To the lions! Rome demonstrated its power and brutality through exotic animals

Rome was the first European civilization fascinated by wild and exotic animals.

Symbols of power, weapons of war, used for merciless punishments against criminals or dissidents such as Christians —"To the lions" is the favorite phrase of Julius Caesar from Asterix and Obelix— or for shows in the great amphitheaters, during which they were hunted , the exploitation of the natural environment by the ancient Romans was so relentless that they caused extinctions in the fauna of North Africa.

The American writer Paul Bowles, who lived most of his life in Tangier and was a great traveler through the Sahara, wrote in his classic book

(Alfaguara): "A large number of wild elephants that roamed the northern part of the desert were captured and trained to be part of the Carthaginian Army, but it was the Romans who finally annihilated the species in order to obtain ivory destined for the European market."

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(Gedisa, translation by Alcira Bixio) is significantly titled 'Nature, Subdued in the Roman Arena'.

“Nurtured by the dominion that Rome exercised over foreign lands and their resources”, writes this researcher, “the battles with exotic animals grew in size and splendor with each territorial conquest.

They began as a way to entertain and control the populace and make them symbolically share in the glory of the state.

But as the people became more and more addicted to these displays, politicians had to promote them to secure popular support.

Finally, the reputation of a ruler ended up depending on the games that he organized”.

Two gladiators face a tiger, in a mosaic preserved in present-day Istanbul.Getty

The animals were used to organize fights against beasts (

), for simple exhibitions (giraffes were one of the creatures that aroused the most astonishment among the people) or for executions, especially cruel, the famous

where large cats were used , but also bulls or elephants.

The images of Christians devoured by lions have become one of the most widespread topics about ancient Rome in movies, novels or paintings, but they are quite close to reality: there are mosaics, such as one that appeared in Zliten (Libya), in the one who looks like a man, with a whip in his hand, holding down a naked condemned man on whom a lion pounces.

Animals were annihilated on a truly formidable scale.

Keith Hopkins and Mary Beard recount in their book dedicated to the Colosseum in Rome

(Profile Books), not translated into Spanish— that only in some games organized by Pompey the Great were 20 elephants, 600 lions and 410 leopards killed, while Augustus estimated that during his reign some 35,000 animals died in shows.

And these were not simple shows: both in the

and in the

Mythological or historical scenes were recreated on many occasions.

“The logic of these shows was very clear,” Hopkins and Beard write.

“It was a dramatization of the conquest of the world by Rome.

It would be hard to contemplate the slaughter during the reign of Augustus of Nile crocodiles in the arena, without thinking that it reflected the fact that Egypt had just been subjugated by Rome.

But all these festivals of cruelty and death raise a question to which there is only a partial answer: how were all these wild beasts, sometimes traveling from as far away as India, captured and handled?

As can be seen in

the Bengal tigers were also present in the arena (it is the only realistic thing, according to the experts, in that scene in which Maximus Tenth Meridio faces Emperor Commodus and the big cats at the same time).

The chronicles also reflect the presence of rhinos, both Asian and African, and even polar bears.

A Spanish researcher, María Engracia Muñoz-Santos, has published one of the most comprehensive studies on this subject,

(Confluences), of which a new expanded edition has just been published.

Mosaic reflecting some games in the amphitheater of Susa, Tunisia.Getty

Although many classic authors, such as Pliny, Plutarch, Seneca or Dio Cassius, wrote about shows with beasts, Muñoz-Santos points out that most of the data that has come down to us on the hunting and capture of wild animals comes from mosaics, reliefs and paintings.

"Of all these artistic manifestations, the mosaics are perhaps the ones that offer us the most information about the animal's capture phase," he writes.

The capture surely began with a commission to organize a show by someone powerful and the hunters were a combination of natives and legionnaires.

“There is evidence of the involvement of Roman soldiers.

It was probably part of a soldier's duty or training."

Trapping systems were surely used, either through cages with baits or holes in the ground, although, the author explains, "Pliny and Plutarch tell us that the system did not work well with elephants due to their herd character and his cooperative instinct.

An unexpected technique was used for the panthers: a puddle was filled with wine and, when drunk, the feline became tame – I don't think any legionnaire would have been excited to be the person to check if the trick had worked.

An elephant is introduced into a boat, in a mosaic belonging to the collection of the Badisches Landesmuseum Karlsruhe.Getty

Regarding the form of transport to the metropolis, most of the indications indicate that it was carried out by sea.

There are mosaics that show elephants boarding ships through a ramp, while Muñoz-Santos adds that numerous paintings and mosaics are preserved, all dated between the end of the 3rd century and the 4th century, with cages in which they were imprisoned since bears to lions.

All those expensive and sophisticated systems for capturing and transporting animals from the ends of the known world to the Roman amphitheaters were intended to do more than amuse the populace with sadistic spectacles, which in turn showed what Rome did with its enemies, basically tear them to pieces. in public in the jaws of lions, tigers and bears.

They were, above all, a show of power, a story that nothing was going to stop Rome in her will to dominate the world.

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