The Roman circus was thoroughly a government institution, and a part of the political machinery of the time in this way, that the exhibitions of strange wild beasts was devised by the victorious Roman rulers to show to their constituents and countrymen the wonders of the foreign countries they had conquered.
According to Pliny, Mutius Scævola (102 B.C.) first exhibited a combat of lions at the circus, and C. Scipio Trasica and C. Lentulus were the originators of contests between men and wild beasts.
In these terrific struggles, lions and tigers were let loose in the arena, and fought with human slaves and convicts.
When Pompey dedicated his theatre, he gave the most remarkable exhibition on record. Five hundred lions and eighteen hundred elephants are said to have been pitted against a body of armed men. The huge animals were attacked in every possible way,—sometimes by swords, again by lances. In the second consulate of Pompey (54 B.C.), a herd was matched against a company of Getulian archers; and, according to Pliny, one of the elephants, enraged by its wounds, rushed upon an archer, and hurled his shield high in air. Another, wounded by a javelin, created a panic among the rest; the great animals rushing against the railing of the circus with such force, that it gave way, and numbers of the spectators were wounded.
As a rule, the elephants were defeated; and the historian Dion adds a description of a wonder no less honorable to the Roman people than to the sagacity of the elephants. “The spectators,” he says, “so compassionated the animals, when they saw them raising their trunks to heaven, roaring most piteously, as if imploring the gods to avenge the cruel treachery which had compelled them to come from their native forests, that they demanded that they should be saved.” Pliny, relating the same story, states that the populace were so touched by the terror which the elephants exhibited, and so full of admiration at their sagacity, that regardless of the presence of Pompey, and forgetful of his munificence, they rose from their seats, and demanded, with imprecations against the consul, that the combat should be at an end. But habit appears soon to have reconciled the people to the torturing cruelties of the amphitheatre,—
“Where murder breathed her bloody steam;”
and we have few other recorded instances of their clemency.
The elephant tournaments of Cæsar added greatly to his popularity as dictator. “When Cæsar, the conqueror of the world,” says Velleius Paterculus, “returned to the city, he forgave all who had borne arms against him [which passes all human belief], and exhibited ship-fights, and contests of horse and foot, together with elephants.” “On this occasion the spectators were well secured by ditches, which surrounded the arena, from the charges of the infuriated beasts, who had annoyed them considerably at the games of Pompey. In these sports of the great dictator, twenty elephants were opposed to five hundred men on foot.”
Entertainments of this kind naturally tended to debase and brutalize the people, and the demand for slaughter was ever on the increase. It is said that Claudius rose at daylight to go to the circus, that he might not miss a single pang of the victims, human or brute. During his reign, and that of Nero, a famous sport was to match an elephant against a single fencer, who sometimes attacked the great beast on horseback, and again on foot.
The Colosseum was the natural outcome of the passion for such barbarous sports. The old one did not afford room enough, and Vespasian commenced the new one, which was completed by Titus (A.D. 79); and it still stands, as a monument of a dark era in the history of Rome.