The Colosseum, more than any other building from ancient Rome, is routinely the subject of both scholarly and popular texts. While it seems that important studies are published on this structure every year, rarely does any attain the status of definitive text. Katherine Welch’s The Roman Amphitheatre: From Its Origins to the Colosseum is such a book. Welch’s splendid volume is a culmination of her amphitheatre studies and provides a much-needed examination of the building...