The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 2 (of 6)

Chapter 123: CHAP. 20.—WHO IT WAS THAT FIRST INTRODUCED COMBATS OF LIONS AT ROME, AND WHO HAS BROUGHT TOGETHER THE GREATEST NUMBER OF LIONS FOR THAT PURPOSE.

By the Elder Pliny

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About This Book

The volume assembles an encyclopedic survey of the known world and its living inhabitants, moving from detailed regional geography and descriptions of seas, rivers, islands, and peoples to extended treatments of humanity, its generation, anatomy, and the origins and inventions of arts. Subsequent books catalog terrestrial animals—their habits, capture, and uses—followed by comprehensive observations on fish and marine creatures, their sizes and behaviors. Accounts mix naturalistic description, reported marvels, medicinal uses derived from animals, and travel and secondhand reports, organized as topical chapters intended as a practical compendium of natural and human phenomena.

CHAP. 20.—WHO IT WAS THAT FIRST INTRODUCED COMBATS OF LIONS AT ROME, AND WHO HAS BROUGHT TOGETHER THE GREATEST NUMBER OF LIONS FOR THAT PURPOSE.

Q. Scævola, the son of P. Scævola, when he was curule ædile, was the first to exhibit at Rome a combat of a number of lions; and L. Sylla, who was afterwards Dictator, during his prætorship, gave the spectacle of a fight of one hundred lions with manes.1676 After him, Pompeius Magnus exhibited six hundred lions in the Circus, three hundred and fifteen of which had manes; Cæsar, the Dictator, exhibited four hundred.