Animal baiting in the Roman Empire
In the Roman Empire , animal hunts ( venationes ) were the great attraction of entertainment culture alongside gladiator fights . Of the first persecution handed down in 186 BC. BC, especially in the capital, hundreds of thousands of animals were killed to entertain the masses into the 6th century.
The animals and the history of the games
Right from the start, animals that were as exotic and strange as possible were brought to Rome for the rush; so already with the first traditional venationes lions (e.g. Berber lions ) and panthers competed against each other, also tigers (e.g. Caspian tigers ). The supply for the enormously high demand was provided by both the state and free traders. The animals were brought to Rome from the most remote corners of the empire and beyond, especially from Africa , the Middle East and India . Over time, the rushes became bigger and more expensive: Even under Sulla , 100 lions were allowed into the arena to be killed by African archers. Pompey sent over 700 animals into the arena within five days (among the animals were wild animals such as lions, tigers, leopards, but also ostriches and antelopes - it should be exotic for people).
These rushes reached a climax during the imperial era: Augustus had 3500 animals appear in his 41-year rule. Titus sent 5000 animals to the inauguration ceremony of the Colosseum, and Domitian and later Commodus took part in the killings. The summit was reached by Trajan , who allegedly sent 11,000 animals into the arena to celebrate the victory over the Dacians . Animal baiting took place both as an accompanying program of a gladiature (gladiator fight ) and independently of it.
The consumption of wild animals was high and contributed to their extinction. In the Roman-Germanic Museum in Cologne, a votive stone is shown with which the centurion Quintus Tarquitius thanks the hunting goddess Diana for having managed to catch fifty bears within six months .
With the rise of Christianity , animal hunting lost its importance. Probus celebrated his triumph in 281 with the killing of around 600 animals; but in 325 Constantine I issued the first edict against animal baiting. Politicians hesitated for a long time to enforce this and other subsequent laws against popular resistance - in 404 a monk who protested against the Games was allegedly stoned - but the collapse of the Western Roman Empire during the Great Migration , the emergency situation that followed and that The emergence of Christianity made animal baiting slowly a marginal phenomenon. Nevertheless, chariot races ( ludi circenses ) and animal baiting were important public events up to the 6th century, which served the self-expression of the rulers. In Rome itself the last known animal hunt took place in 523 under Theodoric the Great , the last chariot races are attested for 550.
In the eastern part of the empire that continued to exist, animal hunting and gladiator fights also increasingly went out of fashion, while chariot races remained very popular well into the Middle Byzantine period.
The happening in the arena
The first traditional animal baiting took place in 186 BC. When Marcus Fulvius Nobilior set animals against each other for a celebration of triumph . This idea came from ancient Greece, where this form of entertainment was already known. The entertainment character takes a back seat to the political importance of the games. The patriarchal social structures led to a downright competition for the favor of the lower citizens. The organizers, for example, got into debt. B. the magistrates, especially since the 2nd century, partly in a ruinous way, in order to rise in the popularity of the public, which exactly differentiated the willingness to pay of the individual organizers. Due to the increase in popularity, the magistrate could z. B. rise to praetor or even consul . Refinancing took place, so to speak, through the additional income to be achieved.
The Romans took a liking to it and initially had the animal baiting carried out in the Circus Maximus , but later relocated it to amphitheaters such as the Colosseum. Such games were also organized by local benefactors ( Euergeten ) in numerous smaller towns ; In late antiquity, however, this was only the responsibility of the emperor and high state dignitaries, and the events were now only held in the largest and most important places.
The types of presentation were manifold: In addition to the original battle of animal against animal, trainer presentations and displays of animals that were special in some way (as in today's circus ) came into play. In spite of everything, a characteristic feature was the "fair" equipment of opponents. So the fighters were equipped with weapons that were equivalent to the opposing weapons in their advantages and disadvantages.
Suetonius reports that Gaius Julius Caesar organized animal hunts that lasted five days and ended with a battle "in which two detachments of five hundred men on foot, twenty elephants and three hundred horsemen faced each other ..."
Organized hunts began to emerge in the late republic and during the imperial era; so let Nero about Elitekavalleristen against hundreds of bears and lions proceed. Finally - and later more and more popular - there was the type of execution Damnatio ad bestias , in which the convicts were killed by animals such as lions or elephants.
Later, in parallel to the gladiator games, prisoners of war were also sent to the arenas and thus to their deaths. However, as with the gladiators, there were also volunteers here who hoped to gain prestige by fighting wild animals.
literature
- Alan Baker: Gladiators - life and death fighting games . Goldmann, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-442-15157-0 .
- Frank Bernstein : Ludi publici. Studies on the origin and development of the public games in republican Rome . Steiner, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-515-07301-9 ( Historia Einzelschriften 119), (Duisburg, Univ., Diss., 1993-1994).
- Egon Flaig : Ritualized Politics. Signs, Gestures, and Dominion in Ancient Rome . Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 2003, ISBN 3-525-36700-7 ( historical semantics 1).
- Marcus Junkelmann : Playing with death - This is how Rome's gladiators fought . von Zabern, Mainz 2000, ISBN 3-8053-2563-0 ( Antike Welt , special issue; Zabern's illustrated books on archeology ).
- Eckart Köhne (Ed.): Gladiators and Caesars. the power of entertainment in ancient Rome . von Zabern, Mainz 2000, ISBN 3-8053-2614-9 .
- Fik Meijer: Gladiators. The game of life and death . Artemis and Winkler, Düsseldorf et al. 2004, ISBN 3-7608-2303-3 .
- Paul Veyne : Bread and Games. Social power and political rule in antiquity. Campus-Verlag et al., Frankfurt am Main et al. 1988, ISBN 3-593-33964-1 ( theory and society 11).
- Thomas Wiedemann: Emperors and Gladiators. the power of games in ancient Rome . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2001, ISBN 3-534-14473-2 .
Media reception
- Animal Gladiators - Beasts for the Emperor, documentary, USA 2010 (115 min.)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Marcus Nenninger: The Romans and the Forest. Investigations into dealing with a natural area using the example of the Roman north-west provinces . Franz Steiner, Wiesbaden 1997, p. 35.
- ↑ http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/L/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/12Caesars/Julius*.html Paragraph 39, Sentence 3