Damnatio ad bestias

This form of execution, which first appeared during the Roman Republic around the 2nd century BC, had been part of a wider class of blood sports called Bestiarii.

The exact purpose of the early damnatio ad bestias is not known and might have been a religious sacrifice rather than a legal punishment,[2] especially in the regions where lions existed naturally and were revered by the population, such as Africa, India and other parts of Asia.

Various animals were used, such as elephants, rhinoceroses, wild boars, buffaloes, hippopotamuses, aurochs, bears, lions, tigers, leopards, hyenas, and wolves.

The first such staged hunting (Latin: venatio) featured lions and panthers, and was arranged by Marcus Fulvius Nobilior in 186 BC at the Circus Maximus on the occasion of the Greek conquest of Aetolia.

Some documented examples of damnatio ad bestias in Ancient Rome include the following: Strabo witnessed[14] the execution of the rebel slaves' leader Selurus.

[16][17] Such executions were also documented by Seneca the Younger (On anger, III 3), Apuleius (The Golden Ass, IV, 13), Titus Lucretius Carus (On the Nature of things) and Petronius Arbiter (Satyricon, XLV).

[18][19] Suetonius wrote that when the price of meat was too high, Caligula ordered prisoners, with no discrimination as to their crimes, to be fed to circus animals.

[20] Pompey used damnatio ad bestias for showcasing battles and, during his second consulate (55 BC), staged a fight between heavily armed gladiators and 18 elephants.

Tacitus states that during the first persecution of Christians under the reign of Nero (after the Fire of Rome in AD 64), people were wrapped in animal skins (called tunica molesta) and thrown to dogs.

There is a widespread view among contemporary specialists[28] that the prominence of Christians among those condemned to death in the Roman arena was greatly exaggerated in earlier times.

Since it was thought that public nudity would not cast doubt on their fidelity, further degradation was added by not only fully exposing them to the beast but using one of their own sex rather than the usual male animal.

[35] More generally though, in contrast to their clothed male counterparts, women were tied fully naked to stakes or pillars with their hands behind their backs.

[36] Full body exposure of a female to a bull after being entirely stripped of all her clothing was one aspect of her shaming, the implications being that she was not regarded in the same way as attired male competitors and allowed to fight any "beast" but rendered helpless, and that being denuded in public would imply a charge of adultery on the part of the woman.

[6] It was used once after that in the Byzantine Empire: in 1022, when several disgraced generals were arrested for plotting a conspiracy against Emperor Basil II, they were imprisoned and their property seized, but the royal eunuch who assisted them was thrown to lions.

Leopard attacking a criminal, Roman floor mosaic, 3rd century AD, Archaeological Museum of Tunisia
Gladiators in the circus arena, Zliten mosaic , 1st century AD
Gladiators fighting Barbary Lion
Christian Dirce by Henryk Siemiradzki ( National Museum , Warsaw ) shows the punishment of a Roman woman who had converted to Christianity. [ 12 ] At the Emperor Nero's wish, the woman, like mythological Dirce , was tied to a wild bull and dragged around the arena.
The Victory of Faith , by Saint George Hare , depicts two naked Christian women on the eve of their damnatio ad bestias with animals in the background.
Faithful Unto Death by Herbert Schmalz . Tying women to pillars or poles and stripping them of clothing in public was a common practice in the condemnation of Christian women.
Beast fighters and criminals being executed, the Zliten leopard, mosaic from c. AD 200
The Martyrdom of St. Euphemia
Saint Thecla and the Wild Beasts, probably from Egypt, 5th century AD, Nelson-Atkins Museum
Androcles pulling a thorn from the lion's paw