The colleseum


However, since the end of antiquity, the amphitheatre of Thysdrus lost this primary function. Indeed, the Byzantines found in it advantages enough to turn it into a fortress in which the remnant of their troops, defeated near Sbeïtla by the Moslem army of Abdallah Ibn Saad Ibn Abi Sarh, took refuge in 647. In her turn, the Kahena took shelter there and managed to oppose a hard resistance to her besieger Hassen Ibn Noomen. The legend attributes to the famous queen of the Aurès, the digging of an underground way leading to Sallacta's harbour situated at a 35- kilometre distance from the monument. The amphitheatre has gone down in the popular memory as the fortress of the Kahena ever since. In the beginning of the XIII th century, the prince Almoravide Ibn Ghania besieged the enemy there during his attempt to capture the country. According to some legend, his adversaries derided him by throwing wriggling fish on his soldiers persuading him of the vanity of his siege. In modern and contemporary times, the amphitheatre continued, on two occasions at least, to serve as a fortress welcoming local tribes in revolt against the tax policies of the beys of Tunis. In 1695, these tribes rose up against Mohamed Bey and retreated inside the edifice. The bey's army had muchtrouble in dislodging them and, fearing another entrenchment, it did not hesitate to open breaches with cannonballs. In 1850, was another rebellion against the authority of Ahmed Bey and the rebels found refuge inside the amphitheatre. To subdue the rebellion, the bey gave orders to his soldiers to enlarge the breaches opened by his predecessors. Since then, local people used the monument as a quarry for their various needs in stone. In 1881, when the French protectorate was established over Tunisia, the natives' reactions were more or less violent. Most of the local insurgents, especially those from the southern tribes, gathered in the amphitheatre and decided to resist the French occupation. They manufactured saltpetre powder in the monument and had some of it dispatched to the neighbouring localities' inhabitants. General Logerot was unable to put an end to their resistance until 1882.
It is worth noting, however, that in 1876, lieutenant-colonel Playfair mentioned the fact that the amphitheatre was abusively used as an all-purpose building, contrarily to all expectation. The external gallery of the ground floor served as a wheat-granary and fodder-loft; some arcades were turned into shops while the upper galleries were converted into dwellings as revealed by the holes in the masonry into which beams were inserted and which can still be seen almost everywhere. At the end of the century, one author summarized the sight as follows : "a café owner, cutlers, barbers, blacksmiths, edge-tool makers, Arabian physicians have settled down amid shops inside the arcades of the monument, against which cactus and gourbis lean". The amphitheatre served then as a refuge for all kinds of outcasts. Nevertheless, it continued to deeply impress the visitors. Sir Grenville Temple regarded it as one of the most beautiful, vastest and most perfect buildings left from ancient times. Many other authors did not hesitate to write that it impressed them more than the Colosseum of Rome which had been restored a little too much and was dwarfed by modern buildings.