Sexual relations between a woman and an animal were often exhibited "under the stands" as they are today in the Place Pigalle in Paris. Such exhibitions were occasionally staged in the arena but the trouble was in finding an animal that would perform on schedule. A jackass or even a large dog that would voluntary mount a woman before a screaming mob was a rare animal and, of course, the woman had to co-operate. The fact that the woman was willing destroyed most of the crowd's fun. Bestiarii had worked hard trying to train animals to rape women, usually covering the woman with the hide of an animal or even building wooden mockups of a cow or a lioness and putting the woman inside. In a play called "The Minotaur," Nero had had an actor playing the part of Pasiphae put in a wooden cow while another actor, dressed as a bull, mounted him. These devices had nearly always failed with real animals and so the whole project had been abandoned.
Carpophorus, with his early training "under the stands" and his practical knowledge of wild animals, understood clearly enough what was the matter. Animals are controlled almost altogether by odour, not by sight. The young bestiarius kept careful watch on all the female animals in the stockyard and when they came into season, collected their blood on soft cloths. These cloths he numbered and put away. Then he got a woman from "under the stands" to help him. Working with extremely tame male animals who didn't mind noise and confusion, he wrapped the woman in the cloths and induced the animal to mount her. As with the man-eaters, he established a habit pattern with these animals, never allowing them to come into contact with a female of their own kind. As the animals grew more confident, they also grew more aggressive. If the woman, following Carpophorus' orders, struggled, a cheetah would sink his dewclaws into her shoulders and grabbing her by the neck with his jaws, shake her into submission. Carpophorus used up several women before he got the animals properly trained—with a bull or a giraffe the woman usually didn't survive the ordeal—but he was always able to get more broken-down old bags from the provinces who didn't fully realize what their job involved until too late.
Carpophorus produced a sensation with his new technique. No one had ever dreamed of having lions, leopards, wild boars and zebra rape women. The Romans were especially fond of acting out mythological scenes in the shows and as Zeus, the king of the gods, often raped young girls in the form of various animals, these scenes could be re-enacted in the arena. Under Carpophorus' direction, a bull raped a young girl representing Europa to great applause.
Apuleius had left us an animated account of one of these scenes. A woman who had poisoned five people in order to get their property was sentenced to be thrown to the wild beasts in the arena but first, as an additional punishment and disgrace, she was to be raped by a jackass. A bed was set up in the middle of the arena, inlaid with tortoise shell and provided with a feather mattress and an embroidered Chinese bedspread. The woman was tied spread-eagle on the bed. The jackass had been trained to kneel on the bed, otherwise the business could not have been concluded successfully. When the show was over, wild beasts were turned loose in the arena and quickly put an end to the wretched woman's suffering.
Carpophorus kept his method for training the animals a profound secret, pretending it was all due to a special amulet which he invariable hung around the animal's neck before letting it go into the arena. Although he was offered fabulous prices for the amulet, he refused to sell it. At last, he gave it to his master at the school in return for cancelling his remaining years as a slave. Somehow, the amulet never worked for his master.
The old-time bestiarii were very contemptuous of Carpophorus. They claimed that he had degraded his noble profession by putting on filthy exhibitions. They forgot that in their day they had been criticized by the still earlier bestiarii for training man-eaters to devour helpless men and women. Actually both groups were right. The shows were growing progressively more and more corrupt. What once had been real exhibitions of courage and skill, even though brutal, were gradually becoming merely excuses for cruelty and perverted sexual exhibitions.
Although Carpophorus boasted that he didn't give a hoot for what the old-timers said, their contempt bothered him. So he continued to fight in the arena as a venator, once killing twenty wild beats in one day, presumably with his bare hands. What the beasts were, the accounts don't say. At this savage and dangerous work, Carpophorus was un-equaled. As a result, he was the only bestiarius whose name has come down to us.
CHAPTER SIX
Borrowing heavily from Martial, Suetonius and other Roman writers, let's picture a day at the Colosseum at the time of the Emperor Domitian during the heyday of the games when Carpophorus was top bestiarius.
For weeks before the show, tickets have been distributed by wardheelers, thrown to the crowds by the editor giving the games, and sold by speculators. People not fortunate enough to get a ticket have started to line up before the various entrances to the great building days in advance hoping to find standing room. They have brought their food with them and are amused by tumblers, musicians and dancers who hope that the crowd will toss them a few copper coins. The ticket holders are shown to their seats by ushers called locarii: that is, men who show you the right location. Then the soldiers guarding the entrances step aside and there is a frenzied dash for seats in the aisles and standing room in the top tier. It's every man for himself. Women are knocked aside, children trampled, and fights break out in the tangle of passageways and ramps leading to the packed tiers. In one such rush, forty people were killed. At last the gigantic building is filled, people crowding so close around the masts holding the awning that the sailors have hard work to handle the rigging.
The whole amphitheatre is diffused by a red glow from the light shining through the awning covering the stadium. With this awning for protection, the signs advertising the games need no longer read: "Weather permitting55 or "Will go on rain or shine" as they formerly did.
Perfumed fountains shoot coloured water into the air, cooling the vast circus and sweetening the atmosphere. Marble statues of various gods and goddesses clasp urns, dolphins and so on from which, scented water gushes. The statues could also apparently be made to "sweat" perfumes by some mechanism. The atmosphere takes some sweetening as already it stinks of sweat, leather, garlic and the odour of beasts in the pens below the arena. Later, it will smell a great deal worse.
The moat is filled with water constantly circulating and cooled with snows brought down from the mountains, for by noon the stadium will be like a roasting oven. Summers in Rome are hot and this is one of the summer shows. Without the awning to protect the crowd from the sun, it would be torture to sit in the stadium. Caligula, to punish the mob for criticizing one of his shows, had the awning removed and kept the people in the stadium under the direct rays of the sun for several hours. Many people died of sunstroke. Most of the crowd have brought fans and are wearing their lightest togas or simply sleeveless tunics.
Hawkers selling programmes, cool drinks, sweetmeats and cushions to cover the hard marble seats, force their way through the packed aisles as best they can. From the cages below the arena come the roars of lions, the howling of wolves and the trumpeting of elephants. People are busy making bets with each other or with the bookies who crawl from one seat level to another, shouting the current odds on the gladiators. The sound of the crowd is like the noise of "surf in a storm," wrote a Roman poet.