Discovering the Colosseum by Mauro Poma

Author:Mauro Poma [Mauro Poma]
Language: eng
Format: epub

Not just lions!

A lion doesn’t die, he sleeps.

(Walt Disney, “The Lion King”)

When one thinks about the animals used in the Colosseum, the first image that comes to mind is a roaring lion wandering around the arena in search of his prey or tearing apart a poor man. In reality, lions were not the only exotic animals to be captured, transported, and used in the Colosseum. Over the centuries, the Roman audience had the "good fortune" to see a number and wide variety of animals at home without the travel possibilities available to us now. Where did the Romans find all of these animals? Crocodiles, rhinos, hippos, and giraffes came from southern Egypt. Gazelles, antelopes, jackals, ostriches, hyenas, lions, cheetahs, panthers, and elephants came from North Africa, and bears were from the Atlas Mountains in Morocco. Until the first century B.C., Middle Eastern countries bordering the Mediterranean provided several species of felines. Tigers ( Fig. 15) had travelled extensively before reaching Rome. They were taken from India and seen by the Romans for the first time in the first century B.C. Italy and other European countries provided all herbivores, such as hares, roe deer, deer, wild pigs, and donkeys, as well as bears, bison, bulls, wolves, or moose. The costs of capture, transportation, and maintenance of wild animals from Africa or Asia were understandably much higher than those of the animals coming from Italy or Europe... no coincidence that the majority of games in the Colosseum were sponsored by the emperor! He was the only one who had sufficient financial resources to organize these expensive slaughters. Today, we have reports of great hunting shows not only after the construction of the Colosseum, but also earlier than that. For example, in 104 B.C., Muzio Scaevola and Licinius Crassus, staged a venatio in the Circus Maximus with a hundred lions to celebrate their victory over Jugurtha, King of Numidia. In the middle of that same century, Marcus Scaurus organized a hunt with 5 crocodiles, 1 hippo, and 150 leopards. A few years later, the grandeur of all of this was completely surpassed by the incredible spectacle offered by the rich Pompey. During the games, he organized the slaughter of 400 leopards, 600 elephants, and many monkeys. The special guests at this carnage were a rhino and a lynx from northern Europe. This was the grandest venatio ever held before the construction of the Colosseum and a show with so many animals was never repeated. Neither Julius Caesar nor even Augustus, the first Roman emperor, who killed three thousands and five hundreds animals during his reign, managed, in a single show, to surpass the magnitude of the one organized by Pompey. Nero brought in 300 lions and 400 bears, and during the 100 days of parties and games arranged by Titus for the inauguration of the Colosseum 9,000 animals were killed. This number is still small compared with the 11,000 reached by Trajan almost thirty years later to celebrate his victories over the Dacians.

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