’Mid various speech, but one glad voice we find,
That hails thee father of converg’d mankind[105].”
As for the Romans themselves, according to Juvenal, these amusements seem to have been preferred to all others.
“Could you the pleasures of the Cirque forego,
At Fabrateria or at Frusino,
Some villa might be bought, for what will here
Scarce hire a gloomy dungeon by the year[106].”
Had the fossil animals died, or been killed by natural accidents, the skeletons would generally have been found entire, but for the most part they are scattered and broken, and are often mixed with bones of animals resembling the species of the present time[107]. In the vicinity of Orleans in France, a fossil roe, of a living species, was found in limestone, along with the bones of the palæotherium.
Instances have occurred of bones being found, in great numbers; and, many feet deeper, other heaps of bones of elephants and wild beasts; but as many amphitheatres were built [p368] with wood, and as the games were exhibited for about six centuries, those structures would require to be often renewed, and the old bones would thus be covered over with earth. Britain was invaded or visited by about twenty emperors, or those so high in importance as to become emperors of Rome; and York was the head-quarters of the Roman empire during the residence in Britain of Severus and his two sons and co-emperors, Geta and Caracalla[108]. All the collections of fossil bones are found at the head-quarters of the Romans, or near the several amphitheatres in the island. Bones of elephants which have been found in France and Italy in fifteen places, are so faithfully accurate to the road over which Hannibal and Asdrubal with fifty-two elephants marched[109], and Hannibal’s (thirty-seven) all perished before his arrival at Thrasymene, that no theory whatever can stand in competition with such historical conviction[110]. If the bones found on Hannibal’s road be not those of his Getulian elephants, are we to conclude that the remains of the beasts lost two thousand years ago have totally perished; but that other bones of elephants, many thousands of years older, have been preserved upon the same spot, although some of them are found quite near the surface? At Plaine de Grenelle, a fossil elephant was dug up, and at that place there stood a Roman amphitheatre[111]. The great numbers of elephants then used in warfare may be judged of, by Metellus having captured upwards of a hundred in the battle of Palermo, where many besides had been killed[112]; and accordingly fossil bones have been found, there and also at Syracuse, where there was an amphitheatre. In Spain, thirty-nine elephants were slain at Munda, in the battle fought between the two Scipios and Asdrubal. At the bridge of Manzanares, and at Toledo, fossil remains of elephants have been [p369] dug up; and at these very places Hannibal and Asdrubal defeated one hundred thousand Carpetani, many of whom were trodden to death by their forty elephants[113].
If we glance at the sports of the Mongols, what a treasure for an osteologist might be found at Termed in Sogdiana, where the army commanded in person by Genghis Khan were four months occupied in enclosing an immense circle, till all the wild beasts were driven (without one escaping, under pain of death to the soldier who failed in his duty, but who was not allowed to kill the tigers, lions, &c.) into a spacious plain, where they were slaughtered by the Grand Khan and all the Imperial princes and military commanders, till they chose to permit the soldiers to end the destruction[114]. How many fossil species might be discovered there, of which naturalists have no knowledge! The Persians are said to have slaughtered as many as fourteen thousand beasts on a like expedition[115]. So long have these amusements existed, that Hushing, king of Persia, B. C. 865, bred dogs and leopards for hunting[116].