The action of the Church in respect to bull-fights has been much the same; local opinion is generally recognised as too strong for opposition. The French bishops, however, did their best to prevent their introduction into the South of France, but they failed completely.
I have strayed rather far from the Roman shows, but the savagery of Christians in the fourteenth century (and after) should make us wonder less at Roman callousness. All our admiration is due to the few finer spirits who were repelled by the slaughter of man or beast to make a Roman’s holiday. Cicero said that he could never see what there was pleasurable in the spectacle of a noble beast struck to the heart by its merciless hunter or pitted against one of our weaker species! For a single expression of censure such as this which has come down to us, there must have been many of which we have no record. Of out-spoken censure there was doubtless little because violent condemnation of the arena would have savoured of treason to the State which patronised and supported the games just as Queen Elizabeth’s ministers supported bull-baiting.
Rome must have been one vast zoological garden, and viewing the strange animals was the first duty of the tourist. Pausanias was deeply impressed by the “Ethiopian bulls which they call rhinoceroses” and also by Indian camels in colour like leopards. He saw an all-white deer, and very much surprised he was to see it, but, to his subsequent regret, he forgot to ask where it came from. He was reminded of this white deer when he saw white blackbirds on Mount Cyllene in Arcadia. I remember a white blackbird which stayed in the garden of my old English home for more than two years: a wretched “sportsman” lay in wait for it when it wandered into a neighbouring field and shot it.
The feasibility of the transport of the hosts of animals destined to the arena will always remain a mystery. At the inauguration of the Colosseum, five thousand wild beasts and six thousand tame ones were butchered, nor was this the highest figure on a single occasion. Probably a great portion of the animals was sent by the Governors of distant provinces who wished to stand well with the home authorities. But large numbers were also brought over by speculators who sold them to the highest or the most influential bidder. One reason why Cassius murdered Julius Cæsar was that Cæsar had secured some lions which Cassius wished to present to the public. Every one who aimed at political power or even simply at being thought one of the “smart set” (the odious word suits the case) spent king’s ransoms on the public games. For vulgar ostentation the wealthy Roman world eclipsed the exploits of the modern millionaire. If any one deem this impossible, let him read, in the Satyricon of Petronius, the account of the fêtes to be given by a leader of fashion of the name of Titus. Not merely gladiators, but a great number of freedmen would take part in them: it would be no wretched mock combat but a real carnage! Titus was so rich that he could afford such liberality. Contempt is poured upon the head of a certain Nobarnus who offered a spectacle of gladiators hired at a low price and so old and decrepit that a breath threw them over. They all ended by wounding themselves to stop the contest. You might as well have witnessed a mere cock-fight!
I should think that not more than one animal in three survived the voyage. This would vastly increase the total number. The survivors often arrived in such a pitiable state that they could not be presented in the arena, or that they had to be presented immediately to prevent them from dying too soon. Symmachus, last of the great nobles of Rome, who, blinded by tradition, thought to revive the glories of his beloved city by reviving its shame, graphically describes the anxieties of the preparations for one of these colossal shows on which he is said to have spent what would be about £80,000 of our money. He began a year in advance: horses, bears, lions, Scotch dogs, crocodiles, chariot-drivers, hunters, actors, and the best gladiators were recruited from all parts. But when the time drew near, nothing were ready. Only a few of the animals had come, and these were half dead of hunger and fatigue. The bears had not arrived and there was no news of the lions. At the eleventh hour the crocodiles reached Rome, but they refused to eat and had to be killed all at once in order that they might not die of hunger. It was even worse with the gladiators, who were intended to provide, as in all these beast shows, the crowning entertainment. Twenty-nine of the Saxon captives whom Symmachus had chosen on account of the well-known valour of their race, strangled one another in prison rather than fight to the death for the amusement of their conquerors. And Symmachus, with all his real elevation of mind, was moved to nothing but disgust by their sublime choice! Rome in her greatest days had gloried in these shows: how could a man be a patriot who set his face against customs which followed the Roman eagles round the world? How many times since then has patriotism been held to require the extinction of moral sense!
Sometimes the humanity of beasts put to shame the inhumanity of man. There was a lion, commemorated by Statius, which had “unlearnt murder and homicide,” and submitted of its own accord to a master “who ought to have been under its feet.” This lion went in and out of its cage and gently laid down unhurt the prey which it caught: it even allowed people to put their hands into its mouth. It was killed by a fugitive slave. The Senate and people of Rome were in despair, and Imperial Cæsar, who witnessed impassible the death of thousands of animals sent hither to perish from Africa, from Scythia, from the banks of the Rhine, had tears in his eyes for a single lion! In later Roman times a tame lion was a favourite pet: their masters led them about wherever they went, whether much to the gratification of the friends on whom they called is not stated.
Another instance of a gentle beast was that of a tiger into whose cage a live doe had been placed for him to eat. But the tiger was not feeling well and, with the wisdom of sick animals, he was observing a diet. So two or three days elapsed, during which the tiger made great friends with the doe and when he recovered his health and began to feel very hungry, instead of devouring his fellow-lodger he beat with his paws against the bars of the cage in sign that he wanted food. These stories were, no doubt, true, and there may have been truth also in the well-known story of the lion which refused to attack a man who had once succoured him. Animals have good memories.
One pleasanter feature of the circus was the exhibition of performing beasts. Though the exhibitors of such animals are now sometimes charged with cruelty, it cannot be denied that the public who goes to look at them is composed of just the people who are most fond of animals. All children delight in them because, to their minds, they seem a confirmation of the strong instinctive though oftenest unexpressed belief, which lurks in every child’s soul, that between man and animals there is much less difference than is the correct, “grown-up” opinion; this is a part of the secret lore of childhood which has its origins in the childhood of the world. The amiable taste for these exhibitions—in appearance, at least, so harmless—strikes one as incongruous in the same persons who revelled in slaughter. Such a taste existed, however, and when St. James said that there was not a single beast, bird or reptile which had not been tamed, he may have been thinking of the itinerant showmen’s “learned” beasts which perambulated the Roman empire.
Horses and oxen were among the animals commonly taught to do tricks. I find no mention of monkeys as performing in the arena, though Apuleius says that in the spring fêtes of Isis, the forerunners of the Roman carnival, he saw a monkey with a straw hat and a Phrygian tunic—we can hardly keep ourselves from asking: what had it done with the grind-organ? But in spite of this startlingly modern apparition, monkeys do not seem to have been popular in Rome; I imagine even, that there was some fixed prejudice against them. The cleverest of all the animal performers were, of course, the dogs, and one showman had the ingenious idea of making a dog act a part in a comedy. The effects of a drug were tried on him, the plot turning on the suspicion that the drug was poisonous, while, in fact, it was only a narcotic. The dog took the piece of bread dipped in the liquid, swallowed it, and began to reel and stagger till he finally fell flat on the ground. He gave himself a last stretch and then seemed to expire, making no sign of life when his apparently dead body was dragged about the stage. At the right moment, he began to move very slightly as if waking out of a deep sleep; then he raised his head, looked round, jumped up and ran joyously to the proper person. The piece was played at the theatre of Marcellus in the reign of old Vespasian, and Cæsar himself was delighted. I wonder that no manager of our days has turned the incident to account; I never yet saw an audience serious enough not to become young again at the sight of four-footed comedians. Even the high art-loving public at the Prince Regent’s theatre at Munich cannot resist a murmur of discreet merriment when the pack of beautiful stag-hounds led upon the stage in the hunting scene in “Tannhäuser” gravely wag their tails in time with the music!
The pet lions were only one example of the aberrations of pet-lovers in ancient Rome. Maltese lap-dogs became a scourge: Lucian tells the lamentable tale of a needy philosopher whom a fashionable lady cajoles into acting as personal attendant to her incomparable Mirrhina. The Maltese dog was an old fad; Theophrastus, in the portrait of an insufferable élégant, mentions that, when his pet dog dies, he inscribes “pure Maltese” on its tombstone.