, that first gatekeeper of survival, tricked into pleasure.
The next morning, after my visit, I walked past a park, close to the ancient Colosseum. Men gathered there, holding court over cups of espresso, their voices stern and alive with debate. Beautiful sun-drenched rosemary framed their court. The air that once carried the stench of carnage and decay now carries smells of espresso and the faint sweetness of cologne. Yet beneath it all, the same notes linger—earth baked by centuries, the salt of skin, the green insistence of rosemary—unchanged, enduring.
I like to imagine that long ago, amid the noise and heat of the games, a child slipped away and tucked a small rosemary seed into their pocket. Perhaps they climbed the hill above the colosseum and dropped it into the earth. That seed took root and endured—through centuries of celebration and conquest until its scent reaches me today, becoming an echo of time’s past.
Now, the voices of men debating mirror the clamor of ancient battles; the aroma of espresso replaces the smell of feasts; and rosemary recalls the perfumes once used to sweeten the air. Together, these scents remind me that even in the face of spectacle and forgetting, some things persist—and like the Colosseum itself, they stand as echoes of what once was.
