The tales of gore and glory in the Roman empire are legendary, not least when it came to crime and punishment, says Rebecca Franks. It was legal under Roman law to throw criminals and prisoners of war to the beasts, who would claw, bite and maul these unfortunate people to death.
This brutal public spectacle was known in Latin as damnatio ad bestias, and to feed it, lions (along with a host of other exotic creatures) were ambushed and captured in North Africa and transported to Rome, where they became part of the bloody entertainment at the Colosseum.
- How did the Romans capture lions and tigers for bloodthirsty entertainment at the Colosseum?
- Guide to Roman Britain: how long did the Roman occupation last and how did they change Britain?
Given that the trade in wild beasts traversed the Roman empire, it’s fair to ask if lions ever made it to Roman Britain. Until recently, there’s been scant evidence to suggest that was the case, but two discoveries in the last four years have brought the question back into the spotlight.
Did the Romans bring lions to England?
First, we’ll head to Leicester in 2021, where archaeologists were excavating under the floor of a Roman town house. They discovered an unusual bronze key which, once they’d cleaned it up, was found to be decorated with a ‘barbarian’ grappling a lion. (Barbarians were enemies of the Romans, living in tribes outside the empire.) The researchers claimed their discovery added weight to the idea wild animals were used to execute people in Roman Britain.
- Roman gladiator skeleton dug up in York reveals first evidence of human vs big cat combat
- Were there ever any lions in Britain?
- Which big cat has the strongest bite? And just how deadly is that bite?
A second, arguably more compelling, piece of evidence came to light just earlier this year (2025). This time, archaeologists were focused on York, where 15 years ago they had excavated a man’s skeleton from a cemetery.
He was one of around 80 decapitated skeletons of healthy young men who had met violent deaths found at the site, suggesting that it might have been a cemetery for gladiators. This particular skeleton, of a man aged 26 to 35, bore bite marks on its pelvis, but they were hard to identify.
Eventually, the researchers struck on the strategy of speaking to zoos, who were able to give them horse bones that had been chewed by cheetahs, lions, tigers and leopards. They compared these with the York skeleton – and concluded that he’d been attacked by a lion.
“This is the first time we have physical evidence for gladiators fighting, or being involved in a spectacle, with big cats like lions in the Roman empire,” says Professor Tim Thompson, first author on the study at Maynooth University in Ireland.
But there are sceptics. Professor Mary Beard, writing in the Times Literary Supplement, believes we shouldn’t jump to the conclusion the key handle is drawn from real life lions in Britain, but rather that it's an example of artistic license. Commenting on the York discoveries, Beard decides to ‘remain on the fence for a while’. But both she and Thompson are united in asking head-scratching questions raised by the research, namely how do you get a lion from Africa to York? And who would want to spend a small fortune doing so?
