Where the dusty village of Smirat now sits hunched against the winds of the Tunisian desert, there once stood the country villa of a wealthy Roman named Magerius. Prominently displayed in Magerius’ villa was a (now well-known) mosaic depicting a beast hunt in the arena. But the presumed stars of the show, four pairs of hunters and leopards, are placed at the corners of the mosaic, while centre-stage is dominated by a figure bearing a plate of money, and a block of text explaining that these are the funds with which Magerius has generously offered to pay for the show.Footnote 1 Contrary to the ancient donor's expectations, however, the modern observer is not struck by Magerius’ munificence, but rather by the meanness of his show compared to those put on in Rome. The emperor Titus (r. 79–81), for example, had 9,000 animals killed during the hundred-day-long inauguration of the Flavian Amphitheatre (Cass. Dio 66[66 Cary].25.1). Magerius’ leopards, worthy of a mosaic in the provinces, would have provided about ten minutes’ worth of entertainment in the capital.Footnote 2
Our evidence for how the emperor achieved and maintained this gaping disparity between his own games and those provided by his subjects is both sparse and chronologically and geographically disparate.Footnote 3 But more evidence exists for other imperial supply systems to Rome, such as the annona (administration of the grain supply) or the state-owned quarries. It may therefore be fruitful to consider the imperial beast-supply system alongside these other systems, using, where appropriate, comparisons with them to fill in the gaps in our knowledge. This will be most easily achieved by examining first the various stages of the beast-supply system (acquisition, transportation, and holding), and then the legal limitations that emperors placed upon other game-givers. Such a study will reveal the ways in which the emperor maintained his advantages over other game-givers, and suggest that the imperial beast-supply system may be more analogous to the methods by which emperors procured other exotic goods than is usually thought.
Acquisition
To procure animals for their venationes, lesser mortals probably turned first to their friends. There were Republican precedents for this: Cicero had been pressured during his tenure as governor of Cilicia into acquiring leopards for his friend Caelius. In addition to Cicero's leopards, Caelius received twenty big cats from the senator Curio, ten of which Curio had received as a gift in turn from another senator, Patiscus (Cic. Fam. 8.9).Footnote 4 In the realm of fiction, Apuleius (Met. 4.13) assumed that some of the bears for a show sponsored by the petty magistrate Demochares would have been provided by his friends. And the fourth-century letters of Libanius and fifth-century letters of Symmachus show a continuation of the practice well into the late Imperial period.Footnote 5
If a game-giver did not have any friends with spare leopards or bears to hand, he had to turn to the open market. Animal traders are mentioned (albeit infrequently) in the literary sources, and it is possible that some might even have had offices in Ostia.Footnote 6 Many of the animals killed in amphitheatres across the empire may have been supplied by the very same associations of venatores that were hired to do the actual killing. Such guilds are amply attested in North Africa, where they seem to have been responsible for providing both beasts and venatores.Footnote 7 Evidence for such associations elsewhere is thinner, but certainly the North African guilds had connections to Italy. The guild that Magerius employed for his leopard hunt, the Telegenii, was also involved in the shipping of olive oil to Rome, as attested by amphorae at Ostia bearing its seal.Footnote 8
Many of those wishing to provide a beast show may have negotiated for everything necessary with such guilds. This was the standard practice for most other types of entertainment. Most magistrates charged with giving gladiatorial munera, for example, hired troupes of gladiators (familiae gladiatorum), who contracted on a per-performance basis. Theatrical performances were also typically negotiated with troupes of actors, and chariot racing was (famously) managed by four factions which provided both the horses and the charioteers.Footnote 9 Perhaps only the wealthiest men bought and stockpiled animals themselves.
Emperors, naturally, were among the wealthiest of men, and it is impossible to gauge what proportion of their animal stock was simply purchased. But they also had means of procurement beyond those available to other rich men. One such means was merely to ‘request’ rare animals. In 216, Caracalla (r. 198–217) gave the province of Mauretania remission of back taxes, and tactfully suggested that, in return, the Mauretanians might put at his disposal their forests teeming with ‘celestial beasts’, by which he probably meant elephants.Footnote 10 Alas, Caracalla had a special need for elephants (he kept a troop of them in his army as part of his military imitatio Alexandri), so it is impossible to know whether requests for animals such as this one were a common practice.Footnote 11 At the very least, the decree proves that such a request was within the horizon of the possible for emperors, at least by the third century.
Much more consistent and wide-ranging is the evidence for the use of soldiers to acquire wild beasts for emperors. How the bears of Germania must have quaked in their dens at the mere mention of the centurion Tarquitius Restutus Pisauro, who captured fifty of their kin in six months!Footnote 12 His feat was imitated by soldiers on every frontier of the empire. In Syria, for instance, troop rosters occasionally have the notation ad leones added after the name of a soldier, a possible indication that such soldiers were assigned to hunt lions.Footnote 13 Meanwhile, in Africa, a fragmentary dedication from Agueneb in the Atlas Mountains mentions the success of a mission involving lions.Footnote 14
It is difficult to tell how many of the animals caught by soldiers were intended, as it were, for local use. A substantial portion must have ended their lives in military amphitheatres. Such amphitheatres are a commonly attested feature of legionary forts, and it was, if anything, even more important for soldiers to celebrate games than civilians, since such celebrations helped maintain the vital bonds of reverence and fidelity that linked the army to the emperor.Footnote 15 So, while access to military hunters operating on every border would seem to give emperors an unparalleled advantage in the quantity of animals that they were able to acquire, the extent of this advantage must remain hypothetical.
There are only two known instances where it seems certain that the animals caught by soldiers were to be used in games sponsored by the emperor. First, a second-century dedication from Moesia Inferior gives thanks to Diana for a successful hunt of bears and bison, carried out for the sake of a venatio Caesariana.Footnote 16 Second, Cassius Dio relates that the notorious praetorian prefect Plautianus commissioned soldiers to go far afield in order to capture zebras (‘tiger-like horses, sacred to the Sun’; Cass. Dio 75[76 Cary].14.3), presumably for the games of Septimius Severus (r. 193–211).
The state quarry business provides a close analogue to this system of beast supply.Footnote 17 In order to ensure a sufficiency of rare and particoloured stones for imperial building projects, important existing quarries were brought under state control (Suet. Tib. 49.2), and new quarries were opened across the empire. Some of these quarries (such as the famous Mons Porphyrites in eastern Egypt) were so remote that they may not have been economically viable without substantial state investment, including the use of soldiers to guard the mine and the tenuous route back to the Nile.Footnote 18 Such quarries demonstrate the difference between modern profit-motivated capitalism and an imperial infrastructure organized for the procurement of rare and exotic goods, no matter the expense.
The use of soldiers to acquire beasts probably followed a similar logic. In both examples where soldiers caught animals destined for imperial games, the beasts hunted were out of the ordinary. Bison appear to have been an infrequent sight in games.Footnote 19 We know from Martial that they were present at the dedication of the Flavian Amphitheatre in the first century (Mart. Spect. 26). But when writing about the bison that appeared in the games of Septimius Severus in 202, Cassius Dio still felt obliged to describe what a bison was (‘a kind of cattle, foreign in both kind and appearance’; Cass. Dio 76[77 Cary].1.5), which indicates that the beasts continued to be novel more than a century later. The evidence for zebras in the Roman Empire is even scarcer. After Plautianus’ zebras, we know of a ‘hippotiger’ in the games of Caracalla, which one might reasonably suppose to be a zebra as well (Cass. Dio 77[78 Cary].6.2). The only other known zebras appear in art, as in the mosaics of the martyrium at Seleucia Pieria and the synagogue at Gaza.Footnote 20
For private beast traders, there must have been a point at which certain animals were simply too distant to justify the risk and expense of capturing them, just as, for private miners, a great mountain of porphyry located inconveniently in the middle of a trackless desert was not worth the trouble of mining. All game-givers were the heirs of a Republican tradition that emphasized the display of truly rare beasts, and so all were presumably interested in procuring the most exotic beasts possible.Footnote 21 But, by virtue of their position, emperors were placed under a particular obligation to put on spectacular shows. In the fourth century, Eusebius noted that
it was an ancient custom to furnish the spectators more splendid shows when the emperors were present than at other times, new and foreign spectacles taking the place of the customary amusements, such as animals brought from India or Ethiopia or other places, or men who could astonish the beholders with skilful bodily exercises.
(De martyribus Palaestinae 6.2)Footnote 22The role of soldiers may have been to provide the emperor with the sorts of beasts he needed to set his games apart from those of lesser men, as well as those of his predecessors in the purple.
Transportation
Transportation formed the link between acquisition in or beyond the provinces, and stockpiling and display in Rome. The animals captured by the army were at least occasionally conveyed to the sea by the major river fleets. This seems to have been the plan for the Moesia hunt, which included a contingent from the classis Flavia Moesia (Flavian fleet of Moesia).Footnote 23 But civilians were probably also involved in the transport of the emperor's beasts, even if the animals were captured by the military. The use of civilian transport was normal for other imperial supply systems, especially the annona. Although Rome's supply of corn may have come from taxation and the production of imperial estates, its transportation to the capital was carried out wholly by private traders.Footnote 24 Initially, the emperors ensured their supply of grain by granting grain traders certain incentives for choosing Rome for their cargos. Claudius (r. 41–54) offered insurance for lost ships, and citizenship for those who consistently brought corn to the capital (Suet. Claud. 18–19). Nero (r. 54–68) added further tax breaks, and second-century emperors continued down this path, offering exemption from public service for those involved in the grain trade (Tac. Ann. 13.51.1; Dig. 50.5.3 [Scaevola]).
There is some evidence of similar benefits for private traders bringing animals captured by soldiers to imperial games. In 417, the emperor issued a decree restating that those who were responsible for transporting animals at the behest of a provincial military commander (qui transductioni ferarum a Duciano officio deputantur) were allowed to stay in any city for seven days, at that city's expense (Cod. Theod. 15.11.2 [Honorius and Theodosius]). There were customs exemptions as well. In the later fourth century, Symmachus had complained when the bear merchants supplying a kinsman of his were taxed (Symmachus, Ep. 5.62). If the expectation was that those serving members of the senatorial elite would be exempted from customs on their beasts, then a fortiori those serving the emperor must have been as well. The evidence for such benefits is late, and it possible that they were instituted after the economic chaos of the third century. But the example of the annona shows that even the earliest emperors were willing to grant concessions to vital merchants, and it is possible that the benefits granted to beast traders pre-dated our evidence for them by a considerable margin.
Holding
Once in Rome, animals belonging to the emperor were funnelled into a system of vivaria, or animal preserves, scattered around the capital.Footnote 25 From funerary inscriptions, we know of at least four imperial freedmen who, at one time or another, managed imperial animal reserves at Rome: a procurator(i) Laurento ad elephantos (overseer of the elephants in Laurentum), a praepositus (prefect) of herbivores (herbariarum), an adiutor ad feras (assistant overseeing wild beasts), and a praepositus camellorum (prefect of the camels).Footnote 26 On onomastic grounds, the tomb of the procurator ad elephantos seems to date from the end of the Julio-Claudian period.Footnote 27 The praepositus camellorum probably served one of the Flavians.Footnote 28 Latest of all were the praepositus herbariarum and adiutor ad feras, who lived in the period when Marcus Aurelius and Commodus ruled the empire jointly (177–80).Footnote 29 In addition to these freedmen, there is some evidence for soldiers administering vivaria. An inscription from Rome records two soldiers of the sixth praetorian cohort who were venatores immunes cum custode vivari (hunters exempted from regular duties with jurisdiction over the animal preserve),Footnote 30 and the fifth-century historian Sozomen mentions that a soldier was in charge of the imperial lions (Hist. eccl. 4.16). So soldiers seem to have been involved in the maintenance of imperial animals, as well as their capture.Footnote 31
The scantiness and broad temporal range of this evidence limits what can be concluded about the growth of the beast-keeping administration at Rome, and about the relationship between its various posts.Footnote 32 But it is nevertheless clear that the size and overarching system of the emperor's vivaria set them apart quantitatively from what others could manage. It could take years to gather the animals for a show (Symmachus, Ep. 6.35; Cic. Fam. 8.2.2, 8.4.5). In that time, many of the animals gathered were likely to die.Footnote 33 Apuleius’ fictional magnate Demochares, for instance, lost to the rigours of heat, disease, and prolonged confinement most of the bears that his friends had so thoughtfully donated (Met. 4.13). The hapless Symmachus lost fifty crocodiles because he could not prevail upon them to eat (Ep. 6.43). At the fortress of Montana in Moesia Inferior, the bones of bison and bears have been uncovered.Footnote 34 If these were animals originally destined for Rome, this is further proof of how quickly captive animals might perish. The extensive system of imperial vivaria solved this mortality problem for the emperor, by providing him with enough space to maintain a reserve ample enough to overcome this natural attrition.Footnote 35
The vivaria not only allowed emperors to stockpile animals destined to die in the arena, but also allowed them to retain animals that they wished to live. Most of the animals who entered the arena did not exit it (it is telling that Augustus says that about 10,000 gladiators ‘fought’ in his shows, but that around 3,500 animals were ‘killed’; RGDA 22).Footnote 36 But some animals did survive their time on the sand, and a happy few even achieved a degree of celebrity. ‘The sad people and Fathers lamented your death, as if you had fallen on the harsh sand as a famous gladiator’, wrote Statius to a particularly well-beloved lion (Silv. 2.5.25–7).Footnote 37 An emperor could presumably win popularity by incorporating such star beasts into his shows. He could also lend or give away beasts from his vivaria, tying himself into the network of reciprocal favours that was such an important source of animals for lesser game-givers. Thus, the emperor Honorius (r. 393–423) gave Symmachus large cats, just as Cicero had helped Caelius procure leopards four and a half centuries earlier (Symmachus, Ep. 4.12). Gladiators, too, might have been used in a similar fashion. It was the custom of Domitian, for instance, to allow any two of the gladiators chosen by the people from the imperial schools to be shown at the games given by quaestors (Suet. Dom. 4.1).Footnote 38
Gathering a surfeit of resources around Rome under the watchful eye of imperial officials seems to have been a common imperial supply strategy. The stones mined in distant Egypt ended up carefully inventoried in Roman stockyards, awaiting the next great imperial building project.Footnote 39 The same principle applied to gladiators. A series of gladiatorial schools (ludi) in Rome was fed by a constant stream of gladiators from ludi in the provinces to ensure that the emperor always had on hand the means to give games. Like the vivaria, these ludi were administered by imperial procuratores, although in this instance the procuratores were equestrians, not imperial freedmen. Over time, the system expanded throughout the Mediterranean, with imperial ludi being founded in Spain, Egypt, and Asia Minor.Footnote 40
It has been suggested that the imperial ludi sprinkled across the empire served not only to facilitate the transport of gladiators to Rome, but also to allow the emperor to honour certain provincial game-givers by giving or lending gladiators.Footnote 41 Although no evidence of an analogous empire-wide system of vivaria exists, it is possible that something similar occurred with animals. In the second-century Martyrdom of Polycarp, an angry mob demands that Philip the Asiarch throw the goodly saint to the lions. But Philip rejects their request because ‘it was not lawful for him to do so, seeing that the shows of wild beasts were already finished’ (11–12).Footnote 42 As Asiarch (the high priest of the imperial cult in the province), Philip was ultimately in charge of arranging executions by beast in the province.Footnote 43 He may have simply been reluctant to set aside the strict and scripted schedule of imperial games to satisfy a mob. But the lion may also have been imperial property, lent to Philip so that he could discharge his duties as Asiarch in a crowd-pleasing fashion, but not his to display whenever he chose.
Laws and Limitations
Alternatively, Philip the Asiarch may simply have owned a lion himself. If this was the case, the Martyrdom of Polycarp raises another important point about imperial animal supply. For, while the procurement system outlined above was perhaps the primary means by which emperors increased their absolute supply of animals, they also had the unique ability to increase their relative supply by placing limits on other game-givers. Such limits could take many forms. If Philip owned his lion, the Martyrdom of Polycarp suggests that emperors exerted some control over when animals were displayed. Certainly emperors had authority over where animals were displayed, at least in Rome proper. When Symmachus wished to give a beast show in the Flavian Amphitheatre, he had to write a letter to Stilicho requesting imperial approval (Ep. 4.8).
Emperors may also have controlled what kinds of animals their subjects could display in their own games. Symmachus provides evidence for this sort of restriction too. In one letter, he mentions that a court official named Patruinus had arranged it so that ‘the purchase of other sorts of Libyan beasts [a general term for large cats] was guaranteed to me by imperial authority’ (Ep. 7.122).Footnote 44 There were also laws governing the unauthorized hunting of lions, laws that the cruel Commodus enforced with draconian vigour and the merciful Honorius and Theodosius (r. 393–5) rescinded.Footnote 45 But the munificence of Honorius and Theodosius did not extend to allowing lions to be captured for sale without imperial approval, and it is an open question to what extent lions were actually used outside imperial games.
Laws regulating beast shows fall neatly into a constellation of similar laws governing other forms of entertainment. Regarding gladiatorial combats, Augustus prohibited the praetors from giving munera without senatorial permission. Even with permission, only two such games could be given, and even those were to be limited to 120 gladiators (Cass. Dio 54[54 Cary].2.4), a ludicrously low number compared to the average of 1,250 men who competed in the games sponsored by Augustus himself.Footnote 46 Tiberius (r. 14–37), too, limited the size of gladiatorial combats, ostensibly as a cost-saving measure (Suet. Tib. 34.1). Tacitus mentions in passing a senatorial decree allowing Syracuse to exceed the prescribed number of gladiators for a show, which indicates that the limits placed on non-imperial games were also enforced outside the city of Rome (Tac. Ann. 13.49.1).Footnote 47
The most restrictive of these entertainment laws date from the Early Principate. The tendency over time seems to have been not to add to such laws, but to circumvent them. Tacitus, after all, remarks that the remit granted to Syracuse was not extraordinary by the age of Nero. Symmachus argued that he should be able to use the Flavian Amphitheatre precisely because so many other lesser officials had been granted the same privilege. It seems likely that the restrictions mentioned in the letters of Symmachus were old ones, dating from an earlier period in which emperors still lived in Rome and might have legitimately feared that other men would put on games rivalling their own. As time passed, and the pre-eminence of the imperial position became more secure, such laws came to serve the emperor in another way, allowing him to distribute exemptions from them as a mark of favour.
Conclusion
At every stage of the process of gathering animals, emperors possessed unique advantages. The emperor's soldiers were used to acquire exotic animals, tax incentives encouraged traders to transport imperial beasts, and the vivaria outside Rome allowed the emperor to stockpile, and even to breed, animals. It is striking how different these arrangements were from the contract system used by humbler game-givers. It did not have to be this way. When providing chariot races, the emperors negotiated with the circus factions just like any other magistrate. Indeed, by the time of Justinian, the circus factions were in charge of the animal shows, in addition to their more traditional enterprises.Footnote 48
There are two probable reasons why the emperors did not simply contract for their venationes. The first is historical. The wealthiest men of the Late Republic tended to purchase their own gladiators and beasts, rather than work with contractors. Caesar, for example, had 5,000 trained gladiators in Capua at the start of the Civil Wars (Caes. BCiv. 1.14.4; Cic. Att. 7.14.2), and even Atticus at one point owned a troupe of gladiators (Cic. Att. 4.4a.2). Imperial ownership of gladiators and beasts was a natural outgrowth of this earlier practice. It was retained because it was also sensible. The two types of entertainment were closely related (they almost always occurred together on the same day) and could presumably share a goodly portion of their auxiliary personnel.Footnote 49
The second reason for direct imperial control over beasts was that beasts constituted an important resource for imperial aggrandisement, just like gladiators, rare marbles, and grain for Rome. Because the emperors had both a larger and a more predictably recurring need for such goods than other men, they developed similar, though not identical, strategies to acquire and manage these goods on a vast scale. In all cases, the emperors appear to have stockpiled the resulting commodities around Rome in official facilities, but for the most part used private transport to convey them there. Incentives were used to entice private traders to transport imperial goods, and emperors were willing to pursue luxury goods like porphyry or rare animals in places where it might not have been economically viable for private traders to do so. With regard to both gladiatorial and beast shows, laws limited the ability of other actors to compete as peers with the emperor.
The adoption of similar strategies of procurement across various goods in different realms implies a sort of official osmosis: officials with different purviews saw their problems as analogous and reached similar solutions. Therefore, by examining these tasks as a set, we see the imperial beast trade from a different perspective, and one more in keeping with how the men who ran such supply systems thought about them.
