Those About to Die

by Daniel Pratt Mannix

  These precautions might seem enough, but most authorities believe that there was also an inner wall of heavy wooden planks running around the arena about ten feet from the podium wall and that the moat lay between this inner barrier and the central part of the arena. There are several reasons for believing this inner wall existed. The Colosseum was so vast that there must have been some way of keeping the animals out of the middle of the arena and away from the podium wall—otherwise the people in the two upper tiers of seats couldn't have seen them because the edge of the podium would have cut off the view. The natural instinct of a wild animal turned loose in a brightly lighted arena full of shouting, yelling people is to hug the wall, and scattered references by Roman writers show that the animals in the Colosseum often did just that. They were driven away from the wall by arena slaves using hot irons or burning straw. but there are no openings in the podium wall through which the slaves could have reached the animals. Also, there are many references to the elaborate scenic effects which acted as backdrops for the shows; the animals issuing from artificial caves, gladiators fighting before a painting representing ancient Carthage, and so on. It is hard to see how this scenery could have been erected and taken down if it were hung on the podium wall, especially as the changes often had to be made while the arena was full of wild animals and certainly the slaves were not allowed on the podium itself among the noble onlookers.

  All these facts suggest that there must have been an inner wall, probably made of heavy planks fastened to poles set into the floor of the arena. The elephant tusks carrying the overhanging nets may have been fastened to these poles rather than to the podium wall itself. This inner wall could be painted, or have painted canvases hung on it, representing any scene desired. It may not always have been a board fence, but composed of artificial rocks made of lathes and plaster, tree trunks to represent a forest or any other material that the stage designers of the Colosseum decided to use.

  The slaves who changed the scenery could operate between the podium wall and this inner barrier. The barrier must have joined the podium wall at the Gate of Life and the Gate of Death. The overhanging nets couldn't be used at these two places, but Calpurnius says that revolving ivory wheels were set into the podium wall at these points to keep the animals from climbing it

  There must have been at least a circle of tall masts in the arena itself, for the great awning which covered the top of the Colosseum to protect the audience from sun and rain had to be supported in the centre by some means. We know that around the top of the Colosseum ran a circle of 240 masts (the sockets where they stood can still be seen) and these masts held the edge of the awning. However, unless the Romans had some very ingenious method for keeping the awning taut, there must have been masts coming up from the arena to take the weight of the great mass in the centre. There may even have been wooden catwalks running across the top of the Colosseum under this awning, as on a modern Hollywood sound stage, for the ancient writers talk of naked little boys with wings tied to them to represent cupids being swung back and forth across the arena by in­visible wires as though they were flying. Often large animals, in one case a bull, were carried up to the awning (which was painted to represent the sky) by invisible wires to illustrate some mythological incident. To make such stunts as this possible, there must have been platforms at the top of the building equipped with blocks and tackles as well as space for crews of highly trained stagehands. Yet no matter how complicated were the mechanical miracles that these men had to produce, there was seldom a hitch in the performance. If there was, the stagehands were thrown into the arena to be eaten by wild beasts or killed by gladiators.

  The games, were worked on a very tight schedule and something had to be going on every minute or the crowd became restless. Anyone who had ever had any connection with a modern circus knows what a tremendous problem it is to get the various acts, especially the animal acts, on and off on time. The Romans were working with wild animals and~ condemned criminals so their problem was incredibly complicated. They were also operating on a gigantic scale— the games often ran for a couple of months, and sometimes five thousand animals were in the arena at the same time.

  Getting such a huge number of animals out of their cages and into the arena must have been a fantastic job.

  We have a pretty good idea how the Romans did it from studying the honeycomb of passages under the arena. The Romans used at least four systems. The cages could be dragged up to the arena on a series of ramps and then put into niches under the podium wall. At a given signal, all the doors were opened simultaneously and at the same time slaves dropped burning straw into the backs of the cages through slots in the top specially provided for this purpose. If there was an inner wall, the animals must have reached it by runways as lions enter the big cage in a modern circus. Or perhaps the cages were only kept in the podium niches so they'd be ready when the time came. As soon as the previous act—chariot racing, gladiators or whatever—was finished, the cages were quickly pulled from their niches in the podium wall, dragged to openings in the inner barrier, and opened there.

  Another method, probably used with less dangerous animals than the big cats, was to turn them loose in a passage­way leading to the arena and then force them on with a movable wooden barrier that just fitted across the passage. There were catches on the sides of the barrier that fitted into holes on the walls so the barrier couldn't be pushed back. These holes can still be seen.

  Still another method was to put the animals into an ele­vator and take them directly up to the floor of the arena. There were a number of these elevators placed at various spots in the arena like trapdoors on a modern stage. The elevator went down into a deep well, the animals were driven onto it, and then the platform was hoisted to arena level by pulleys. In some cases "breakaway" cages were used that would fall to pieces when certain pins were re­leased. These cages were carried out into the arena, the pins jerked clear, and the animals left exposed as the sides of the cages fell to the ground. The Romans also had cages that operated on the same principle as the chutes used in rodeos; that is, the two sides were hinged so that they could be swung back parallel with the rear, leaving the animal com­pletely exposed. All these devices were necessary as it is almost impossible to induce a frightened animal to leave its cage under normal conditions.

  In addition to the problems of handling the animals, the arena might in the course of a day's show be flooded for a sea fight and then planted to represent a forest. This might be followed by the erection of an artificial mountain complete with streams, bushes and growing flowers, which then had to be cleared for chariot races and immediately afterwards a gigantic fight might be staged representing Hannibal's attack on Rome—including elephants and catapults plus a mock city defended by condemned legionnaires. Thousands of slaves must have been employed in these great spectacles and every last one of them trained to split-second timing. The sailors from the fleet were used to raise and lower the great awning as these were the only men with sufficient training to handle vast spreads of cloth. The places where the awning lines chafed the stone walls still show.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  By the time the Colosseum was built, wild animal shows were an important part of the games. Wild beasts had always appeared in the shows from the earliest days, either in the form of trained animal acts or for hunts in which deer, wild goats and antelopes were turned loose in the arena and killed by experienced hunters. Later, dangerous animals such as lions, leopards, wild boars and tigers were introduced and gladiators sent out to kill them. Augustus had a bandit named Selurus dropped into a cage of wild beasts, and this sight made such a hit that the execution of condemned prisoners by wild animals became a regular part of the shows. So many elaborate and ingenious uses were made of wild animals (which were particularly popular with the mob, while the upper-classes preferred the gladiatorial contests) that a special class of men called bestiarii were created to handle the animal turns. These men had their own school as did th
e gladiators, and had their own traditions, professional slang and uniform.

  One of the bestiarii was named Carpophorus. We know of him because the poet Martial wrote enthusiastically, "Carpophorus could have handled the hydra, the chimaera and the fire-eating bulls at the same time." That's all we know about Carpophorus. Let's describe a top bestiarii during the reign of the Emperor Domitain, shortly after the building of the Colosseum. We'll call our hero Carpophorus for con­venience's sake.

  Carpophorus, we'll suppose was a freeman. He was the son of freed slaves who had died, leaving the boy destitute. As his parents had been freed, the boy was also free but as the son of former slaves, he was regarded with contempt by the Roman mob. Because of this prejudice, finding a job was even harder for him than for most people of his time, and at an early age the boy took to hanging around the Circus Maximus, the Circus Flarninius, the Circus Neronis, and all the other big and little circuses in Rome of the period, in­cluding travelling shows that set up wherever they could find an open spot and featured a few worn-out gladiators and some moth-eaten lions. Little Carpophorus carried water for the elephants, cleaned the cages, polished the gladiators' armour and ran errands for a few copper pieces and his meals.

  At night he slept under the arches of the Circus Maximus. There were hundreds of these arches supporting the tiers of seats above and they formed a maze of interlocking passages, holes, runways, and narrow slits where only a boy could crawl. Carpophorus learned to know the whole tangle blind­folded. This "under the stands" was a world of its own inhabited by fortune-tellers, astrologers, fruit and souvenir sellers, sausage and hamburger vendors, and prostitutes. All these people formed a close-knit fraternity of their own and made their living out of the crowds going to see the shows. People in the stands who got bored with the games would leave their seats and stroll down to this underground world where they could buy special dishes at the various stands, get a skin of wine, watch Syrian and Moorish women do obscene dances to the music of drums, cymbals and casta­nets, or engage the services of the plump, highly painted little boys who went around with their smocks hitched up above buttocks.

  In this world, Carpophorus grew up. although he had dreamed at one time of being a famous gladiator and at another of being a great charioteer, his real talent was always with animals. He picked up a couple of stray dogs in die street and taught them to dance on their hind legs, walk a tightrope, howl dismally when asked, "What do you think of the Red, White, and Blue teams?" and bark en­thusiastically when asked, "What do you think of the Greens?" This, of course, if the onlooker was wearing a green flower or scarf. As the dogs obeyed secret hand signals rather than the words, they could be made to bark or whine on whatever colour Carpophorus wished.

  The boy grew up with few illusions about his job, the Roman mob, or the emperor himself. On one occasion, he carried wine and bread for the arena carpenters while they worked on a magnificent galley so cleverly contrived that by pulling a single dowel the entire ship would fall to pieces. It was supposed that this galley was for one of the shows—in fact, such a galley had been employed in a spectacle only a few weeks before and the Emperor Nero had been deeply interested in it—but on completion the galley was taken to the port of Baiae. A month later it was learned that the queen mother, Agrippina, had been given a splendid new galley by her devoted son, the emperor, which had unac­countably come to pieces in the middle of the bay. Some of the stage carpenters who gossiped ended in the arena. Car­pophorus kept his mouth shut, but this incident confirmed the boy's belief that the entire world was like the arena—a place without justice or mercy, where only the smart and ruthless could survive.

  Later, Carpophorus got a job as helper to some of the bestiarii in the circus and learned their techniques of handling dangerous wild animals. Once when a bestiarius was trying to drive a bear from the arena, using a sort of cat-o'-nine­ tails with lead balls on the ends of the lashes, the bear had turned on him and grabbed the man by the shoulder. Young Carpophorus ran into the arena with a twist of blazing straw snatched from the hand of an arena slave and drove the bear off. Rumours of this feat reached one of the instructors at the School of Bestiarii and he had a talk with the boy. He agreed to sent Carpophorus through the school if the boy would agree to serve him as a slave for the next ten years. Carpophorus accepted this offer and so became an auctorati (bound over). He spent two years at the school, learning how to handle animals ranging in size from foxes to elephants.

  Although everyone at the school admired the tough young man's uncanny ability with animals, Carpophorus was ex­tremely unpopular, and not even the most farsighted of his instructors imagined that the quiet, rather sullen youth would some day be the top bestiarius in Rome. The boy was short, dark, heavy set, and if not actually clumsy, at least not graceful. A good bestiarius was supposed to be slender and agile like a modern matador. The boy was not a good mixer. His early life had made him suspicious of people—one of the reason why he had turned to animals with such a passionate intensity—and he had cultivated a chip-on-the-shoulder atti­tude which his fellow students resented. Carpophorus, on the other hand, regarded them as a lot of amateurs. Most of them had never been in an arena with a wild animal before they came to the school while Carpophorus had been handling wild stock since he was a kid. He didn't think much of his instructors, either. They put too much emphasis on book-learning, always quoting Aristotle and Pliny. Neither of these two learned gentlemen, as far as Carpophorus was concerned, knew beans about animals. They thought a mare could conceive if a south wind blew under her tail. Carpo­phorus knew better than that.

  The boy went through the usual course at the school and learned many things which his rough-and-ready, rule-of-thumb education as cageboy in the arena had not taught him. As with gladiators, there were many types of bestiarii: men who specialized in keeping ahead of the beasts by rurming, men who learned how to dodge them, bull-fighters, lion-tamers, pole-vaulters, and so on. Carpophorus, because of his great strength and brutal technique, was made a venator— a hunter. He learned how to fight wild animals barehanded, strangling them or breaking their necks. He learned how to blind a lioness by throwing a cape over her head and then cracking her back by striking the loins with the edge of his hand. (At least, the Roman writers claim that bestiarii could do this—it must have been quite a trick.) He also fought bears with a veil in one hand to distract the animal and a sword in the other.

  To learn how to dodge, the young man was sent out against a leopard tied to a bull by a long rope. As the bull could move as well as the leopard, this was a far tougher job than if the cat were simply tied to a stake but much easier than if the leopard were free. Another bestiarius with a spear stood behind the animals, goading them on. Carpophorus was also exposed to two wild animals at the same time, such as a lion and a leopard, and had to learn to avoid both. He was sometimes forced to lie on the ground while a wild boar or bull was set on him. Carpophorus had to learn how to leap to his feet at the last instant to escape the rush. He had to learn how to irritate wild animals by allowing them almost to catch him and then vaulting over a low fence or behind a wooden shield (as in modern bull-fights). The purpose of this manoeuvre was to make the animals so furious that they would willingly attack the condemned criminals afterwards thrown to them.

  Naturally, Carpophorus was soon covered with scars, but like all bestiarii he was as proud of his scars as a soldier is of his medals, considering them a hallmark of his profession. You could point to any scar and Carpophorus could tell you when and how he had received it.

  The young bestiarius had two serious vices: he was a heavy drinker and had a berserk temper. Wine was forbidden the students, except during meals, and then mixed with water, but Carpophorus knew his way around and managed to get his own supply. One of his jobs in the school was to train a leopard to be a man-eater. This was a complicated process as none of the big cats willingly attacks humans. The first part of the training consisted in overcoming the leopard's instinc­tive
dread of human beings. For this purpose, a leopard born in captivity who had never learned to fear people was far preferable to a wild caught animal. A particularly mean, half-grown cub was selected and a bestiarius, heavily padded, approached the animal deliberately pretending to be nervous. As soon as the leopard made a swipe at him, the bestiarius fell on the cage floor, rolling in apparent agony. The sight of a prostrate victim will generally encourage any aggressive animal to attack and also the man had bits of meat tied to his padding. In this way, the leopard was taught to be a killer. The animal always won in these combats and the trainer was careful never to strike or discipline him in any manner whatever.

  The leopard was always fed human meat—there was plenty of that around the arena—and later encouraged to attack slaves. These men had their arms broken and teeth knocked out so they could not injure the animal. A desperate man can kill a leopard with his bare hands (Carl Akeley, the African explorer, accomplished this feat) but even if women or children were used the animal had to be convinced that he could always win without trouble. Finally, when the animal was completely confident of his powers, he was given un­crippled slaves to kill. If the slave put up too much of a struggle, the watching bestiarius helped the leopard out by a quick spear thrust.

  Carpophorus' man-eater was a perfectly trained animal. He had developed such a perfect "habit pattern" that he never thought of attacking Carpophorus or anyone except a person exposed on the sand of the training arena. He was used to eating only under these specific conditions and would have starved to death in a butcher shop because he wouldn't have recognized the meat as edible. (This may seem incredible but it's true. A confirmed man-eating lion or tiger will charge through a herd of sheep to get at the shepherd and will not touch a freshly killed cow because he has lost his taste for anything but human flesh. This was true of the famous man-eaters of Tsavo in Kenya, East Africa, who held up the construction of a railroad for three weeks. These two lions ignored goats, cattle and even zebra—the lions' favourite food —left out for them. They finally had to be lured into a double-compartmented trap with two men in one of the compartments. Even with a fusillade of bullets whining about them, they continued to try to reach the men.)