<\/p>\n In the Roman Empire, beast hunters put on shows in arenas, where they would battle wild animals, such as boars and bears. Unlike gladiators<\/a>, they fought beasts rather than people. The newly analyzed drawing, on a third-century mosaic, shows a topless huntress fighting a leopard with a whip.<\/p>\n Article continues below <\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n The mosaic was found in Reims, France, in 1860. Most of it was destroyed during bombing in World War I, but there is a surviving drawing illustrated by Jean Charles Loriquet, the archaeologist who discovered the mosaic. Loriquet published the drawing in his 1862 book, but it has received minimal scholarly attention, Alfonso Ma\u00f1as<\/a>, a sports researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote in the new study.<\/p>\n The mosaic shows a mix of beasts, beast hunters and gladiators, each of which is surrounded by diamond- or square-shaped decorations that archaeologists call “medallions.” Dating to the third century A.D., it was found in a house that likely belonged to a wealthy individual who sponsored beast-fighting shows held in arenas, Ma\u00f1as told Live Science in an email.<\/p>\n The mosaic was probably on the floor of the feasting hall “so that the guests of the host could admire the mosaic during the banquet,” Ma\u00f1as said.<\/p>\n Originally, researchers weren’t sure if the individual was female, so they identified the figure as an “agitator, an inexistent arena role, or a paegniarius, a kind of clown with a whip,” Ma\u00f1as wrote in the study. But there are several clues that the person is female and a huntress, Ma\u00f1as said. An agitator is a person who supposedly used whips to encourage the beasts to fight, however there is no solid evidence that this position existed. A paegniarius fought with a whip and a stick and wore an armguard. The fact that the woman doesn’t have a stick or armguard indicates that she is not a paegniarius.<\/p>\n I think that women were regular participants in arena events and that they’re underrepresented in surviving textual and visual evidence.<\/p>\n Alison Futrell, professor of history at the University of Arizona<\/p>\n Ma\u00f1as said that there is no doubt that this depicts a woman, noting that the drawing shows that the person has sizable breasts.<\/p>\n As for her role, Ma\u00f1as thinks she was a beast hunter, rather than a prisoner condemned to death. A prisoner condemned to death would be given no weapon and would often be tied up. This woman holds a whip and doesn’t seem to be restrained.<\/p>\n Is the drawing accurate?<\/p>\n Most of the mosaic was destroyed in World War I, so it’s impossible to verify if Loriquet’s drawing is accurate, Thomas Scanlon<\/a>, a professor emeritus of classics at the University of California, Riverside who was not involved with the study, told Live Science in an email.<\/p>\n What to read next<\/p>\n Scanlon praised the journal article but wasn’t convinced about the identification. “The article is well documented, but my concern is that the actual mosaic is not extant, but was destroyed in WWI, so the images are from an old [drawing] which may not be reliable in detail,” Scanlon said.<\/p>\n In his article, Ma\u00f1as tried to address this problem by comparing the drawing of the mosaic with a small piece of the mosaic that survived the bombing and is currently in the Mus\u00e9e Saint-R\u00e9mi. The surviving fragment appears to closely match the drawing, Ma\u00f1as wrote.<\/p>\n Alison Futrell<\/a>, a professor of history at the University of Arizona, found the article convincing. “I agree with the author,” she told Live Science in an email, adding that “I think that women were regular participants in arena events and that they’re underrepresented in surviving textual and visual evidence.”<\/p>\n Topless beast hunter<\/p>\n We don’t know the huntress’s name or much else about her. She may have volunteered to be a beast hunter, or she may have been convicted of a crime that did not warrant execution, and instead was sentenced to be trained and perform as a beast hunter, Ma\u00f1as wrote in the article.<\/p>\n Although this is the only surviving image of a Roman huntress, there are at least two known surviving sculptures of female gladiators<\/a>. Those images also depict the women topless and without helmets to help show that they are women.<\/p>\n \n A close-up of the drawing of the female beast hunter holding a whip. Most of the mosaic was destroyed during World War I, so the only surviving image of the huntress is from the drawing made by Loriquet. (Image credit: Alfonso Ma\u00f1as)<\/p>\n Like the female gladiators, it seems female beast hunters would “always fight topless, with bare breasts, because [otherwise] spectators from the stands would have had problems to notice that they were actually women, and [to] arouse an erotic effect on those spectators, to excite them sexually, was one of the aims sought by their performance,” Ma\u00f1as wrote in the article. The women would have had to be of low social status since it would have been unacceptable for a woman of higher status to appear topless in the arena, Ma\u00f1as said.<\/p>\n The bottom half of the female beast hunter is not shown in the drawing; it may have been destroyed already when Loriquet found the mosaic in 1860. Therefore, it is unclear if she competed completely nude or wearing something like a loincloth, Ma\u00f1as noted.<\/p>\n The mosaic dates to the third century, while historical records indicate that female gladiators were banned throughout the Roman Empire<\/a> in A.D. 200. This suggests that this ban did not affect female beast hunters, Ma\u00f1as said.<\/p>\n While female gladiators tended to be controversial in the Roman world because many people felt that fighting another person should be restricted to men, the idea of women hunting beasts was less controversial, Ma\u00f1as said. The Roman goddess Diana engaged in hunting, he added, which made the idea of women hunting beasts more acceptable to Romans.<\/p>\n Roman emperor quiz<\/a>: Test your knowledge on the rulers of the ancient empire<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the first time ever, an image of a Roman woman battling a beast in an arena has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":362015,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[85,46,141,386],"class_list":["post-362014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/u55xKYcJ5sW5gK8viYeLrg.jpg\")
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