A bite from a lion likely led to the demise of a gladiator, new research finds

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A skeleton recovered from an intriguing Roman-era cemetery in England may mark the first physical evidence of combat between gladiators and animals, according to new research.

The skeleton of a man, who was between the ages of 26 and 35 when he died, was found with bite marks from a large cat — likely a lion — on the pelvis. The man died and was buried in a grave between 1,825 and 1,725 years ago in an area now known as York, England. The study was published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One.

Archaeologists with the York Archaeological Trust recovered the remains from Driffield Terrace, which they consider to be a gladiator graveyard.

The spot sits along the old Roman road leading out of York and got its graveyard designation after archaeologists announced the discovery of 82 skeletons of able-bodied young men in a 2010 documentary called “Gladiators: Back From the Dead.”

While the Romans documented fights between humans as well as humans and animals in artwork and records, the physical evidence of gladiators and the battles they faced for the sake of entertaining others is scarce, the study authors said.

“For years, our understanding of Roman gladiatorial combat and animal spectacles has relied heavily on historical texts and artistic depictions,” said lead study author Tim Thompson, a professor of anthropology and vice president for students and learning at Maynooth University in Ireland, in a statement. “This discovery provides the first direct, physical evidence that such events took place in this period, reshaping our perception of Roman entertainment culture in the region.”

The findings highlight the wide-ranging effects of the Roman Empire across England, showing that gladiator arenas that featured animals imported from other countries were part of the culture and lifestyle far from the reaches of the Colosseum in Rome.

Revisiting a puzzling find

Burials didn’t take place within settlements during the Roman period, leading the dead to be cremated or buried alongside major roads, the authors said in the study.

When construction in the area led to archaeological evaluations in 2004, researchers uncovered the Driffield Terrace cemetery. Many of the men’s remains carried evidence of training, trauma, healed injuries and unusual funeral rites such as decapitation. Analysis of tooth enamel also showed the men came from a broad range of Roman provinces from around the world.

While researchers have carried out extensive studies on the cemetery and its remains, a mystery lingered: a skeleton with unexplained depressions on the pelvis that resembled bites from a carnivore.

As part of the new study, the researchers created three-dimensional scans of the markings and compared them with bites from various carnivores. The comparison showed the bite marks likely came from a large cat, most likely a lion.

“The bite marks were likely made by a lion, which confirms that the skeletons buried at the cemetery were gladiators, rather than soldiers or slaves, as initially thought and represent the first osteological confirmation of human interaction with large carnivores in a combat or entertainment setting in the Roman world,” said study coauthor Malin Holst, lecturer in osteoarchaeology at the University of York’s department of archaeology, in a statement. Holst is also the managing director of York Osteoarchaeology, which specializes in the excavation, analysis and reporting of human remains.

Surviving texts and artwork demonstrate that such encounters between men and beasts were staged during arena spectacles in the Roman Empire, said Kathleen M. Coleman, James Loeb Professor of the Classics at Harvard University. Coleman was not involved in the research.

“But images can travel to areas where the events themselves do not take place, so on their own they are not conclusive evidence that animal combat took place there,” Coleman said. “That is why the new skeleton is so important.”

Additional analysis of the man’s bones showed he recovered from malnutrition as a child but had spinal issues due to overloading his back and inflammation of his lungs and thighs.

The man was likely a bestarius, or a gladiator that went up against beasts, and whose role was filled by volunteers or slaves.

“(Gladiators) could become famous and could buy their freedom, so we have a better understanding now of the complex social world they inhabited,” said Barry Molloy, an associate professor in the school of archaeology at University College Dublin, who was not involved in the study. “What we see in art might be considered to be ‘the money shots’ or what we might imagine the Romans viewed as the ‘coolest kills’ that the patron of the art wanted to show their audience. You can imagine in the arena, with an armed person fighting for their life, the winner of human vs. animal battles was not a foregone conclusion.”

Gladiators were viewed as athletes at the time, and their owners wanted them to win so they would be able to fight again, the study authors said. The lion bite never healed, which suggests it led to or caused his death, and the man was decapitated after death. While this was a funeral rite for some in the Roman period, the researchers think the man was decapitated as a mercy killing after the lion bite.

“This is a hugely exciting find because we can now start to build a better image of what these gladiators were like in life, and it also confirms the presence of large cats, and potentially other exotic animals, in arenas in cities such as York, and how they too had to defend themselves from the threat of death,” Malin said.

But how did a gladiator arena, and a lion, end up in northeast England?

An ancient epicenter of entertainment

Images of sparring gladiators, sometimes with one another or with beasts, memorialized in ancient mosaics and pottery recall the Roman Colosseum, “which would have been the classical world’s Wembley Stadium of combat,” said David Jennings, CEO of York Archaeology and a doctoral researcher in the department of archaeology at University of York. Jennings did not participate in the new research.

But such brutal sporting events had an extensive reach beyond the core Roman territories, and while an amphitheater likely existed in Roman York, it hasn’t been discovered yet, Malin said.

York began as the Roman city of Eboracum, which was founded as a fortress in the year 71 AD, and soldiers remained there until the end of the Roman period in the early fifth century, according to the study authors. Researchers think gladiator-style arena events were occurring there as late as the fourth century because the city hosted many senior generals and politicians, as well as Constantine, who was proclaimed emperor by his troops in Eboracum in AD 306.

The new findings indicate that Britain was well integrated into the customs and systems of the Roman Empire at its peak and provide evidence that Roman entertainments were widespread across the empire, said Jaclyn Neel, an associate professor of Greek and Roman studies at Carleton University in Ottawa. Neel was not involved in the research.

But the presence of lions, rather than local wild boar and deer, in York provided a unique twist for the researchers. Mosaics, such as the “Corridor of the Great Hunt” located in the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Villa Romana del Casale in Piazza Armerina, Sicily, depict how large animals were captured and transported to Rome for sport.

“The exact context for this encounter might have been a contest between a professional beast-fighter and the lion, which would have been exciting for the spectators, who might even have laid bets as to who would win,” Coleman said. “Or it could have been a form of execution in which a criminal is exposed to wild animals, in which case presumably the spectators would enjoy the satisfaction of seeing justice being done, since a criminal would not elicit any pity.”

The lion was likely transported along well-established supply routes that also carried bulk supplies of wine, oil and grain across continental Europe and the Mediterranean to York given that it was a legionary base, said study coauthor Dr. John Pearce, reader in archaeology and classics at King’s College London. Big cats like lions would have been captured in northern Africa, then transported across the sea before being moved across a network of rivers and eventually the road from London to York.

“As tangible witnesses to spectacles in Britain’s Roman amphitheatres, the bitemarks help us appreciate these spaces as settings for brutal demonstrations of power. They make an important contribution to desanitizing our Roman past,” Pearce said in a statement.

If the man who faced the lion was a professional hunter, as indicated in the study, the entertainment of watching human and a lion interact in the arena was probably more like bullfighting in Spain, Neel said.

“I do think it’s important to not exoticize the Romans — they were much more familiar with death than most modern North Americans, but that doesn’t mean that they tried to kill as many people as possible,” she said. “Roman culture emphasized the control of man over nature. A beast hunt, to me, is a theatrical re-enactment of that control. Romans thus used the beast hunts to reinforce a sense of human superiority over nature, even for the spectators.”

The skeleton will be part of the Roman exhibition “DIG: An Archaeological Adventure in St. Saviorugate” in York, while a 3D scan of the bite mark and other depictions of gladiatorial fights in Britain are part of the traveling “Gladiators of Britain,” a British Museum partnership exhibition currently on display at the Dorset Museum & Art Gallery.

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