New Evidence of Women Fighting Beasts in the Roman Arena: The Woman in the Mosaic from Reims

Abstract

Women fighting beasts in arena games are attested by the written sources, but no visual source is known to show their image. It is proposed that a figure in a mosaic found in Reims in 1860 but destroyed in World War I, and largely forgotten since then, depicts one of those women. Evidence is presented proving that (1) she is a woman–whereas previous researchers only suggested that she might be a woman; and (2) she is a beast-fighter–a huntress, a venatrix–whereas previous researchers have wrongly identified her as an agitator, an inexistent arena role, or a paegniarius, a kind of clown with a whip. The identification of the sole known visual source depicting a Roman female beasts-huntress alone is very important, but, additionally, since the mosaic dates to the third century, it adds a whole century to the history of those female arena huntresses, since venatrices are supposed to have disappeared soon after AD 100, and to the history of women in the Roman arena, since female gladiators disappeared in AD 200. Thus, she is a female arena fighter (and performer) recorded at a later date.