A Roman ritual sacrifice depicted on Trajan’s column (2nd century AD)

Presentation on theme: "A Roman ritual sacrifice depicted on Trajan’s column (2nd century AD)"— Presentation transcript:

1 A Roman ritual sacrifice depicted on Trajan’s column (2nd century AD)
Animal Rights in Rome Modern and Ancient Attitudes: Collision or Agreement? A Roman ritual sacrifice depicted on Trajan’s column (2nd century AD)

2 Animal Shows in the Roman Arena: Some Ancient Literary Evidence
PLINY, Natural History, 8.20 (referring to 55 BC) Also in Pompey’s second consulship, at the dedication of the Temple of Venus Victrix, twenty elephants, or as some record, seventeen, fought in the Circus, their opponents being Gaetulians armed with javelins. CALPURNIUS SICULUS, Eclogue 7 (AD 57) I saw a theatre that rose skywards on interwoven beams and almost looked down on the summit of the Capitoline … Beasts of every kind I saw; here I saw snow-white hares and horned boars … Nor did I only see monsters of the forest: sea calves also I saw with albino bears pitted against them. Sources on the Emperor Commodus (2nd-4th century AD) Commodus devoted most of his life to ease and to combats of wild beasts and men. For example, all alone with his own hands, he dispatched five hippopotami together with two elephants on two successive days; and he killed rhinoceroses and a giraffe.

3 Animal Shows in the Roman Arena: Some Ancient Visual Evidence from Roman Mosaics

4 Gladiator (2000): our hero kills animals
Gladiator (2000): our hero kills animals! But don’t be alarmed, folks – it was only one animal, and it was only done in self-defence!

5 Pythagoras on the Wickedness of Animal Sacrifice OVID, Metamorphoses, 15.127-42 (AD 2-8)
It is not enough to have committed such wickedness: they involve the gods in crime, and believe that the gods above delight in the slaughter of suffering oxen! … Do not, I beg you, and concentrate your minds on my warnings! When you place the flesh of slaughtered cattle in your mouths, know and feel, that you are devouring your fellow-creature!

6 Should we Romans empathise with animals or not?
(1) Ovid, Fasti (simile for Ceres searching for daughter):    Just as a mother cow, whose calf has been snatched from her own udder, groans and seeks her offspring through every grove: so the goddess Ceres did not hold back her groans and carried herself along at speed, starting from your plains, Henna. (2) Ovid, Fasti (sacrifice at the Roman Fordicidia festival): But when the attendants have snatched the calves from the womb (of their mothers) and have offered the cut entrails to the smoking hearths …

7 Phoenix the Calf Civic Duty v
Phoenix the Calf Civic Duty v. Emotions during the Foot and Mouth crisis (2001)

8 Bibliography S.J. Green (2008) "Save the Cows? Augustan Discourse and Animal Sacrifice in Ovid's Fasti", Greece & Rome 55, 39-54 R. Sorabji (1993), Animal Minds and Human Morals: the Origins of the Western Debate, London, esp J.M.C. Toynbee (1973), Animals in Roman Life and Art, Baltimore