Roman mosaic shows topless woman battling leopard in arena, study finds

For the first time ever, an image of a Roman woman battling a beast in an arena has been identified.
While ancient texts say that some women battled beasts in the arenas of the Roman Empire, this is the first visual evidence that this occurred, according to a new study published March 22 in The International Journal of the History of Sport. The women who battled beasts were known as venatrices or huntresses.
In the Roman Empire, beast hunters put on shows in arenas, where they would battle wild animals, such as boars and bears. Unlike gladiators, 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.

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 Mañas, a sports researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote in the new study.
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, Mañas told Live Science in an email.

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," Mañas said.

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," Mañas wrote in the study. But there are several clues that the person is female and a huntress, Mañas 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.