I ask this because of an odd passage I've found in my reading of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. The passage in question is located in chapter XI and reads as follows: "Where, the huge velarium that Nero had stretchered across the Colosseum at Rome" (115). Yet, the Flavian Amphitheater was built after the reign of Nero. Wilde was apparently a brilliant classicist, so I find it a bit difficult to believe he made such a silly error (not to mention if this was a mistake, my Norton critical edition also failed to catch it).
Thus, I wonder if he's referring to something else? When did the Flavian Amphitheater become referred to as the Colosseum in English? Did the "Colosseum" refer to some other than the Flavian Amphitheater in Victorian English? Or, did "Nero" perhaps referring to someone else besides the last of the Julio-Claudians in Victorian speech?
I'm reading the Second Norton Critical Edition published in 2007 for reference.
The Flavian Amphitheater was not called anything but the Flavian Amphitheater in antiquity. Its modern name first appears in Bede during the early Middle Ages, and it derives from Nero's Colossus, which was moved to a location in front of the amphitheater by Hadrian, not from the size of the building itself. Wilde cannot, however, be referring to the Colossus Neronis, partly because it's never called the Colosseum but more importantly because he refers to a velarium, the awnings that amphitheaters had and which obviously it would be kind of difficult to have on a statue. I think Wilde is conflating Nero's amphitheater with the Flavian Amphitheater--Nero's temporary wooden amphitheater on the Campus Martius was enormous and quite monumental, and given its preservation to posterity in Martials de Spectaculis it's not hard to see why they might be confused. Wilde, though a gifted classicist, was mainly a Hellenist, and I don't know off the top of my head of any important work of his on Latin--I don't think it's out of the question that he might have conflated the two arenas