The notion that gladiators once fought big cats in Roman amphitheatres sounds so fanciful that it’s easy to dismiss it as a Hollywood myth. However, new academic research into a skeleton from Roman-era Britain bearing the tooth-marks of a "large cat such as a lion" has confirmed the all too grisly truth.
The findings have been published today in a study by Tim Thompson of Maynooth University, Ireland, along with various colleagues in the open-access journal PLOS One.
"The implications of our multidisciplinary study are huge," comments Professor Thompson. "Here we have physical evidence for the spectacle of the Roman Empire and the dangerous gladiatorial combat on show. This provides new evidence to support our understanding of the past."
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Buried at some point between 200-300 CE, the skeleton was one of 80 that were discovered 20 years ago near Eboracum – modern-day York. However, it’s only now that researchers have created a three-dimensional scan of the tooth-marks, allowing the team to compare them to bites from a range of different animals.
Co-author Dr. John Pearce, of King's College London, adds: "As tangible witnesses to spectacles in Britain's Roman amphitheatres, the bite-marks help us appreciate these spaces as settings for brutal demonstrations of power. They make an important contribution to desanitising our Roman past."
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Although gladiatorial bouts between humans and animals in Roman times are well documented, the punctured skeleton is exceptional in that it’s the very first physical evidence found in Europe of such fights taking place.
In this case the evidence suggests rather persuasively that this particular battle was won by the large cat. The researchers note chillingly that, since the tooth holes were in the pelvic bone, it’s quite possible that the victor was gnawing on the hapless gladiator’s body "around the time of death".
"This latest research gives us a remarkable insight into the life – and death – of this particular individual," concludes David Jennings, CEO of York Archaeology.
"We may never know what brought this man to the arena where we believe he may have been fighting for the entertainment of others, but it is remarkable that the first osteo-archaeological evidence for this kind of gladiatorial combat has been found so far from the Colosseum of Rome, which would have been the classical world’s Wembley Stadium of combat."
One imagines that, had this gladiator only known his remains would provide such vital material to 21st-century historians, it would have consoled him to some degree as his antagonised opponent clamped its jaws around his groin, and the splintering of his bones was drowned out by the cheers of the crowd.
Main image: puncture injury from leopard feeding. Credit Thompson et al., 2025, PLOS One, CC-BY 4.0
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