amphitheatricaladj.

1599 J. Rainolds Overthrow Stage-playes 159 No dout the Fathers, as holy men of God, haue written many Zealous and most godly things against the amphitheatricall sights of their times.

1654 E. Gayton Pleasant Notes Don Quixot iv. xxi. 271 Amphitheatricall gladiatures.

1752 D. Hume Polit. Disc. x. 165 Who can read the accounts of the amphitheatrical entertainments without horror?

1881 L. W. Yaggy & T. L. Haines Museum Antiq. 137 Another sort of amphitheatrical amusements consisted in witnessing the death of persons under sentence of the law.

1907 W. R. Paterson Nemesis Nations v. 319 The amphitheatrical combats were continued even although the Theodosian Code admitted their cruelty.

2011 M. A. Malamud in tr. Origin of Sin 182 Observation of the pain of others was institutionalized and harnessed in amphitheatrical displays.

1729 D. Bellamy tr. F. de S. de la M. Fénélon 27 Moral Tales & Fables vi. 69/2 These thirty rural beauties were conducted into one of his majesties most spacious halls, and there rang'd in an amphi-theatrical form [Fr. dans une espece d'amphitheatre], that the king and his son might survey them all.

1845 C. Darwin Jrnl. (ed. 2) xix. 439 On seeing the correspondence of the horizontal strata on each side of these valleys and great amphitheatrical depressions.

1919 J. Reed Ten Days that shook World v. 117 In the high, amphitheatrical Nicolai Hall that afternoon I saw the Duma sitting in permanence.

2006 Wired Oct. 180/1 Through the verdant amphitheatrical sweep of the Columbia River Gorge.