From <http://www.historytoday.com/daisy-dunn/roman-hunt>:
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The Roman Hunt
By Daisy Dunn

ROMAN EMPIRE
The elites of ancient Rome transformed the nature of hunting.

Youthful pursuit: Alexander the Great (right) and General Krateros on
a lion hunt. Macedonian mosaic, fourth century BC. Bridgeman Art
Library/Archaeological Museum, PellaOccupying a shadowy position
between hunting for subsistence and hunting for spectacle, the hunt of
the late Republic and early Empire is reminiscent of the kind
practised until recently in Britain.

One of the architects of modern hunting was Scipio Aemilianus
(Africanus the Younger), who in 168 BC fought under his father at
Pydna, at the end of the Third Macedonian War.

In much of Greece and the Near East learning to hunt had long been
seen as a rite of passage. Nature was to be feared as much as revered
and there was glory to be won in tempering it. By wrestling a lion to
death, as Plutarch recalled, Alexander showed the world who was king.

Scipio's Macedonian expedition brought him not only military
experience, but also, at his father's bidding, hunting lessons from
the region's royals. As Rome came into contact with inhabitants of the
Greek and Near Eastern city states it was gathering to itself across
the second century BC, it also absorbed their passion for hunting.

Yet Scipio could hardly have expected the pursuit to be viewed in the
same way in Rome as it was in Macedonia. The problem was not that it
was alien, but that the Romans tended to use the same word for the
hunt, venatio, whether it was pursued in the arena or woods, for food
or for pleasure. It could also be a metaphor for love. Hunting had
long been a necessary part of life in Italy - a means of protecting
one's land from roving predators, feeding the family, or, as Virgil
claimed, ingraining hardiness - but such utilitarian concerns
gradually became less prevalent.

The growth of urban economies alongside the Empire's expansion did not
mean that subsistence hunting disappeared, but contact with men beyond
must have encouraged broader discussion about the lessons of hunting.

When Scipio demonstrated his hunting skills in the city, against the
grain of Roman custom, the historian Polybius says he won a reputation
for himself that was unparalleled among his peers. Although Polybius,
as Scipio's friend and a keen hunter himself, wished to present him in
a good light, it is plausible that in the midst of other men tearing
each other apart in the Forum, Scipio was indeed winning valour by
tearing the flesh off wild beasts instead.

Whether this was his primary intention or merely a by-product of the
novelty of hunting in the city when his contemporaries were in the
forum, Scipio seems to have found that hunting carried considerable
cachet. His father might have seen the sport simply as 'the finest
physical preparation and character-building for young men', but
Scipio's success with it in Rome showed that it was a means to earn
plaudits.

When Augustus encouraged the youth of Rome to hunt, he intended it, as
Scipio's father had, as training. Cicero, too, was among those who,
like the Greeks, discerned parallels between hunting and the exercises
of war. But the popularity of the sport under the 'peaceful' emperors,
especially Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, suggests it did not have to
serve as preparation for anything.

Which is why it maintained the elitist roots with which it was
associated in the Hellenistic and Near Eastern courts. As in Greece,
most Roman hunting, including that of boar, deer and hare, was done on
foot, meaning that there was little equipment to purchase. Hunting, in
other words, was not just a rich man's game. So, rather than choose to
endorse it as a rite of passage, upper-class Romans sought to
transform it into a demonstration of status.

One of the many wonderful scenes described in Petronius' Cena
Trimalcionis, his novel of a lavish dinner party, features a pack of
hounds chasing a platter- mounted wild boar into the dining room,
where guests recline on tapestries decorated with hunting
paraphernalia. The boar is wearing a 'cap of freedom' because the
guests of the previous evening had passed him up, meaning he could now
return to the table 'as a freedman'. The theatre of the occasion is
obvious; less so is how accurate Petronius' vision was: that the hunt
is reduced to an absurd sideshow demonstrates how far it had become a
means of denoting good taste among the elite.

When interest in hunting peaked under Hadrian, a lifelong lover of the
sport, crowds rushed in unprecedented numbers to the arena. Here was
hunting for the masses. This was still venatio, but how different it
seemed from the idealised, mythological images of the Greek Meleager
spearing the bull in the wilds, with which men still chose to plaster
their sarcophagi.

Perhaps the majority just grew passive. The noble youth of Rome,
Horace lamented, were too afraid to hunt. There were quicker ways to
discover what the sport had to offer than participate in it oneself.
Had there been as unified a view of the different types of hunt in
Rome as the word venatio would suggest, then the idea of it as a rite
of passage or preparation for war might have been sustained and
perhaps it wouldn't still be branded with so elitist a brush today.

| Published in History Today Volume: 64 Issue: 2 2014
Daisy Dunn is an author and classicist. Her first book will be
published by HarperCollins in 2015.