When the wild cattle first entered the arena, they were thrown dummies to toss. This trick put them in the mood to handle humans. Then the bestiarii dodgers entered the arena. The inner barricade to keep the animals in the centre of the arena had been erected and burladeros (the Romans called them cochleas) such as are used in a modern bullring had been put up at intervals. The dodgers darted out from behind the shelter of these burladeros and rushed across the arena, encouraging the bulls to pursue them. An experienced dodger could tell without looking back how far the bull was behind him. If he had a lead, he'd slow down to make it look good. When the bull began to catch up, he'd put on a sudden sprint to reach the burladeros. As the man slipped behind the burladeros, the pursuing bull would often hit the wood with his horn, sometimes knocking off a large splinter two or three feet in length. One such splinter shot into the stands and killed a spectator.
Often two dodgers would work together, "spinning 5 ' a bull by keeping one man at the head and the other at the tail while the animal whirled around trying to reach first one and then the other of his tormentors. This trick could only be played with an inexperienced animal. A bull who had been in the ring several times before knew the ropes and would concentrate on one man, but the dodgers could recognize such an animal almost immediately by the way he took up a stand and forced the men to come to him instead of charging about blindly.
After a few minutes of this work, the bull-tumblers entered. They were both men and women, naked except for a loincloth. These performers were Cretans and were performing a traditional art which can still be seen in the frescos at Cnossus. I'll admit that most antiquarians doubt if Cretans ever performed in an arena, but there are Roman murals of men turning somersaults over a bull's back, and I don't think that there's any question that this was a fairly standard act. It's still occasionally done in modern rodeos. One man would distract the bull's attention while the other ran forward and grabbed the bull's horns, immediately springing up and putting his feet on the bull's forehead (aficiondos will please remember that these were not Spanish fighting bulls but wild cattle). As the bull tossed his head, the tumbler would shoot into the air, turn a somersault, and land on the bull's back, instantly sliding off while his friends shouted and ran in front of the bull to keep him occupied. A variation of this stunt was to turn a back somersault and be caught by two waiting friends. A man with impetus of the bull's toss to help him could go nearly fifty feet. Usually the bull instead of pursuing the man would stop, shake his puzzled head as if to say, "Where did he go?" and charge another tumbler.
In all these stunts, the tumblers were more afraid of the bulls' hooves than their horns. If a man slipped he could often avoid the great horns but he could not keep the bull from trampling him. Then the animal's great weight crushed his lungs and ruptured his liver.
There were frequent fights between the animals. An aurochs bull approached one of the bison who was lying down. The aurochs snorted, pawed the sand, but would not attack. A dodger ran between the two animals, inciting the aurochs to charge, but instead of the aurochs, the bison was enraged. He sprang to his feet and charged the man with the speed no aurochs could have equalled. The dodger ran for the burladero as he had never run before but the bison would have had him if the aurochs had not attacked the bison. The bison whirled and tossed the aurochs, lifting him clean off the sand. When the aurochs landed, the bison gave him a quick, short thrust in the eye, breaking of part of the horn in the aurochs' skull. Then he spun away on his forelegs, not his rear, and trotted off leaving the mortally wounded aurochs dying on the sand. At this moment a wildly excited patrician lady tore off a valuable brooch and, for no reason except that she was mad with excitement, hurled it into the ring. Her escort, a young knight, sprang from the podium, ran to the inner barrier, vaulted it and retrieved the brooch. But the bison saw him. The animal turned and charged, killing the man almost instantly.
The head dodger nodded toward the Master of the Games, who had been watching closely from the edge of the inner barrier. The animals were sufficiently excited now for the next step. Also, they were growing sullen. Except for the bison bull, none of them had succeeded in killing any of their tormentors and they were beginning to take up stands —called a querencia in modern bullfighting. Either the animals herded together or picked a section of the arena and stood there motionless. The dodgers and the tumblers could now do nothing with them until the animals had been given new confidence by a kill.
The condemned criminals who were to be killed by the animals to give them this confidence (in the bullring, horses are used for this purpose) were now driven into the arena. Among them was the pitiful young boy who had been Glyco's minion, or male mistress. The boy—he could not have been more than fifteen or sixteen—staggered out into the blinding light of the white sand, for the awning did not cover the central part of the arena and protected only the spectators. Glyco, sitting in the podium with his mistress, leaned over the marble balustrade and called to the boy. The youngster, hearing the familiar voice and hoping for a reprieve ran toward the sound. The motion attracted an aurochs which promptly charged. Just before he struck the boy, the lad was jerked into the air by an invisible wire that had been tied around him before he entered the arena and was operated by the sailors in the overhead scaffolding. The boy soared into the air with a scream, only to be dropped almost instandy in front of a bison. The bison also charged, the boy was again pulled upwards, and this farce continued while Glyco and his mistress roared with laughter and the crowd howled its mirth. Eventually, either by accident or design, the boy was impaled by a charging aurochs. The long horn went completely through him and the bull charged madly around the arena, the shrieking boy pinwheeling around the horn with every shake of the bull's head.
When the criminals were dead, the dodgers and tumblers rushed out again. This time they were followed by Thessalian horsemen who galloped alongside the bulls, grabbed them by the horns, and then flung them down—bulldogging as in modern rodeos. Pliny describes this trick. Mounted men with lances also engaged the bulls while the venatores on foot, armed with swords and capes, also entered the arena. Carpophorus was one of these last.
Some of the wild cattle had been in the arena many times before. A pole vaulter made the mistake of trying to show his skill with one of these experienced animals. He ran toward the bull and when the animal charged, tried to vault over his head. The old bull simply stood back and waited for the man to come down. The expression on the man's face as he clung to the top of his pole put the crowd into convulsions. Carpophorus was armed with a javelin and seeing the vaulter's plight, stepped forward and drove his weapon into the aurochs' side.
He had meant the bull to drop dead instantly but his stroke missed and the wounded animal rushed away, tearing the javelin from Carpophorus' hand (a Pompeian fresco shows this scene). The bull wheeled and came back. Carpophorus, a venator rather than a dodger, could not avoid the rush. He went down between the bull's spreading horns.
The horns saved him. He clung to them while the mortally wounded animal smashed him repeatedly against the sand. Other venatores had run to his assistance. One of them grabbed the bull's tail (also in the frescos), another threw his cape over the bull's head, another plunged his sword into the animal's side. Between them they managed to drag Carpophorus to one of the burladeros. Even while they were carrying the wounded venator around the outside of the inner barrier to the Gate of Death, the bull followed them on the inside, watching the men. When they finally disappeared, the bull returned to the battle so suddenly that he caught the venatores following him. He tossed one man fifteen feet in the air, bounded around like a spring lamb while the man was coming down, and then gored him again. The venatores finally managed to get the corpse away from him and over the inner barrier. Then they stood back to let the mortally wounded animal die.
When the bull was sure the dead man was gone, he walked slowly over and stood sniffing the bloody sand as though it were incense. Then h
e looked up at the howling mob with quiet satisfaction and stood there proudly until his legs buckled under him and he fell dead.
Carpophorus had two broken ribs and the arena doctor had to strap him up before he could go out for the next event. If you think that I'm exaggerating the punishment a man can take and still keep going, I'd like to mention that Carnecerito, the famous Mexican matador, was carried from the ring after a bad goring and put on the operating table. When Carnecerito heard the crowd yelling for the next matador who'd been sent out to kill his bull, he jumped off the table, wrapped a towel around his belly to keep his guts from falling out, and ran back to the ring. He killed the bull and then fainted from loss of blood. Louis Procuna once drove eight hundred miles from Mexico City to Nuevo Laredo after a goring and when he arrived the floor of the car was literally awash with blood. He still fought. I don't know what wounds the Roman bestiarii were able to take, but I do know that they fought in event after event and must have often received terrific injuries. They had to be tough to survive.
The next act had a popular tie-in. A few weeks before, a whale had been stranded at the port of Ostia and thousands of people had travelled down from Rome to see the monster. A mock-up of the whale was raised to the arena on one of the elevators and then a trap door opened in its side, allowing the escape of several dozen lions, bears, wild horses, wild boars, stags, antelope, ibex, ostriches and leopards. Meanwhile a number of see-saws had been placed in the arena, each with two condemned criminals in the seats. As the man on the bottom was sure to be eaten, the desperate efforts of the prisoners to out-see-saw each other provided great amusement for the crowd.
Then the bestiarii came out again. Some of them were swung back and forth in baskets. The baskets were hung by a pendulum arrangement and at the bottom of their swing were close enough to the arena so an animal could grab them. The bestiarii in the baskets could control the rhythm of the pendulum as a man on a swing can control his speed. The trick was to control your basket so when it reached the low point there wouldn't be an animal waiting for you. Venatores, entering the inner barrier by turnstiles or through swinging doors guarded by slaves who quickly barred them if an animal tried to escape, decapitated the ostriches by shooting curved arrows at them. These arrows must have operated on the principle of a sharp-edge boomerang although how they could have been shot from a bow beats me.
Carpophorus came on with a pack of fighting dogs which he had trained himself. Some of these dogs could only have been Tibetan mastiffs from the description, and as die Romans were getting elephants and tigers from India, there's no reason why they couldn't have got dogs too. He also had boarhounds, much like a harlequin Great Dane except they had slender muzzles. He had some of the enormous Molossian hounds from Epirus and the Hyrcanians, which were so savage that the Romans thought they must be part tiger.
Carpophorus' best dogs were British, the British dogs being universally admitted the best of all breeds for fighting. The British used them in warfare and the Roman legionnaires were terrified of the brutes. It is said that one of them could break a bull's neck. Unfortunately, we don't know what they looked like. They are described both as "enormous" and "not very big." Possibly they were like a Norwegian elkhound. Personally, I think that they were probably not bred basically for type, but for courage as with the bull terriers used in pit fighting which may be almost any colour and weigh fifteen pounds or forty-five pounds.
Carpophorus loosed these dogs and then went in with his spear. The dogs attacked any animal that their master indicated. The stags and antelope they killed by themselves, chasing the animal around the arena until it turned at bay, and then pulling it down. One deer fell on its knees before the royal dais as though imploring mercy. In response to the shouts of the crowd, Domitian spared the animal. The dogs surrounded the more dangerous animals, rushing in and snapping to keep their quarry turning so he could not attack any individual member of the pack. Only when Carpophorus moved in for the kill would the dogs take hold, grabbing the animal by the paws, muzzle or testicles to hold him long enough for the spear to go home. They were also employed to dispatch the last of the wild cattle. Certain of the dogs were trained to grab a bull by the nose and hold his head down for the fatal stroke. These dogs had undershot jaws, elevated nostrils so they could continue to breathe without loosening their grip, and bowlegs; the ancestors of the modern English bulldog. Sometimes a bull would toss a dog. When this happened, handlers were ready with long poles to guide the dog into the arms of another handler who broke the dog's fall. One bull, left for dead, suddenly sprang up and killed a venator.
After this attraction, a number of fast-moving novelty acts were introduced. Women were dragged behind chariots and the hounds set on them. "Legendary pageants" were staged showing the castration of Alys, Hercules being burned alive on a pyre, and Mucius Scaevola having his hand burned off. A prostitute and her pimp gave an exhibition of the various positions of sexual intercourse, but in the middle of an embrace, Carpophorus set the Molossian hounds on the couple and they were quickly torn to pieces. A robber was crucified and bears encouraged to jump up and tear the dying man from the cross. A man representing Prometheus was chained to a rock and a trained eagle turned loose to pull out his liver. By the time the eagle was done with him, Martial tells us, "his mangled limbs still lived although all the parts dripped blood and in all his body was nowhere a body's shape." A man dressed as Daedalus with wings tied to his shoulders was thrown from the top scaffolding. When he crashed on the sand, a wild boar was released to gore the corpse. A lion, who had turned on his trainer when beaten, was killed by a venator using a sword and a cloak. "Although the beast won't take the whip, he learned to take the steel." A bear, trapped in the mountains with bkdlime, was surrounded by a ring of bestiarii and whirled around on the bloody sand with lowered head until a javelin dispatched him. A pregnant sow was cut open by a venator's spear and the litter of piglets spilled out of her side onto the sand. One piglet even lived.
Under the direction of the bestiarii, animal fights of all kinds were staged: lion versus tiger, a buffalo versus an elephant. A rhino tossed a bull as though it were one of the straw dummies. Then he killed a bear, a bison and two aurochs in quick succession. Finally an elephant was sent against him. According to the story, the elephant picked up a sweeper's broom and blinded the rhino with the coarse bristles. The blinded rhino charged straight through the inner barrier and crashed into the podium wall. The elephant finished the stunned animal by trampling him, and was then given candy by his proud mahout. At last, the legionnaires were sent to clear the arena with their shield wall and line of spears.
Now came a delightful novelty. Instead of having the crowd find their own lunch, by order of the editor catapults flung roast partridges and pheasants among the stands. Slaves dragged basketfuls of other fancy foods up and down the aisles. Then the catapults showered the crowd with lottery tickets. The holder of a lucky ticket might win a set of furniture, a suit of clothes, a sack of gold coins or a valuable jewel. To get in on the act, Domitian ordered that government lottery tickets also be distributed. A winner might get a merchant ship, a house, or even a large estate.
Some of the tickets were fakes. A man might get a ticket giving him a beautifully carved box. When he opened 'it, a hive of bees would pour out. Other people would find that they'd won ten man-eating bears, ten dormice, or ten heads of lettuce. As a joke, Elagabalus even had the catapults throw poisonous adders in the stands.
When distribution of the lottery tickets began, many people left the stands. The distribution was always the signal for a free-for-all fight, only slightly less bloody than the battles in the arena. Only the lowest members of the crowd cared to expose themselves to the riot. After the distribution was over, speculators flooded into the stands offering to buy sight unseen any of the tickets. Not knowing what they might get, many of the crowd sold their tickets without bothering to cash them in.
During lunch, there were a number of novelt
y acts. There was a dog race with monkeys as jockeys. There was a fight between big cranes and African pygmies, the pygmies armed only with sharpened reeds. Men fought huge pythons with their bare hands and snake charmers from the Marsi Snake Training School in Greece handled cobras. At the end, there was a fight between women and dwarfs. As Statius wrote, "It was enough to make Mars and the Goddess of Bravery split their sides laughing to see them hacking each other."
In the late afternoon, the gladiators came on again. Domitian had given permission for the court gladiators to take part in the games. These men were all freemen, fighting for hire, and made a magnificent show in their golden armour and waving peacock plumes as they entered the arena. Their armour was solid gold, embossed with scenes of gladiatorial combats done by the leading artists in Rome. Julius Caesar provided solid silver armour for his gladiators; Nero topped him by giving his gladiators armour made of carved amber. Now Domitian had tried to surpass both men by arming his gladiators in gold. I don't know how many of these gladiators there were, but Trajan had five thousand pairs of gladiators fight to the death to celebrate his victory over Decebalius in 106 a.d.
These men were too important to use up in a general melee. Individual combats had been arranged. The crowd knew virtually every man in the outfit, and cries went up of "Tetraites! Primus! Pamphilus!" We know these men's names for their tombs still remain with a carving of the gladiator, usually holding a palm in one hand as symbol of victory, and his sword or trident in the other.
Those About to Die Page 14