I had seen beast-fights without
number in the Colosseum, but had never thought of the enormous labor and
expense incident on the preparations for even one morning's exhibition of,
say, a hundred lions and other beasts in proportion. Now I meditated over
the thousands of trappers and other hunters who must scour the forests of
Dacia, Moesia, Thrace, Illyricum, Pannonia, Noricum, Rhaetia and Germany
to gather such a supply of beasts for exhibition. I saw wolves, bears and
boars by the thousand, and hundreds of lynxes, elk and wild bulls, both
the strange forest-bisons, unlike our cattle, with low rumps and high
shoulders and their horns turned downwards and forwards, parallel to each
other, and the huger and even fiercer bulls, much like farm bulls, but
larger, taller and leaner and with horns incredibly long, so that their
tips were often two yards and more apart. I had no idea of the vast
numbers of such beasts which were yearly poured into Rome from all the
mountains and forests to the north and east of the Alps. I was amazed.
Even more was I amazed to see hundreds upon hundreds of cages containing
beasts not from northern Europe, but from Africa, or even from Asia: lions
without number, panthers and leopards by the hundred, many tigers,
antelopes of all kinds by scores of each kind, rhinoceroses, and
hippopotami in enormous cages on gigantic wains drawn by twelve yoke of
oxen; even a dozen huge gray elephants pacing sedately, their turbaned
_mahouts_ rocking on their necks.
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