Rome’s Remains

The Greco-Roman City of Catania, Sicily had an amphitheater as well as a theater and odeon, among other ancient remains still visible today. The theater one can visit, wedged tightly into the dense buildings that surround it. At some point in the Roman period there was a conversion in the theater as apparently they couldn’t make enough money just putting on plays. In an attempt to cash in on other types of entertainment, they constructed a low wall around the orchestra and diverted water from an aqueduct so it could be filled with water for tetimimi shows, which were aquatic spectacles where nude or semi-nude swimmers put on shows. The famous Roman ‘Bikini Girls’ depicted in the mosaics of Sicily’s Piazza Armerina villa might be drawn from tetimimi entertainments of the period.