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1 The Ring at Casterbridge was merely the local name of
one of the finest Roman amphitheatres, if not the very finest
remaining in Britain.
Casterbridge announced old Rome in every street, alley,
5 and precinct. It looked Roman, bespoke the art of Rome,
concealed dead men of Rome. It was impossible to dig more than
a foot or two deep about the town fields and gardens without
coming upon some tall soldier or other of the Empire, who had
laid there in his silent unobtrusive rest for a space of fifteen
10 hundred years. He was mostly found lying on his side, in an oval
scoop in the chalk, like a chicken in its shell; his knees drawn up
to his chest; sometimes with the remains of his spear against his
arm; a brooch of bronze on his breast or forehead; an urn at his
knees, a jar at his throat, a bottle at his mouth; and mystified
15 conjecture pouring down upon him from the eyes of Casterbridge
street boys, who had turned a moment to gaze at the familiar
spectacle as they passed by.
Imaginative inhabitants, who would have felt an
unpleasantness at the discovery of a comparatively modern
20 skeleton in their gardens, were quite unmoved by these hoary
shapes. They had lived so long ago, their time was so unlike the
present, their hopes and motives were so widely removed from
ours, that between them and the living there seemed to stretch a
gulf too wide for even a spirit to pass.
25 The Amphitheatre was a huge circular enclosure, with a
notch at opposite extremities of its diameter north and south. It
was to Casterbridge what the ruined Coliseum is to modern
Rome, and was nearly of the same magnitude. The dusk of
evening was the proper hour at which a true impression of this
30 suggestive place could he received. Standing in the middle of the
arena at that time there by degrees became apparent its real
vastness, which a cursory view from the summit at noon-day was
apt to obscure. Melancholy, impressive, lonely, yet accessible
from every part of the town, the historic circle was the frequent
35 spot for appointments of a furtive kind. Intrigues were arranged
there; tentative meetings were there experimented after divisions
and feuds. But one kind of appointment - in itself the most
common of any - seldom had place in the Amphitheatre: that of
happy lovers.
40 Why, seeing that it was pre-eminently an airy, accessible,
and sequestered spot for interviews, the cheerfullest form of
those occurrences never took kindly to the soil of the ruin, would
he a curious inquiry. Perhaps it was because its associations had
about them something sinister. Its history proved that. Apart
45 from the sanguinary nature of the games originally played
therein, such incidents attached to its past as these: that for scores
of years the town-gallows had stood at one corner; that in 1705 a
woman who had murdered her husband was half-strangled and
then burnt there in the presence of ten thousand spectators.
50 Tradition reports that at a certain stage of the burning her heart
burst and leapt out of her body, to the terror of them all, and that
not one of those ten thousand people ever cared particularly for
hot roast after that. In addition to these old tragedies, pugilistic
encounters almost to the death had come off down to recent dates
55 in that secluded arena, entirely invisible to the outside world save
by climbing to the top of the enclosure, which few townspeople
in the daily round of their lives ever took the trouble to do. So
that, though close to the turnpike-road, crimes might be
perpetrated there unseen at mid-day.
60 Some boys had latterly tried to impart gaiety to the ruin
by using the central arena as a cricket-ground. But the game
usually languished for the aforesaid .reason - the dismal privacy
which the earthen circle enforced, shutting out every appreciative
passer's vision, every commendatory remark from outsiders -
65 everything, except the sky; and to play at games in such
circumstances was like acting to an empty house. Possibly, too,
the boys were timid, for some old people said that at certain
moments in the summer time, in broad daylight, persons sitting
with a book or dozing in the arena had, on lifting their eyes,
70 beheld the slopes lined with a gazing legion of Hadrian's soldiery
as if watching the gladiatorial combat; and had heard the roar of
their excited voices; that the scene would remain but a moment,
like a lightning flash, and then disappear.
Henchard had chosen this spot as being the safest from
75 observation which he could think of for meeting his long-lost
wife, and at the same time as one easily to be found by a stranger
after nightfall. As Mayor of the town, with a reputation to keep
up, he could not invite her to come to his house till some definite
course had been decided on.
