Lion in the Arena by William Rimmer, circa 1873-1876, oil on pressed wood pulp board, 9 5/16 x 12 1/4 in. (23.7 x 31.1 cm), Reynolda House Museum of American Art. Credit: William Rimmer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
There are manuscripts and pictorial depictions aplenty, but only now can we say with certainty that gladiators did actually fight lions as entertainment in the Roman Empire. A find at a dig in northern England has provided the key evidence; a lion’s tooth puncture wound in a hipbone. Malin Holst from York Osteoarchaeology and the University of York archaeologist Malin Holst explains.
Applications to build conservatories on two near-adjacent properties in York two decades ago set in motion an archaeological riddle that has only now become a world first: physical proof that Roman-era gladiators actually fought big cats as entertainment for the Roman elite and wider society.
The discovery of lion tooth puncture wounds on a gladiator’s hip bone, found in subsequent archaeological digs on cemeteries dating back to Eboracum – the Roman name for modern-day York – is the first definitive proof that bestiarii gladiators did indeed fight animals.
Malin Holst, of the Department of Archaeology at the University of York and managing director of York Osteoarchaeology tells ScienceVega of a process that took 20 years before the announcement its groundbreaking discovery…
ScienceVega: We have all seen images of amphitheatre fights between a lion and a gladiator in the Roman era, but how common do we think such events were?
MH: There is pictorial evidence from around the Roman Empire. We have mosaics and wall paintings and there are scenes on pottery depicting gladiator fights, but we had no forensic evidence of it, so that’s a real issue. As far as I could find in my research, no big cat bones have been found associated with amphitheatres anywhere in the Roman Empire other than one leopard bone in Serbia. We do think such events were fairly common in at least the more important cities in the Roman Empire, but we have very little evidence.
ScienceVega: That’s surprising. A lot of manuscripts still exist from Ancient Rome – do they depict these contests?
MH: It is described in manuscripts, but again you never quite know what is actually the truth and what is fiction.
Lesion on the left iliac spine of 6DT19. Credit: From the research paper: Unique osteological evidence for human-animal gladiatorial combat in Roman Britain.
ScienceVega: How prevalent do we think gladiator-big cat fighting was compared to gladiator-gladiator combat?
MH: In Rome, certainly, there was a school that was solely dedicated to this. It was called a bestiarium. The men they trained were not really gladiators as such; they were known as bestiarii because they trained to only fight animals, most likely wild boars and bears, but also big cats.
Lions and other big cats would have been really expensive animals to capture and keep. It would have been logistically very challenging to bring them to Britain and keep them in the right conditions.
ScienceVega: Given it would have been expensive to have ‘big cat entertainment’ in York, was Ancient Britain an important region of the Roman Empire?
MH: York was a really important part of the Roman Empire and was the capital of the northern frontier from the third century onwards. Several emperors lived in or visited York, and two of them actually died there: Septimius Severus and Flavius Valerius Constantinius (Constantinius I). York was a really important city in the Roman period.
ScienceVega: Do we know if Roman entertainment varied throughout the empire?
MH: I’m not a Roman specialist; I’m a skeleton specialist, so I’m not sure. But I do know there is very little evidence of this kind of entertainment, and there are very few skeletons of gladiators. Some skeletons were found some in Ephesus in modern-day Turkey, there might be some loose gladiator bones from Trier in Germany and likewise some possible gladiator skulls that were found in London. But outside of Ephesus, these are the best-preserved examples of actual evidence, by far. Of course there were amphitheatres and colosseums throughout the Roman Empire, but I’m not sure of how the gladiators fought, or how these shows were organised.
ScienceVega: What is the timeline that led to the groundbreaking piece of research about the bitemark in the hip bone?
MH: Archaeology is part of infrastructure development. If somebody builds a house or a motorway or some other piece of infrastructure, the local planning office will check whether there are archaeological remains on the site and, if there are, they will put conditions on the site.
In 2004 and 2005 there were planning applications to put extensions in the back gardens of two, almost adjacent, properties on Tadcaster Road, which is a Roman road leading out of York. That led to the first evaluation, which I was a part of, and then the excavation which found these skeletal remains – 82 in total.
There are actually more samples that were probably excavated in the 19th Century that we are now reanalysing as part of one of my PhD student’s assemblages.
In 2011 it had been realised that the site was quite unusual in that all but one of the skeletons were male, and they were mostly young middle adults aged between 26 to 35 years old. It was obvious this was a bit unusual because directly opposite on the other side of the road we have analysed a lot of other skeletons that clearly point to the area being a family cemetery. Those skeletons are typical in demographics and pathologies, for example. The ones in the ‘gladiator cemetery’ are not typical.
Marble relief with lion and gladiator. © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.
ScienceVega: At what point was it realised that this particular bone was potentially proof of a big cat bite?
MH: During the initial skeleton assessment, we found there was probably a bite mark in the hip bone, and then during our full analysis we realised it was most likely from a large cat or similar. That decision was partly down to how animals, such as bears attack people differently to big cats; bears tend to push their whole weight on people and use their claws, whereas big cats tend to attack the neck or head area, then they drag their prey. The hip is quite a handy area for dragging something.
There was no sign of attack on the head of the skeleton, but there could have been soft tissue damage which we wouldn’t be able to see. When we saw the marks on the hip, we weren’t sure what type of cat it came from, but my Maynooth University colleague Professor Tim Thompson compared the marks made on meat joints given to big cats at London Zoo and found that it most closely resembled a lion.
ScienceVega: We have a full skeleton of this young gladiator with the puncture wounds on the hip bone. How does this discovery reshape our perception of Roman culture at this time?
MH: It’s important because the whole cemetery’s archaeological context is really important. If we just had that one skeleton, it would not have been very meaningful, but as an assemblage (there are 82 skeletons) are unusual. All except one we could sex was male, so there is one female and almost all of the skeletons are young middle adults. They are also really well trained and we can tell they were quite muscular as there are muscle injuries visible on their skeletons which suggest they were training from a young age. These were highly trained athletes.
Without the bitemark they could perhaps have been soldiers or slaves, but this one skeleton in the context of the rest of them, and in particular with the lion bite, means it is certain that they were gladiators.
It gives us a really good insight into what Roman life was like. For example, some of my colleagues looked at the diet of the individuals and at where they came from. The individual with the bitemark was from southern Europe, while there was another skeleton that came from Scandinavia and a third from Syria, and yet more were Britons. We were aware there was a lot of population movement or individual movement in the Roman period, but this just demonstrates the cosmopolitan nature of this group of gladiators. It also highlights the fact that these were really expensive, highly trained athletes who were fighting really precious and expensive animals in this arena.
In York, like elsewhere, they probably would have also used slaves or prisoners in the arena as ‘cannon fodder’ to have fights and to be killed. But for the individuals we found to be killed would have been quite a financial sacrifice, so they probably tried to keep them alive as long as possible and to have as many really spectacular and expensive shows for the higher echelons of York society at the time.
Lion tooth mark on the hip bone. Credit: Maynooth University.
ScienceVega: Was this ‘entertainment’ for the masses, or just for the very wealthy. Could it be described as the pinnacle of Roman ‘sport’?
MH: Gladiator fights were laid on for high status individuals and the average Roman citizen. There were even some in high society who fought in gladiatorial battles.
ScienceVega: How surprising is it that this bitemark is the first skeletal proof of such an interaction?
MH: Considering that so few skeletons have been found from gladiatorial cemeteries, it’s not surprising that we haven’t found more. With the other skeletons, a lot of them have healed trauma and so we have evidence of other fights, or training, but I’m not that surprised we don’t have evidence of other big cat fights. In Ephesus, there are about 100 gladiator skeletons, so we probably have around 200 confirmed gladiator skeletons in the whole of the Roman Empire. When you consider that, it’s not that surprising that we only have the one bite. Because of decomposition, we can’t see anything that affects the soft tissue and if we have poor skeletal preservation, then again we would lose that evidence.
What is really interesting about this cemetery is that 71% of the skeletons were decapitated. It’s quite common in the Roman period to decapitate and about 5% to 6% of skeletons were decapitated. It could be children, it could be women, it could be men and often their head is laid between the feet or by the feet. But for 71% to be decapitated, that is unusual and there are differing opinions on that. Some suggest it is just a part of a burial ritual that we don’t really understand, so it was done post-mortem. We don’t know at this point whether the decapitations were undertaken to kill those people, or whether they were undertaken after death.
In this case, we don’t know which came first; the decapitation of this particular individual or the lion bite. We don’t know if the gladiator was already dead when the lion dragged it, or whether he was still alive. That’s something that is unlikely to be sequenced in the future, but one thing I love about archaeology is there is always another question. For example, he was bitten in both hips, but we don’t know whether there were two lions fighting over him or whether the lion let go and then started again on the other side, but it already adds to the picture if there are two lions involved.
Gladiators fighting a Barbary lion. Credit: Studio artist of Firmin Didot, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
ScienceVega: Going forwards, what direction do you think this finding will take you and your research?
MH: It’s such a fantastic story and particularly the fact the lion bite proved it’s not a cemetery for slaves or soldiers. That’s really satisfying. What I would really like to do is undertake more aDNA analysis to try to learn a bit more about the ancestry of the rest of the individuals, because we’ve only done that with seven skeletons so far. This paper is very much focused on this one individual, but I would like to see if we can publish the whole story about the whole cemetery.
One thing that is really important to me is to try to use our work to prevent racism, given the fact that these gladiators are so diverse in their origins. There are some that osteologically may be African, but that’s not very conclusive and would need to be based on aDNA analysis. I would really like to do more investigations on that.
With younger people it’s so important to highlight the diversity because those from diverse backgrounds will perhaps identify more with the past, and it might make them feel more included. People who are racist might actually realise that there were people from diverse origins living here 2000 years ago.
The link to the original paper can be found here.
Malin Holst
Managing Director
York Osteoarchaeology
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