Bestiarii (Beast Men)

A great modern misconception is that Roman gladiators fought against wild beasts in the arena. But gladiators only fought against other men. Warriors who faced off against lions and bears were a whole other classification entirely. They were known as the bestiarii, the ‘Beast Men.'

To the ancient Romans, no spectacle brought about the same feverish excitement as fights to the death in a packed arena. Thousands flocked to coliseums, placing bets, watching on violently animated, while the most prominent dignitaries from the highest echelons of Roman society acted out their limitless thirst for vile blood-spill - from the safety of the Senator’s seating section. And spectators, be it prince or pauper, took as much enjoyment from men fighting monsters as they did from them fighting one another.

There were two types of bestiarii.

One was he who stepped in and faced a wild monster of his own accord, either as a means of making a living, or to see his name in lights via some warped sense of narcotic joy. This Man v Animal event was known as a venatio and was immensely popular, usually preceding the gladiator bouts. The vast majority of venatio events were rigged to be extremely one-sided, sometimes a dozen or more men would torture and kill a lion.

Emperor Commodus was a bestiarus, much to the chagrin of the Senate who would have preferred to see him immersed in more diplomatic duties befitting the Emperor of Rome, rather than see him facing off against an (always limp or injured) animal.

The other type of bestiarii was one who had been sentenced to death via mauling. This was usually a prisoner of war, a criminal, a runaway slave or a person who for one reason or another had lost the right to be part of Roman society. These events were known as Damnatio ad bestias and like venatio were also overwhelmingly one-sided – but this one was in favour of the beasts.

Sometimes men were sent out with just a spear, completely unarmed or even naked, and often didn’t last more than the time it took for an animal to sprint across the sand and lunge at them. If they did manage to slay the beast against all odds, another one was usually unchained and let loose into the arena, wild with frenzied hunger and terrified by the deafening noise. This usually finished off our hero.

Historical distance can often desensitize us to human suffering or make it an object of humour or curiosity, so it’s hard for us to contemplate the veritable dread these doomed men felt in the days leading up to their fate. Some were known to find inventive ways to cheat their grisly demise by committing suicide in the morning of their execution. Roman statesman Symmachus tells of 29 Saxon slaves, given to Rome as a gift, strangling each other to death in their cells the night before their scheduled downfall.

Scholae bestarium were schools where young bestiarii who wanted to make a life of it went and learned the trade. Here, they would learn how to fight, how to wield weapons, and animal trainers would teach them the most efficient way to kill a wild animal that they might one day face off against in the arena. Exotic animals transported in from the four corners of the earth, including lions, bears, dogs, tigers, wolves, rhinos, hyenas, boars, bulls.

In the arena, the most common attack method utilized by a bestiarii was to attempt to blind the animal by spearing it in the eye, then attacking the throat while it was stunned. But many, merely froze in one spot and meekly accepted their fate, letting the animal get its inevitable rip at their throat as quickly as possible. This resulted in irritated and unimpressed spectators - usually not good news for the next man up who might now have a bear thrown in alongside the lion he's about to face, in a morbid effort to pacify and appease the bloodthirsty mob.

"Man is slaughtered, to kill is an exercise and an art. Men offer themselves to the wild beasts, men of ripe age. They fight with beasts, not for their crime, but for their madness."

Cyprian, Ad Donatus, VII

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