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Beasts of the Roman Games
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I have saw this documentary years ago, in Discovery Channel. It is very interesting, with facts like that lion was the most popular animal and cost like the salary of a soldier for one year, the next popular was the elephant, both Africans and they were famous long before they even began to export tigers and rhinos from India and Hyrcania (Caspian region).
They also explained how it works the mechanisms of the Coliseum, that the animal-vs-animal fights were in the morning, and that in the middle day you could lunch, sometimes for free, and at the same time you could see how specially trained leopards killed thief and other prisoners in the arena, a good show, for that people at least. Other thing that I remember, almost 50% of the animals that were transported to Rome died in the travel, mostly because of the stress caused for been taken in cages that were in completely darkness. It is also interesting that there were over 1,000 lions transported at once to Rome, showing that in the old days it was perfectly possible to take large animal populations (this is over 3 times the population of lions in Gir!). Finally, if you are waiting a word about lion-vs-tiger, sorry, but they don't mentioned anything about this, except that people had they favorite animals, but that is all.  (06-20-2015, 09:25 AM)'GuateGojira' Wrote: I have saw this documentary years ago, in Discovery Channel. It is very interesting, with facts like that lion was the most popular animal and cost like the salary of a soldier for one year, the next popular was the elephant, both Africans and they were famous long before they even began to export tigers and rhinos from India and Hyrcania (Caspian region). I have read about it. These wild animals "imports" were truly massacres. The romans were the first to draw from the wild and remote faunas and till to empty them in order to wipe out them for bloody and cruel entertainments. The first animals slaughterers of the humanity story. 
This is quite good documentary to watch if interested about beast of the Roman games:
This is also a good video and if interested, it is good to read description in youtube, there is more information about this Mosaic and history of it.
One article about this sad subject and with sad I mean it, that how many animals were massacred at those times. In this article many pictures come visible when moving cursor over certain parts of text.
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/play/hd_play.htm
One study about this subject.
Quote: "The trade in wild beasts from North Africa has usually been examined from the point of view of the destination : accounts of venationes held in the ampitheatres and cireuses of Italy. The purpose of this paper is to examine this trade in terms of the impact upon North Africa and specifically to examine the relationship between it and the large scale agricultural production of North Africa. " http://sciencepress.mnhn.fr/sites/defaul...n16a20.pdf
Here can be seen part of one good book about this topic.
https://books.google.fi/books?id=BiXpAAA...me&f=false
Are there any historical facts about lion vs. bear fights in Roman times? Regards
PLEASE: go to Wildfacts - Beasts of the Roman Games - show them this: www.amazon.com/Bear-History-Fallen-King/dp/0674047826
Also tell them that Somewhere on the internet are the actual records translated into English - charger1 has posted once years ago - lost now. From Brother Bear. (05-11-2020, 04:38 PM)GreenGrolar Wrote: PLEASE: go to Wildfacts - Beasts of the Roman Games - show them this: www.amazon.com/Bear-History-Fallen-King/dp/0674047826 If somewhere is something real, it would be nice to see. But it looks like it, that there are no good records really about it, that what happened back then. It´s obvious, that Romans massacred a lot of animals and mistreated them a lot. Bears were mistreated just like lions, tigers, leopards, rhinos, elephants, ostriches etc. etc. etc. That book what you mention doesn´t give any clear answers either as far as I know. Bears have been worshiped in past just like moose etc. That book gives more information about it, not so much about it, what really happened during Roman games. 
Michel Pastoureau is a European Historian from France. According to him, in the book, "BEAR, History of a Fallen King", he says that he read the existing records from the actual events of the Roman Circus Games. My old friend from animal debates some years ago, "Charger1" ( a tiger enthusiast ) once posted from a site he had discovered; the records translated into English. I remember that they were not easy to read because, even though translated, the wording was unusual. I remember specifically reading about the rhinoceros and the bear fight ( which was not really a fight, but a killing ). This event and more are told of in this book.
(05-14-2020, 06:23 PM)bruin Wrote: Michel Pastoureau is a European Historian from France. According to him, in the book, "BEAR, History of a Fallen King", he says that he read the existing records from the actual events of the Roman Circus Games. My old friend from animal debates some years ago, "Charger1" ( a tiger enthusiast ) once posted from a site he had discovered; the records translated into English. I remember that they were not easy to read because, even though translated, the wording was unusual. I remember specifically reading about the rhinoceros and the bear fight ( which was not really a fight, but a killing ). This event and more are told of in this book. I´ve seen some texts and that rhino-bear was a no contest, rhino killed the bear very fast. Then again it has to be remembered, that rhino has been to a bear something never seen before. Anyway what I´ve seen has been worthless for people who try to find easy answers in "who is who" among predators. There is so little about predator against predator encounters. They wrote a lot more how many animals were killed overall in different games, that was after all the thing which was important when people with power tried to brag to each others. If some lion killed a tiger or tiger killed a lion wasn´t important. Important was to get as many animals as possible and massacre them. If someone would really have something more than some vague descriptions it would be really interesting, but looks like, that no-one is able to provide anything giving some real numbers etc.
Shadow, over on https://domainofthebears.proboards.com/ we deleted our complete "collection" of "historical animal fights" most taken from old 19th and early 20th century newspapers. Some of the stories are too outrageous to believe. Some tales have multiple endings according to which newspaper published it. By biggest problem with those stories are that too many factors not accounted for such as the age of the animals, their health and physical conditions, and the list can go on. Also the fact that when you mix people and animal fights, there might be gambling involved. So, I'm more interested to what happens in the wild.
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