Tearing apart convicts made for quite a show, but it was not the only use Romans had for exotic animals. At least as popular were venationes, or “hunts,” a sport in which it was animals who were sentenced to death, whether at the hands of human hunters or in combat with other animals.

The venatio has survived into our day in the form of its direct descendant, Spanish bullfighting. Like modern bullfighting, the ancient venatio had its share of critics, including—not surprisingly given his reaction to the panther situation—Cicero, who thought the practice appealed to the worst parts of human nature. In a letter, the orator describes one venatio (organized by the famous general Pompey the Great) that was so brutal not even Rome’s typically bloodthirsty rabble could enjoy it.

The last day was that of the elephants, on which there was a great deal of astonishment on the part of the vulgar crowd, but no pleasure whatever. Nay, there was even a certain feeling of compassion aroused by it, and a kind of belief created that that animal has something in common with mankind.

The later writer Pliny the Elder describes the same sad spectacle.

When [the elephants] had lost all hope of escape, they tried to gain the compassion of the crowd by indescribable gestures of entreaty, deploring their fate with a sort of wailing, so much to the distress of the public that they forgot the general and his munificence carefully devised for their honour, and bursting into tears rose in a body and invoked curses on the head of Pompey.

Pompey’s elephant-hunt spectacle, which took place close to the end of the Roman Republic, provoked an emotional response from the crowds—but it by no means marked the end of venationes. In fact, over the course of the early Roman Empire, animal shows reached staggering new scales. In his autobiographical Res Gestae, Augustus claims that he had 3500 African animals killed in 26 venationes over the course of his reign. The better part of a century later, the emperor Titus inaugurated the Colosseum with a hundred days of spectacle in which 5000 wild beasts were killed. And in public games held from 108 to 109 C.E., the emperor Trajan arranged for 11,000 animals to fight in the arena.

Many descriptions of Roman animal spectacles list the types of animal killed along with their origins. While plenty of venationes featured local species like bulls and dogs, exotic animals—especially those from Africa and the eastern reaches of the Roman Empire—were far more exciting. What’s more, the Romans seem to have had little interest in breeding exotic animals at home. Animals caught in the wild were considered infinitely more dangerous, more valuable, and more fascinating. In his book Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome, the historian Donald Kyle explains,

[E]xotic animals got special treatment with expert handlers and attendants to ensure their health and readiness for their performance. They might also be displayed temporarily or, less likely, kept in menageries before the spectacles for which they were intended.

Capturing and transporting live animals from distant lands was a lucrative cottage industry in the Roman provinces. Several ancient texts describe the methods used by the suppliers of wild beasts. In his Satyricon, the late 1st century C.E. novelist Petronius waxed poetic about the business of procuring exotic animals for sport.

The wild beast is searched out in the woods at a great price, and men trouble [the god] Hammon deep in Africa to supply the beast whose teeth make him precious for slaying men; strange ravening creatures freight the fleets, and the padding tiger is wheeled in a gilded palace to drink the blood of men while the crowd applauds.

Other texts give more technical details. Pliny tells us how African hunters captured live elephants, which continued to be used occasionally in venationes despite the shame felt by the audience of Pompey’s elephant hunt. Men on horseback would chase the elephants into pits, where the animals would be left without food or water until they were physically depleted enough to be transported without too much trouble.