Welcome, one and all,
To the greatest games ever witnessed.
A spectacle unlike any seen before.
A lone warrior will fight
In mortal combat
Not one fearsome beast...
Not five or ten...
But 20 of the fiercest beasts.
The greatest beast master in the empire,
Carpophorus.
The colosseum is the roman empire
Distilled to its most basic essence.
It is a symbol of conquest.
It's a symbol of dominance.
It's a symbol of imperial power
Radiating throughout the roman world.
Now.
Any emperor had the colosseum
At his disposal to use as a tool
To reassert his power and authority.
The message to the roman people
Is that life is a combat.
It was also a judicial warning.
Do not test the power of rome.
It was a death penalty offense.
If you live by the sword,
You die by the sword.
It demonstrates the power of the colosseum.
It made slaves into heroes,
Upending the power structure of rome.
The colosseum would come to symbolize
The rise and fall of rome.
It's all there:
The blood, the glory, the magnificence,
And the flaws
That made rome the greatest empire
That europe has ever seen.
83 a.D., the opening day of a new series of games
That emperor domitian promises will be dazzling.
The headline: "the most extravagant beast hunt
Rome has ever seen."
The beast hunts were much more
Than just fighting animals.
It was a way to demonstrate roman control
Over the entire world,
Both the human world and also the natural world.
Domitian is a real contrast to his brother and father.
While his father, vespasian,
Had been a bluff man of the people
And titus had been charming and suave,
Domitian was all harsh edges.
From domitian's perspective,
To follow his father, vespasian,
And his elder brother, titus,
That was a difficult act...
In terms of military prowess
And in terms of their popularity.
So domitian had to strike out in a different direction
To win the goodwill of the roman people.
He decides to use the power of the colosseum
By putting on the greatest show
That anyone had ever seen.
Narrator: At the center of this deadly spectacle,
One man, a famed beast master, or bestiarius,
Charged with facing 20 wild beasts
One after the other.
Most of 'em weren't successful long enough
For us to learn their name,
But there was one beast master
That the poet martial mentions.
His name is carpophorus.
To have caught the attention of a poet of martial's caliber,
The fight must've been incredible.
Beast masters were enslaved people.
And so therefore, they were also a display
Of roman domination over the people
Subjected by the roman empire.
Narrator: The animals carpophorus faces
Come from all over the roman world.
You had bears and wolves and boars from the northlands.
You had crocodiles and ostriches from egypt,
The big cats from north africa,
Tigers from asia.
The range of animals that appeared in the arena
Were, in a sense, a showcase of the power and the extent
Of the empire.
We can estimate perhaps a million animals
Were killed in the colosseum,
Many of whom were slaughtered
With the hands of beast masters.
Just as the romans brought wild animals
From all over the empire,
So the beast masters were drawn
From wherever the romans could find slaves
With the talent to kill.
Narrator: The romans' favorite hunting ground for animals
Was its prized territories in north africa.
The ancient kingdom of numidia
In what is now algeria and tunisia
Is hugely significant.
Numidia and north africa were extremely important
For rome.
They supplied luxury goods,
Like marble,
And they were the breadbasket for rome
And the rest of the empire.
Without northern africa,
Rome could not have fed itself.
Numidia was also
An extremely important resource
For wild animals.
Narrator: It was also most likely
Where carpophorus lived.
At the time of domitian's reign,
North africa had been under roman control
For over 200 years,
So the romans were no strangers
To these local hunters.
Even more cages.
Soon there'll be no more animals left in the mountains.
There was a part of the roman military
That was specifically assigned with the task
Of gaining the beasts for the beast hunts.
But also, the emperor will have employed
A series of hunters.
There would be locals of that particular area
Who had a knowledge of the animals,
Who had a knowledge of how to capture them.
An average roman soldier will have no idea
Where to find a lion or how to hunt a lion,
But the locals will.
Coming from the foothills of the aurès mountains,
Carpophorus would have been absolutely integral
To roman efforts from a very young age.
A lion.
The construction of the colosseum
Creates a great demand for wild beasts.
Anything that the romans could get their hands on
That they thought would be dangerous and interesting
To watch it die in the colosseum,
That's what they were looking for.
A lot of what we knew about the hunting and capture
Of wild animals from the arena comes from a mosaic in sicily,
In a place called piazza armerina.
It shows this enormous operation
In very great detail.
We see in the mosaic that they employed dogs
To round up bisons and deer.
It shows that leopards were captured
In cage-like structures.
We see that to capture big cats,
They would use live bait and lure them into pits.
Another technique was to use nets
That were disguised as bushes and get that animal
To be ensnared into the bush and be captured.
They show the capture of bison, lions,
Elephants, rhinos, lynxes.
Unfortunately, the roman thirst
For wild beasts for the arena has a disastrous impact
On the wildlife of north africa.
The result is, the considerable number
Of major species of animals were eliminated,
Simply eliminated.
The north african elephant appears to have disappeared
Completely as the result
Of roman appetite for animals to kill for sport.
One roman poet said, "no longer shall
The furthest wilds of libya echo with the roar of lions."
The ancient world is a place where might is right,
So the romans thought that they had the right
To exploit a territory, to exploit a people.
There is an appalling truth about the ancient world
That there is constant and sustained
And systematic enslavement of subject peoples,
What they describe as human booty.
We take them both to rome.
- Both? - The lion and your son.
You can't.
Take him away.
There's no sentiment attached.
Both the beast masters and the wild animals
Are seen as commodities.
And in terms of the colosseum,
They're simply there for the entertainment
Of the masses.
Narrator: Carpophorus now faces
The long and dangerous journey to rome...
As a slave.
Narrator: Within days of his capture
In his homeland of numidia,
Carpophorus boards a boat headed to rome.
He's thrust into a vast network
Of enslaved people spanning the mediterranean.
You have the unfree from africa,
From asia, from europe,
And the outposts of the roman world.
We're told that on one particular greek island
Called delos, 10,000 slaves a day
Would be traded across the roman empire.
Narrator: But carpophorus is bound for the capital.
Every day, there are hundreds of ships
Crisscrossing the mediterranean to ostia,
The port of rome.
And ostia means literally "mouth."
It was the mouth which fed the city of rome.
Rome was a consumer city.
Everything is being imported.
Everything is coming through ostia.
You're getting imported luxury items
From all over the empire, jewelry,
And of course you're getting imported animals.
The romans had an insatiable taste
For exotic animals.
Thousands and thousands and thousands
Were being shipped in.
It shows the importance of the games in roman life
That the emperors thought, "this is part of my job.
"this is part of what binds
The people of the city of rome to me."
This was what it took to sate their demands,
To meet their bloodlust.
Narrator: An endless supply of enslaved people
Serves that bloodlust.
The process of enslavement involved a kind of alienation.
Wait!
Entering the slave system of the ancient mediterranean
Entailed the leaving behind of one's former identity.
That meant that one was assigned a new name.
From now on, your name is...
Carpophorus.
Carpophorus means "fruit bearer,"
Someone who's bringing some of the resources
Of the roman imperial world to offer to the spectators.
The slave name is a shorthand for someone who is subhuman.
Someone who is more an animal than a person.
Removing someone's given name is an exercise in power
And control.
We have no friends here.
You and I.
Narrator: Carpophorus' final destination
Is 13 miles from the port of ostia,
The colossal city of rome.
Founded in the eighth century b.C.,
Rome was situated on the river tiber,
Allowing easy access of supplies from the sea.
Surrounded by seven hills,
Providing defense and protection,
What began as a small collection of villages,
By the first century a.D., had grown
Into the world's first megacity.
Rome had a population of a million people.
That is the largest population in any city
Anywhere in the world for 1,500 years.
The next city to be that sized population
Is victorian london.
Of those million people in rome,
Over 300,000 of them were slaves.
Carpophorus is coming into a city
That's tightly packed.
It's surrounded with just an absolute babble
Of voices speaking languages that he's never heard before.
There would've been egyptians
And alexandrians and africans,
Numidians and other berbers,
And there would've been arabs there.
There would've been europeans and germans
And people from britannia.
And that would've been one of the excitements of a city.
The city is this enormous vacuum
*ing up people from all over the empire,
So carpophorus would not have been at all out of place
In the city of rome.
Skin color was not a determination
Of status, of class.
It's not what you look like.
It's not even where you were born.
It's whether you are a roman citizen or not.
Narrator: Carpophorus will one day fight
As a beast master in his new city.
But first, he must learn his craft.
Carpophorus would not, of course, have been brought
Directly into the colosseum and put before the people.
He would've first been brought
To the ludus matutinus,
The newly established training ground
For beast hunters in the shadow
Of the colosseum.
Domitian was very, very conscious
Of the fact that his father and his brother
Sort of owned the colosseum,
And he felt that he had to go one further
To show he was really committed to roman sport
And to the roman people.
The way that domitian decided to strike out
And impress his own personality on the roman people
Was to build a specialized school
Devoted to beast fighting, the ludus matutinus.
The name means "morning schools"
Because the traditional time within the gladiatorial display
For beast hunting was in the morning.
The very, very large, expensive facility
Was an effort to establish a direct link
Between himself and the populace
Of the city of rome
As their benefactor and entertainer.
Welcome.
Now you belong to me.
It is a very militarized,
Very severe environment.
- Out! - These are brutal academies
For the violent arts.
You can't escape.
You'll have to learn to run faster than that.
The only way most of us leave is as dust.
Narrator: After arriving in rome,
Carpophorus begins his training
At a special school called a ludus.
If you're a beast master in a ludus,
Effectively, you're a slave.
It's no better than being in a military barracks
Or probably a prison.
We know that the training grounds
Were not comfortable athletic facilities.
These were harsh facilities
Designed to produce hard men.
We have now been able to excavate training grounds,
In particular at pompeii,
Showing that the places in which they slept were small.
There were undoubtedly several men
Crammed into a room at a time and it's very, very,
Overwhelmingly likely they were locked in
Whenever they were not training.
The ludus was closed off
From the surrounding neighborhood with walls.
Access was strictly controlled.
The beast masters are in the ludus to do one thing,
And that is to train for the games.
The training itself is exceptionally tough.
They were being trained in how to use a net,
How to use a spear, how to use a bow.
It really depends on what animal
They're going to be fighting.
Different techniques involved
In fighting different animals.
Almost everything that we know
About beast masters,
From the weapons they used,
The style of fighting that they used,
Or even the clothes that they wore,
Come directly from roman art,
So mosaics and frescos.
There are some beautiful mosaics,
Horrifying mosaics, that give us details
Of various aspects of the process.
We see them in action
At heightened moments especially.
Often the death blow for the animal.
There is an active self-identification there.
This person is carrying out the will of the roman people.
This person is a representative
Of our greatness as a society.
They were symbols of masculine virility.
They were * symbols.
They were exceptional athletes.
They were the superheroes of the empire.
In the same way that you might put up posters
Of famous actors,
That's how you would have beast masters painted
On the walls of houses.
When carpophorus is in the ludus,
He's having to learn a whole variety of skills.
He's having to learn hunting skills.
He's also having to learn to look after the animals
To make sure they stay healthy.
He's learning how to prepare them for the arena.
He may want to train them in certain tricks,
As it were.
All of this made the beast masters' occupation
Somewhere between a zookeeper and a professional fighter.
It involved a bunch of different skill sets.
It was extremely difficult,
And it was also, as you can imagine,
Extremely dangerous.
On the other hand, we do have these interesting stories
About animal memory and animal friendship
That are striking.
Don't get too close, carpophorus.
These animals are here for one reason.
One reason only.
Remember that.
Thinking about someone like carpophorus,
He has been uprooted from his homeland
And brought to fight in the capitol.
So were many of his victims, so were many of the animals
That were brought from his homeland,
So there might have been a strange sort of symbiosis
Or a strange sort of camaraderie
Between killer and killed.
There's the animals from his homeland
Who, in a certain sense, shared his fate.
But the spectacle was not just about killing the animals.
Sometimes it was just to watch them.
The romans really reveled in them.
Sometimes for the roman audience
In the colosseum, just seeing crocodiles
Lying in a dish full of water
Or seeing leopards run in a straight line
Without the blood was a very entertaining,
Amusing spectacle.
Roman historians report that this line of leopards
Running by caused people to just fall down laughing.
The average roman is not going to leave rome.
For them to be able to go to the colosseum was like
Bringing the farthest reaches of the known world
To rome itself.
It's an opportunity to see
What were to the romans aliens.
Imagine seeing a rhino for the first time.
We have sources talking about giraffes,
How terrified people were of giraffes,
An animal with its neck so long,
Spots like a leopard,
A ferocious creature that could reach
Into the highest roman apartment
And eat your children.
The poet martial writes about an incident
In which an elephant bowed in front of the emperor.
Of course, it's trained to bow,
But the romans don't know that.
They just see this creature,
This monster, this alien, bowing before the emperor,
And it shows his majesty, his divinity.
Narrator: But witnessing circus tricks
Isn't enough for rome's bloodthirsty crowds.
To please them, beast masters need to do more.
that's good. Good.
Good. Come on. Come here.
Beast fights were entertainment.
There would have had to be a showmanship
From the beast masters.
That would have had its own sort of routine
And its own climax and storytelling.
So they had to learn all these skills
In order to please not just the crowd
But the emperor.
You are ready.
Narrator: While carpophorus is training,
The emperor domitian returns from germania,
Where he has been fighting barbarian tribes.
He decides to celebrate his victory
At the colosseum and begins planning a series of games.
Domitian still has things to prove.
He still has this insecurity, and holding magnificent games
Is one way of working around that.
Narrator: Meanwhile, carpophorus fights his way
Across the empire in smaller arenas,
Earning a reputation and fans.
Each victory brought carpophorus more fame.
Made the crowd more interested in seeing him.
And that meant a ticket
To the final destination:
Fighting in front of the emperor himself.
Narrator: As a winning beast master,
It's likely that carpophorus would be given small perks.
Money talks in ancient rome.
I mean, every aspect of roman sports involves money,
Whether you're a charioteer, whether you're a gladiator.
You know, think of an average roman.
He's earning 9,000 sesterce a year.
Some gladiators could earn
15,000 sesterce in a single bout.
They became incredibly wealthy people.
You would imagine that a beast master
Would be paid the same
As a chariot racer or a gladiator,
But this wasn't the case.
These fighters of animals that could kill a man,
They worked for tips.
you earned it.
We do not hear of beast masters
Growing tremendously wealthy.
However, one thing that beast masters might hope for
Is to get their freedom through their fighting.
The possibility of freedom, it's there,
But you have to rise to the top.
You have to be somebody truly great.
Narrator: Like gladiators,
Beast masters compete to be featured performers,
No matter how dangerous.
These games will be bigger, bolder,
And better than anything rome has ever witnessed.
The emperor has requested one beast master
To be the main event of the morning opening,
A fight with 20 beasts,
One after another.
The man rome demands is...
Carpophorus.
There was rivalry between opposing beast masters.
After all, there was glory, fame,
And potential freedom at stake.
We have evidence of this
In curse tablets that were found
In the amphitheater in carthage.
The curse tablets contain spells and magical symbols
That were meant to evoke the help of demons
To harm rival beast masters.
"kill, destroy, and wound gallicus
At his hour in the ring of the amphitheater."
It's a very cutthroat industry,
And obviously, everybody's vying for that one spot.
It's a very narcissistic sport, and what we know
Is that they really hated each other at certain moments,
Entreating the gods to do nasty things
To other beast hunters.
"bind gallicus, the son of prima.
Let the bear crush him and wound him."
I'm sorry, my friend.
The gods will decide our fate now.
Narrator: In 83 a.D., it's finally opening day,
And domitian's great games are ready to begin.
The commencement of the games
Was a major deal for the city of rome.
These took place on holidays.
A great portion of the population
Would have the day off.
I think it's impossible to overstate
The kind of excitement and energy of a crowd
That's been pent up to see blood.
The buzz would've been building for months
By the time at least 50,000 people
Made their way to the colosseum and packed themselves in.
You can imagine for someone like carpophorus,
Beneath the floor of the amphitheater
And waiting for his turn to go up
And fight these 20 beasts...
This is an opportunity of a lifetime.
We can imagine the stink of fear,
The smell of wild animals.
Everything is ready to go.
You can hear the buzz of the crowd above.
Eventually, the emperor would take his place
And would be watched by everyone in the vicinity.
I have no doubt that domitian was well aware
Of what could happen to an emperor
Who failed to put on spectacular games
For the people in attendance.
So this matters for him as a way of shoring up
What seems to have been an unsteady political reputation.
Part of the spectacle
Of putting on a proper beast fight in the colosseum
Was making sure that
The animals were properly prepared.
That meant starving them.
So beast masters are faced
With fighting apex predators...
That are hungry, that are scared,
That are nervous, that are being thrust up
Through the bowels of the colosseum
Into the daylight, surrounded by screaming fans,
And then you've gotta go fight them.
That is a tremendously frightening prospect.
One man against one animal?
That's a show.
A single man will fight
20 of the fiercest beasts
From the furthest reaches of our empire.
One man against 20
Was a feat that had never been undertaken
And would not be undertaken ever again.
There's every chance that carpophorus would not survive.
Narrator: On the opening day of domitian's great games,
Carpophorus must survive fights
With 20 of the fiercest beasts in the empire,
One after another.
And now, the hyena.
Narrator: Carpophorus' feat was immortalized
By the imperial poet martial.
Martial was fascinated with the games.
He was a sort of aficionado of all human nature.
And of course, nothing was more fascinating
Than what happened in the colosseum.
"if former ages had borne carpophorus,
"marathon would not have feared the bull,
"nor leafy nemea the lion,
"nor the arcadians the maenalian boar.
"however many were the glorious deeds of hercules,
"it is far greater to have subdued
20 savage beasts all at once."
I think it's clear that what domitian
Is trying to do is draw an analogy,
That he's saying carpophorus is like hercules.
Narrator: The story of hercules
Was one of rome's most popular
And enduring mythological tales.
Hercules has to carry out 12 labors,
Including the slaying of monstrous beasts,
All to win the favor of the god apollo.
Sometimes, the games were put on
With a mythological theme.
They would reenact scenes of mythology.
These myths were a way to teach the romans
An important lesson.
But if you couldn't read,
The colosseum was an opportunity
For you to see them, to experience them.
Here's a mere mortal, a slave,
The lowest of society.
He is parallel to hercules.
Actually, you know what? He's greater than hercules.
Because hercules only had 12 labors.
Carpophorus had 20.
Beast 12, the rhino!
He's worthy of a poem.
Narrator: But martial's poem is not designed
To praise the beast master carpophorus.
His true subject watches the combat unfold
From the imperial box.
By extolling the exploits of carpophorus,
The poet martial is shedding glory
On the emperor domitian himself
Because domitian is the sponsor of these games.
Beast number 19!
Narrator: The emperor's beast hunts also serve
Another vital function for romans.
One of the most remarkable aspects
Of gladiatorial fighting in ancient rome
When it comes to these exotic animals,
Whether it be giraffes or rhinos
Or lions or tigers or the like,
Is that the meat from the dead animals
Was given out to the people of rome,
And this seems to have been a real crowd-pleaser,
But also seems to have actually made
An impact on the nutrition of the roman people.
It was an important source of protein
That they could count on.
You have been invited by the emperor
To eat with him, to drink with him,
To share in the games with him.
You remember the emperor that gave you lion burgers.
You'd never had that before.
Another reason we know about this
Is because they drained one of the sewage systems
In the colosseum, and what they found in it
Was bones of a bear, of an ostrich,
Of a wild boar, of horses.
So they obviously would have cut the meat up,
And then the bones were just thrown into the sewage system,
And they've survived to this day.
Narrator: On the sands of the arena,
Only one final beast
Stands between carpophorus
And freedom.
One final adversary!
They arrived together from far numidia,
But only one-- only one can live.
The lion's a fearsome opponent.
It is seven times stronger than a human being
And can weigh up to a half a ton.
It can run 50 miles an hour.
And the swipe of a lion's paw,
Delivering 400 pounds, was enough to decapitate
A human being.
For carpophorus, facing this apex predator,
This was a massive undertaking.
Narrator: The famed beast master carpophorus
Has somehow managed to slay 19 fearsome beasts
And survive.
Now, he has one opponent left.
There's almost like a religious aspect
To the lion.
He's this revered animal,
Much as the eagle was to the romans.
He's the top predator.
He's the top of the food chain.
And that, for the romans,
Is a representation of rome.
The lion has always been a symbol
Of strength and ferocity
In many ancient societies.
They appeared in the palaces of babylonian kings
And in the court of alexander the great.
But what the romans do is, they import lions
In their thousands.
So this is the romans, as ever,
Trying to go one step further
Than the civilization that went before them.
So they're saying, "it's not just that we can kill lions.
"it's that we can mass-slaughter
"the most ferocious and powerful creature
That mother nature has to offer."
For carpophorus,
It's an epic achievement that, sure enough,
Has made his name live down in history.
Perhaps by his victory and accomplishments,
Carpophorus actually challenged
The very foundations of roman society
Here was an enslaved person
Who actually elevated himself as a hero
And, in victory, became a symbol
To the roman people of success.
So perhaps carpophorus challenged
The very notion of what it meant
To be a slave.
Well done, brother.
Carpophorus was at the center of all
Because his feats in fighting exotic animals
Really was the highlight of domitian's games,
And domitian's games were meant to impress the people.
The games are a propaganda tool.
The collection and systematic execution
Of a bunch of exotic animals
Was a very strong statement
About the sort of superhuman power
Of the emperor himself.
Domitian's games were a great success.
The fact that they were written about to that extent,
That people remembered them,
Meant that he had been a hit with the roman people.
The games had served their purpose.
Of course, that didn't last forever.
In rome, the love of the people wasn't enough.
In 96 a.D., an increasingly paranoid
And tyrannical domitian
Made enemies among the senate,
Among rome's elite,
And on their orders, he was knifed to death.
We don't know what happens to carpophorus,
Where he goes from here,
What profession he pursues.
Does he go elsewhere in the roman world?
Does he find peace somewhere?
If a beast master were ever going to have
A chance for a life after the colosseum,
Carpophorus would be a good candidate for that.
We don't have to assume that coming to rome,
Whether willingly or unwillingly,
Was a one-way street.
I'd like to imagine that carpophorus,
After this triumph,
Has enough fame and enough money
To buy his own freedom
And perhaps, one day, to return to his homeland,
Where he's not the stranger
And the exotic professional hunter,
But someone who could live at ease in his native soil.