Spain's transport minister resigns after deadly train crash
Spain's Transport Minister Óscar Puente resigned on Tuesday, six days after a high-speed train collision near Urda, south of Madrid, killed at least 69 people. “A transport minister in a country like Spain cannot remain in office after two accidents of this seriousness in less than a year,” he told Congress, referring also to January's crash on the same line. He also withdrew from the lists for the November 29 general election. Read at BBC News →
The collapse of the amphitheatre at Fidenae
What happened then
In AD 27 a wooden amphitheatre packed with spectators for a gladiator show collapsed at Fidenae, a town just north of Rome. Tacitus put the toll at fifty thousand maimed or killed; Suetonius said more than twenty thousand died. Either way, it was one of the worst structural disasters of the ancient world.
What caused it
According to Tacitus, the builder, a freedman named Atilius, put it up for “sordid gain,” without laying a solid foundation or using strong enough timbers.
How it was resolved
Rome responded quickly. Atilius was banished, and the Senate decreed that no one with a fortune under 400,000 sesterces could stage a gladiator show and that no amphitheatre could be built except on ground of proven solidity. Leading families opened their homes to the injured and brought in physicians, and Tiberius left his retreat on Capri to show himself to the people.
How it turned out
The disaster became an early example of public safety rules written in response to tragedy, and of holding someone answerable for a failure the public paid for in lives.
What the philosophers say
Writing to Lucilius after fire destroyed the city of Lyons, Seneca said that “nothing ought to be unexpected by us” and that “we should consider, not what is wont to happen, but what can happen.” For the Stoic, preparing for the worst is not gloom but duty, and it is the habit that keeps builders, engineers and officials from trusting that what hasn't failed yet never will. Seneca also offered hope after disaster: that a community can rebuild “better in size and security than what they have lost.”
Sources: Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius 91 (tr. Gummere, Wikisource) · Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Seneca
Sources: Tacitus, Annals 4.62 (tr. Church and Brodribb, Perseus) · Tacitus, Annals 4.63 (tr. Church and Brodribb, Perseus) · Suetonius, Life of Tiberius 40 (LacusCurtius)
Further reading: The Colosseum by Keith Hopkins and Mary Beard