The Centrale Montemartini Museum hosts several archeological remains and beauties (but even some modern wonders) as those wonderful mosaics, that for us could be considered as historical witnesses of the ancient Roman society. It's time to know more about the ancient roman lifestyle.

Here we have, for example, some fragments of a big mosaics depicting hunting scenes. The hunting for the ancient Romans was not just a sport, but a real status symbol. As it happened in order tribal societies, to demonstrate to be a good hunter means to legitimate the power, the social role and the strenght. For this reason emperors, senators and noblemen spend a lot of time hunting or creating masterpieces depicting it. Not only that, because the animals and the activities around them were also a great business. Think about the venationes, the hunting showed at buildings like the Colosseum. The people like very much to see human being hunting animals, and something like that could provoke fame and popularity. But in what way did the ancient romans hunt animals?

Usually the boars were captured with spears, using men riding horse in order to confuse them, pushing the animals inside cages (that sometimes were renforced with iron rods). The bears, which were stronger and bigger, were usually pushed inside big nets, meanwhile lions and tigers were pushed until deep pits, using goats as baits. But some noblemen owned also private zoos, full of exotic animals, which were used for private hunting sessions. We know that in the ancient Rome there were several vivaria (that means "place of life"), which were real private reserves. The main function of a vivarium was to breed the animals, but sometimes they were turn to private large parks used to hunt animals. It is a cruel aspect of the ancient Roman society...