(please forgive the horrible pic, the coin looks much better in hand) Domitian, AE quadrans, 17 mm, 2.60 g, Rome Obv: African rhinoceros walking left. Rev: IMP DOMIT AVG GERM around large SC According to Pliny the first rhinoceros ever seen in Rome was an Indian single-horned rhino in the games given by Pompey the Great in 55 BC. Cicero, who attended these games, mentions elephants but no rhino. Cassius Dio writes that the first rhino seen in Rome was under Octavian in 29 BC : it was an Indian single-horned one from the spoils of Alexandria. We can trace part of his journey because Strabo could see him exhibited in Corinth on his way to Italy. In Rome he (I assume he was a male, but he could as well have been a female, like all others) was exhibited in the Saepta Julia. Another rhino (we don't know which species) was later brought to Rome and could be seen in 8 AD in the games given by Augustus in the name of Germanicus. The poor animal was opposed to an elephant and the elephant won. After this, there is no word of any rhino in Rome until Domitian. In 86 or 87 (Ludi Capitolini or Saeculares) an extraordinary two-horned African rhino was opposed in the Colosseum to a bull and to a bear. The poet Martial composed epigrams on these fights : "The rhinoceros, exhibited for thee, Caesar, in the whole space of the arena, fought battles of which he gave no promise. Oh, into what terrible wrath did he with lowered head, blaze forth! How powerful was that tusk to whom a bull was a mere ball!" or "While the trembling keepers were exciting the rhinoceros, and the wrath of the huge animal had been long arousing itself the conflicts of the promised engagement were beginning to be despaired of; but at length his fury, well-known of old, returned. For easily as a bull tosses to the skies the balls placed upon his horns so with his double horn did he hurl aloft the heavy bear!" The rhino became an arena superstar and there is no doubt it is him who was depicted charging, head lowered, tail raised, on the common quadrantes minted in very large quantities. The fight against the bull was also depicted on a guttus figured among other pontifical implements on the frieze of the temple of divine Vespasian. The fragment is now in the Tabularium, overlooking the Forum. The image of this rhino became a standard that was also reproduced on mosaics, lamps, bronze statuettes... The rhino fighting a bull, a small detail of the frieze of the Templum Divi Vespasiani, Rome. Mosaic of Aquinum (Aquino, Italy) Bronze statuette found underwater in a Roman 2nc c. wreck, Port-Vendres, France. The rhino type was imitated in Alexandria on small denominations under Domitian, Trajan and Hadrian. How did this rhino come to Rome? He was from sub-saharian Africa, for there were no rhinos in North Africa at this time. He was probably captured in East Africa, carried on a ship on the Red Sea to Rome via Egypt. There is no word of a venatio in which he may have been killed, so he may rather have been stans missus, like a victorious gladiator, and retired in some imperial menagerie where the public could see him. There are brief mentions of other rhinos under Antoninus Pius, Commodus, Caracalla, Elagabalus and Philip the Arab, but not always in very reliable sources. The last mention is in Historia Augusta: an unique rhino paraded in 248 during the Saeculares of the Millenium. After this one, no rhino will be seen in Rome until 1750.
Very cool! The rhino is more than likely the basis for the Greeks depiction of the unicorn (they said unicorns were black beasts)
a bit of a tangent, but an interesting book on mythology and fossils-- The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times
Thanks for the detailed write-up. It's difficult to believe that such battles to the death between pairs of large animals (lions, tigers, bulls, bears, rhinos, etc.) were still being staged for largely American audiences south of the border in Mexico in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Here's my Domitian rhino: Domitian (son of Vespasian), AE Quadrans [1/4 As] 84-85 AD, Rome Mint. Obv. African Rhinoceros with two horns advancing right with head down/ Rev IMP DOMIT AVG GERM (clockwise around starting at 1:00), S C across. RIC II-1 Domitian 249 (2007 ed.), Sear RCV II 2834, Cohen 673. (Legend starting at 1:00 rather than 7:00 is rarer variety, with only 4 examples at OCRE -- none at British Museum; see http://numismatics.org/ocre/id/ric.2_1(2).dom.249 -- and 8 at acsearch.) 16.5 mm., 2.56 g. Purchased from Kölner Münzkabinett, April 2021.* *Issued after Domitian’s assumption of Germanicus title in late 83 AD, but before the Consular date XI was added to his quadrantes in 85. It was possibly distributed as a token and/or souvenir to the crowds at the Colosseum, which Domitian completed in 82 by adding its uppermost story. See Martial’s Liber De Spectaculis (http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/martial_on_the_games_of_domitian_01_text.htm) re exhibition of rhinoceros at Colosseum, and re practice of distributing tokens to crowd. See also T.V. Buttrey, “Domitian, the Rhinoceros, and the Date of Martial's ‘Liber De Spectaculis,’" The Journal of Roman Studies Vol. 97 (2007), pp. 101-112, at https://www.jstor.org/stable/20430573?seq=1.
Nice, @GinoLR Roman Provincial Trajan Egypt AE Dichalkon Laureate hd L Rhinoceros walking L LI-Z yr 17 CE 113-114 12.9mm 1.25g Emmet 719 var. rhino right Ex: SteveX6 collection
