It’s a popular sight on television and in movies. Many of us have seen it in paintings or ancient frescoes. Gladiators battling lions for the glory of being in the arena were a popular spectacle of life in ancient Rome. At least, we all thought they were. The truth is that there was no actual physical evidence that gladiators actually fought lions—until now.
An archeological site at the Roman city of Eboracum (which is today the English city of York) uncovered a mass graveyard. Its inhabitants weren’t just any Romans, however. The remains, 80 in all, had evidence of violent trauma inflicted on them. Decapitations, broken bones, blade marks and—finally—bite marks from a big cat. It was the first physical evidence that animals and humans fought anywhere in Europe during the Roman period.
It all began when a real estate developer was hoping to build an apartment complex in York, according to the BBC. The chosen site was in an area known to be significant to the ancient city of Eboracum, a relative backwater of the Roman Empire, but an important fortress in the province of Brittania. Roman-era burial sites aren’t unusual, but the one found by archaeologists appeared to be a gladiator graveyard.
Most of the bodies interred at the site bore the signature markings of the gladiator: large arm muscles, healed injuries on their bones and faces, and, of course, the coup de grace: decapitated losers. Inside this unique graveyard, there was a skeleton that stood out even among the other standouts: a headless man with bite marks from a large carnivore on his hips.
As previously mentioned, there had been artistic evidence of this kind of combat. The Roman statesmen Seneca and Cicero described the men who fought animals. Technically, a gladiator only fought against other gladiators. The men who fought beasts were known as venatore, and not everyone who went into the arenas of the empire as venatore did so because they wanted to. Some of these ancient warriors were sent there as a death sentence. But until 2025, there was no real evidence it ever happened.
While the rules of gladiatorial combat would have forbidden a criminal from being buried in a gladiator’s cemetery, Ebroacum was apparently so far from Rome that the rules might not have applied, historian Barry Strauss told National Geographic.
“The rules they followed in Rome were not necessarily applied in godforsaken Eboracum,” Strauss said. “So, although the man was probably not a gladiator, he may indeed have been one. Burial in the gladiator cemetery is certainly an argument in favor of that theory.”
Ancient Romans didn’t import only large carnivorous cats for gladiatorial combat. They were an equal opportunity employer in that respect. Records show the empire’s arenas, especially the Colosseum in Rome, used a “menagerie” of wild creatures for such public entertainment. Vicious predators like crocodiles, hippos, cheetahs, panthers, bears, wolves and others were very common. It might surprise some readers that venatore and other condemned prisoners also succumbed to rhinos, giraffes, elephants, donkeys, camels, moose, hyenas and wild boars too. Most of these exotic animals would be found in the Colosseum in Rome, competing in front of its 50,000 spectators. Some of the animals imported were simply hunted for sport in front of the crowd..
While this archaeological discovery confirms one of the enduring myths of the Roman Empire and its gladiators, some myths still live on, unproven except in literature and art. For example, Christians were killed in the Colosseum, but not necessarily for being Christian. Right now, researchers know Christians were killed there, but their religion appears to be incidental. However, what we know about Rome changes with every new discovery.
More from We Are the Mighty
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- Celebrate the heroes of D-Day with these unique World War II-era 48-star flags
This article originally appeared on We Are the Mighty.
