Thrown to the Lions

[Epictetus]

Seneca talks about beast-fighting in the arena on a number of occasions, but he uses them to illustrate different philosophical points that he makes. Are they accurate representations? Perhaps, but I don’t know.

For instance, he seems to imply movement is used to get some animals to attack:

The bull is aroused by a red colour, the asp strikes at a shadow, bears and lions are irritated by a handkerchief; all creatures by nature wild and savage are alarmed by trifles.

Seneca, On Anger

(Side note: So red was used to make a bull charge even then! I learned something new today.)

He also mentions: disembowelling a person to get the animals to eat him (perhaps this is how they attacked bound captives?), using chariots to scare lions back into their cages (they were frightened of the wheels, evidently), and having witnessed a contest where the beast-fighter used to be the trainer of a lion, and the lion recognised him and refused to attack him.

If I remember correctly, some Lives of the Saints have cases where the lion refused to attack, but these might not be reliable. Also, I swear I recall Horace or Juvenal complaining about watching a case when the lions wouldn't attack. However, I couldn't find this episode using word searches so I might have imagined it.