The spectacles began with animal hunts -- venationes -- that showcased creatures hauled from across the Roman Empire and beyond. Lions, elephants, bears, and rhinoceroses fought each other or were hunted by trained fighters in elaborately staged scenarios. The poet Martial, who witnessed the games and wrote a series of fawning epigrams about them, described a rhinoceros with a double horn -- confirming it was one of the African species, either a white or black rhinoceros -- tossing a bear into the air. On one particularly bloody day, 5,000 animals were killed, with some sources noting that female gladiators participated in the hunts. These were not random slaughters but carefully choreographed performances, with exotic animals serving as living proof of Rome's reach across the known world.

The gladiatorial combat was the centerpiece, and the most famous bout from the inaugural games pitted two fighters named Priscus and Verus against each other. Martial's account describes a contest so evenly matched and so fiercely fought that the crowd demanded both men be spared. Titus, ever the showman, yielded to the audience's will -- he declared the match a draw and granted both gladiators their freedom, presenting each with the wooden sword that symbolized release from the arena. Martial framed this as unprecedented generosity, though scholars note that ties and mutual survival were not actually uncommon. Training a gladiator was expensive, and owners did not dispatch them lightly. Evidence of both fighters exists beyond Martial's poetry: a first-century graveyard in Smyrna contains the grave of a gladiator named Priscus, and a marble slab from Ferentinum records a fighter named Verus, though neither can be conclusively linked to the men who fought that day.

The most extraordinary -- and most debated -- spectacle was the naumachia, a staged naval battle. According to the historian Cassius Dio, Titus somehow filled the arena with water and introduced horses and bulls trained to perform in the liquid, followed by a naval engagement involving 3,000 men, and then an infantry battle. How this was physically accomplished remains a subject of scholarly argument. The Colosseum's hypogeum -- the elaborate underground network of tunnels, lifts, and animal pens beneath the arena floor -- was not yet constructed during Titus's games, which may have made flooding the arena technically feasible at that stage. Alternatively, Dio may have been describing events at a separate venue. What is not in dispute is that mock naval battles were a well-established Roman tradition; Augustus had staged one decades earlier in a specially excavated basin near the Tiber.

Titus understood that the games were as much political theater as entertainment. From his box at the north end of the arena, the emperor threw wooden balls into the crowd -- each inscribed with the description of a prize. A lucky catch might entitle the holder to food, clothing, slaves, pack animals, horses, cattle, or vessels of gold and silver. The recipient would present the ball to an official, who would hand over the named gift. It was an act of calculated generosity, binding the population to the emperor through spectacle and largesse. Martial's account, though openly sycophantic, captures the intended effect: Titus as the benevolent provider, the emperor whose entertainment exceeded all precedent. The games were funded in part by spoils from the sack of Jerusalem in 70 AD -- a connection the regime did not hide but celebrated.

On the final day of the games, Titus wept publicly in the amphitheatre. The ancient sources disagree on what happened next. Cassius Dio reports that Titus died the following day, after officially dedicating the amphitheatre and the adjacent baths. Suetonius places his death somewhat later, at the first posting station on the road to the Sabine territories. What is clear is that the inaugural games were among the last acts of Titus's brief reign -- he had been emperor for barely two years. The Colosseum itself would stand for centuries, hosting spectacles for nearly 500 years after its opening. But those first hundred days set the template: the combination of animal hunts, gladiatorial combat, public executions, and imperial gift-giving that would define Roman entertainment for generations. The building Titus opened became the largest amphitheatre ever built, and its inaugural games remained the most elaborate in Roman memory.