You may have read in the news about a gruesome discovery – a bite mark attributed to a lion found on a skeleton from a 1,800-year-old cemetery near York. This places the event within the Roman period. The individual was a male, aged 26-35 and the bite mark was found on his pelvis. Perhaps he was alive when being dragged off by the lion or perhaps he was already dead. Whatever the case we have the first recorded incident of a lion attacking a person in Britain.
The skeleton was found in a Roman era cemetery and here things get even more intriguing. So far 100 individuals have been found there, and apart from one, all male. Another curiousity is the number of decapitations. All of the skeletons had been decapitated, now this isn’t unusual in itself but as Mary Beard noted normally we might expect 5% of burials in a cemetery to have this feature. Not 100 %. Even the manner of decapitation has raised eyebrows. Normally this would involve the cut being made from the front to the back, whereas here the reverse is true (the cut was made from the back).
Aside from these questions we have a young male and evidence of a lion attacking him. As this dates from the Roman period this has been cited as evidence of a gladiator. Or is it?
The issue with ‘gladiator’.
The word ‘gladiator’ can often be used in a catch all sense, the idea being that anyone fighting in an arena is by default a gladiator. However, this isn’t entirely accurate – a gladiator was one type of combatant amongst many others who fought in the arena. The origins of the gladiator and their development as a spectacle is something I covered in my podcast episode where I talk about that and more. Traditionally gladiators had fought only at funeral games and against each other in pairs. However, under Augustus the popularity of gladiatorial combat (as well as a possible fear that these events could be used politically) resulted in gladiators becoming part of the wider games which involved various events such as chariot races, athletic events and venationes (beast hunts).
Using the word ‘gladiator’ in such a generalised sense has led to a famous misconception, or rather confusion which I still see even today. It relates to the idea that gladiators swore an oath before they fought and this itself results from a mix up in the context of who was fighting. I covered this (and more) in my article Mythbusting Gladiators and the short of it is that the fighters involved when this occured (a single instance) were criminals fighting each other in a naumachia (a mock sea battle). They weren’t gladiators, but it stuck and I still see this reported even today.
Our information on gladiators isn’t as substantial as you might think and given the Roman love of novelty it’s impossible to rule out a gladiator at some point fighting an animal. However, there was a specialised fighter in ancient Rome who was trained to fight animals, the venator. He took his name from the latin ‘to hunt’ and alongisde him was the bestiarius. There was also one other way an invidual might find him or herself up close with a lion which I’ll come to later.
The venator and the bestiarius.
From its debut in the mid 3rd century BC gladiatorial combat became hugely popular in Rome. The only restriction it had was that, until the reforms of Augustus, you could only have such a spectacle at funeral games. If you listen to the podcast episode I mentioned you will hear how the likes of Julius Caesar tried to find loopholes so they could stage them. But these weren’t the only type of violent entertainment available to the Romans. There had been ludi (games) at Rome which were very popular and included theatre, athletics, chariot racing and venationes. These are often referred to as beast hunts, but they included a range of events. Sadly most were violent, animals were fought by men and even made to fight each other. There was also exhibitions of exotic animals.
In the Augustan period the gladiator was merged into these games. But venators had been huting animals in games long before this happened. Indeed, the earliest known instance of a venatione dates to 168 BC when M. Fulvius Nobilior presented a hunt of lions and panthers in the Circus Maximus.
The popularity of venationes created a demand for more animals, the more exotic the better. Needless to say pressure was placed on sourcing them, something which Cicero referred to in a letter when he was a provincial governor. A friend, Marcus Caelius Rufus, had been elected aedile and thus responsible for organising games. However, there was a shortage of panthers and Cicero wrote to Caelius informing him that he was doing his best to get hold of some.
Venators were similar to gladiators in some respects. Thet were sourced from prisoners of war, criminals and the like. Like the gladiators they were trained in schools, under Domitian the Ludus Matutinus was built in Rome. This was a substantial school, and investement which underlines their importance and use.
Alongside the venatores we find the bestiarii. Exactly what a besiarius did seems more vague, they can be best thought of as supporting the venator. Not hunting as there’s no evidence that they were armed. Instead they were there to provoke the animals or act as ‘handlers’ in some way. Even this carried a great deal of risk, Martial wrote an epigram which featured a handler being bitten by a lion (Spect.10).
There was was final, and I mean final, way an individual might encounter an animal such as a lion in an arena. In such a situation there was no hope for the individual, they were there to meet their end. They were literally being thrown to the beasts.
Damnatio ad bestias.
The execution of criminals (noxii) was a standard feature of the games in the Imperial period and took many forms. There were naval battles where individuals were made to fight to the death, perhaps under the suspicion that a feat of arms might lead to pardon. There was also abject butchery. Seneca, writing in the 1st century AD, reported a mass execution of criminals at midday by armed men which he found pitiful (Epist.7.3-5). There was also one other option, that criminals and those condemned damnatio ad bestas were to be killed not by men, but by animals.
Instances of humans being executed using animals wasn’t an Imperial invention. Valerius Maximus reported that in 167 BC the Roman general Lucius Aemelius Paulus had deserters from his army trampled by elephants (2.7.13-14). Another general, Scipio Africanus Minor, used the same technique in 146 BC (ibid). In both cases the victims were likely non-Roman citizens.
Much variety was employed in the arena to make these deaths a spectacle. The poet Martial, writing about the games of the Roman emperor Domitian, noted some truly horrific mythic recreations. One individual played the part of Prometheus, though this time it wasn’t an eagle which attacked him but a bear. Another was cast as Daedalus, quite literally, as he was presumably dropped from a height to an awaiting bear. A notorious robber in the time of Augustus was placed on a platform which collapsed with the robber landing on cages of animals which were designed to break on impact.
The fact that these instances were highlighted in their novelty suggests that these weren’t the standard way people were killed by animals. It was likely that the common experience was to be bound to stakes and essentially fed to them or simply placed near them in an arena. Animals such as lions would have been starved to make them more inclined to attack.
With this in mind perhaps we can consider other options as to who the individual was with the lion’s bite mark upon him. As I mentioned it is plausible that he was a gladiator, perhaps fighting a lion. But it is more likely that he was a venator, unfortunate bestiarius or an even more unfortunate criminal.
Further reading.
Nossov, K. Gladiator.
Shadrake, S. The world of the gladiator.
See the reading list in the episode notes for Rise of the Gladiator for more reading and sources used.
