Commodus, emperor of Rome, killed a giraffe during one of his public animal hunts. Cassius Dio, a Roman senator who lived under Commodus and attended the emperor’s games, recorded the killing. Dio called the animal a camelopard, a name joining the camel’s long neck to the leopard’s patterned skin. His account includes the giraffe among the rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses and elephants the ruler killed himself. The event belongs to Commodus’s elaborate arena performances, in which animal hunts became displays of imperial power.
Commodus shared the imperial title with his father, Marcus Aurelius, from 177 CE. When Marcus died in 180, he ruled alone, until his own death in 192 CE. Toward the end of that reign, he appeared before audiences at the Colosseum in Rome, killing animals and participating in staged gladiatorial combat. He also styled himself after Hercules, the hero associated with feats of physical strength. The hunts publicly linked him with Hercules, while senators regarded an emperor’s performances as a degradation of his office.
Dio’s testimony has acquired details that he never supplied. Dio names the giraffe, but does not tell us which weapon Commodus used, how the animal died or how spectators reacted to that particular killing. He does not report the emperor announcing that he had defeated a monster. Later descriptions sometimes fill those gaps with invented action. His account records the death of an exceptionally rare animal in a display of imperial authority.
The Giraffe in Cassius Dio’s Account
The crucial passage is Cassius Dio, Roman History 73.10.3. In it, Dio reports Commodus killing five hippopotamuses and two elephants across two consecutive days, as well as rhinoceroses and a camelopard. He lists these deeds while describing the emperor’s habits in the arena, rather than giving a minute-by-minute account of a single event. The passage does not date the giraffe’s death or trace the animal’s arrival. It confirms that Dio reported the killing without providing its circumstances.
Dio was writing about the ruler under whom he had entered the Senate. He states elsewhere in his account that he attended the games and joined in the required acclamations, which makes his observations of the spectacles especially valuable. Yet the history’s sections on Commodus reach us largely through a Byzantine epitome, an abbreviated copy prepared later. The surviving text explicitly names the camelopard, though its abbreviated transmission leaves many questions unanswered.
Herodian, another historian of the period, adds information about how Commodus hunted in front of an audience. In Herodian 1.15, he describes the emperor throwing javelins and shooting from protected positions, at times moving around an elevated terrace. The animals include deer, leopards, lions and ostriches. A giraffe does not appear in Herodian’s list. Both historians describe the imperial hunts; only Dio specifically mentions a giraffe.
Nothing in those accounts describes Commodus attacking the giraffe with Hercules’ club or announcing it as an evil creature. The surviving writers do not say that attendants made it look fierce, or that the crowd cheered or protested as it died. Those details have no support in the cited ancient texts. The animal’s inclusion in Dio’s list should be distinguished from later reconstructions of what its last moments might have looked like.
Why Romans Called a Giraffe a Camelopard
Romans had already seen a camelopard during Julius Caesar’s celebrations of victory in 46 BCE. In Dio’s account of Caesar’s games, 43.23, Cassius Dio pauses to describe the strange creature brought before the Roman public. Its long neck, unequal-looking legs and spotted hide prompted comparisons with animals familiar to Mediterranean readers. The composite name emerged from those comparisons. Caesar’s event was an exhibition of the animal; Dio gives no account of Caesar killing it. This earlier encounter helps explain why Commodus’s giraffe was remarkable even to a public accustomed to elaborate spectacles.
Pliny the Elder, Natural History 8.69 also identifies Caesar as the first to display a camelopard in Rome. Pliny treats the animal as a natural curiosity, describing its distinctive appearance and even comparing its disposition to that of a wild sheep. He stresses its unusual looks more than any ferocity. For Roman readers, the name provided a way to describe a creature few had encountered. The compound name described its appearance without classifying it as a supernatural monster.
Giraffes remained rare in the Mediterranean world. Bringing one to Rome meant obtaining it from an African habitat, finding people capable of handling it, providing water and fodder, and moving it over long distances. The records do not reveal where Commodus’s animal was caught or which route its handlers followed. An itinerary involving Egypt and Mediterranean shipping is plausible given Roman connections, but there is no evidence for a particular caravan, vessel or river port. Its keepers are equally unknown.
A sponsor could choose to exhibit a rare animal alive, allowing visitors to inspect something they might never see again. A staged hunt offered a different use of that rarity: the emperor could demonstrate that his reach extended far enough to bring such creatures under his control. The hunts carried an obvious political message, but Dio never identifies Commodus’s particular reason for killing the giraffe.
How Commodus Turned the Colosseum into His Hunting Ground
Roman animal spectacles were called venationes. They could involve specialist hunters, displays of unfamiliar species or arranged encounters between animals and people. Gladiatorial contests were another form of entertainment, with trained human fighters and established fighting equipment. Commodus took an unusual part in both types of show. Emperors commonly sponsored games and watched from privileged seats; here the ruler became a performer before the people and the Senate. Writers from the senatorial class saw that choice as a public degradation of the imperial office.
Dio describes a fourteen-day series of games late in the reign. During one event Commodus killed one hundred bears while standing above the arena. Barriers crossing the space divided it into four sections, restricting the animals’ movements and keeping them within range. On other days he entered the arena floor to strike creatures brought toward him or delivered in nets. The animals and their handlers worked within a carefully arranged setting. The controlled setting made these hunts safer than encounters with wild animals outside the city.
Herodian also describes an elevated terrace that allowed Commodus to attack from relative safety, even as he praises the ruler’s accuracy. He says unusual animals arrived from places including India and regions Romans described as Ethiopia. Those geographical terms do not give us a capture record for each animal, and they can reflect Roman ideas about distant lands rather than an exact origin. Still, bringing such creatures into the amphitheater required knowledge, labour and networks capable of collecting and transporting them.
Commodus performed as a gladiator as well as a hunter. Dio says he appeared as a secutor, a fighter equipped for close combat whose expected opponents included men carrying nets. During these appearances the emperor held a shield in his right hand and a wooden sword in his left. His opponents faced a ruler they could scarcely treat as an equal adversary, and Commodus received immense payments from the gladiatorial fund. The conditions differed substantially from the careers and risks experienced by professionals in Roman gladiator schools and training. His opponents could hardly risk defeating him.
The giraffe’s death cannot be reconstructed with that same precision. Other hunts described by Dio and Herodian used handlers, barriers and controlled approaches, so comparable arrangements may have been available. Yet neither author describes an enclosure or weapon specifically for the camelopard. The sources say nothing about the animal’s movements or injuries. The detailed accounts of other hunts cannot fill in this missing episode.
The Emperor Who Wanted to Be Hercules
Commodus’s public identity increasingly drew on Hercules, the Roman counterpart of the Greek hero Heracles. Hercules defeated the Nemean lion and the many-headed Hydra; his club and lion skin were recognisable attributes. By associating himself with those feats, Commodus presented physical dominance in the language of heroic and divine favour. The club and lion skin identified the hero at a glance. More of the hero’s place in ancient religion can be found in the traditions of Heracles and his labors, although the emperor’s use of that imagery had a specifically political purpose.
Herodian reports in 1.14.8–9 that Commodus wanted to be addressed as Hercules, wore a lion skin and carried a club. He ordered images of himself erected and gave the months new names drawn from his own titles. Dio likewise records official language calling him the Roman Hercules, as well as a large statue altered to have Commodus’s head and the hero’s attributes. His identification with Hercules extended from the arena to official titles, statues and even the calendar.
Dio’s account complicates the idea that Commodus wore Hercules’ lion skin throughout every hunt. In 73.17–18, he says the skin and club were carried in procession and displayed on a gilded chair in the amphitheater. Dio then describes the emperor entering dressed as Mercury, the Roman messenger god, before changing to a tunic for the performance. Herodian’s costume description differs. The sources describe different costumes and several divine identities within Commodus’s public performance. Neither establishes what he wore when the giraffe was killed.
A marble portrait preserves the Hercules imagery in unusually elaborate form. The Capitoline Museums’ bust of Commodus as Hercules, inventory MC 1120 was discovered in the Horti Lamiani on Rome’s Esquiline Hill in 1874. The emperor wears the lion skin and holds the hero’s club and the apples of the Hesperides, a prize associated with another labour. Figures and emblems of abundance appear on the sculpted base. The portrait makes his claim to the hero’s divine prestige explicit.
The same message appeared on circulating coinage. A copper-alloy coin dated to 191–192 CE in the British Museum shows Commodus wearing a lion-skin headdress, with a club represented on its reverse. A denarius of the same period pairs the emperor as Hercules with a personification of Africa. People far from Rome could encounter such images without ever attending the arena. The personification evokes imperial authority over faraway regions. The coin cannot be tied to the killing of any particular giraffe.
The Animals Behind the Imperial Display
Exotic animals helped the Colosseum present the extent of Roman influence in a visible form. For most people in Italy, a tiger, elephant or giraffe was a creature known through reports or images, if at all. Its appearance in the amphitheater required access to distant habitats and to handlers, merchants, officials and transport. Some animals came from Roman territories, while others travelled through diplomatic or commercial connections outside imperial borders. At the games, the distances travelled by the animals became visible signs of imperial reach.
Matthew B. Roller examines the political purpose of imperial hunts in his 2022 study of dining and hunting at the Roman imperial court. He describes courtly hunts as opportunities for emperors to perform power in front of their companions, and treats Commodus’s arena appearances as an especially telling example because senators had to witness them. Roller also distinguishes imperial hunting grounds from commercial vivaria, enclosures used to keep animals. The existence of such facilities does not show that every enclosure had the same purpose or that the emperor personally hunted in each one.
The sources say almost nothing about the cost of Commodus’s particular giraffe. There is no surviving account book naming the seller, no record of a keeper’s wage and no inventory describing the journey to Rome. Dio complains more broadly about the vast expenditure on games and animals, and he reports the extraordinary payments awarded to Commodus for gladiatorial performances. Neither statement gives a price for the camelopard.
Before it reached the arena, the giraffe had to be captured, transported, housed and kept alive. Each stage required people to handle a species that was scarce in Roman collections. Its rarity also made displaying it alive a possible spectacle in its own right, as Caesar’s earlier exhibition shows. Commodus chose a fatal hunt for an animal that could also have been exhibited alive.
What Roman Art Tells Us About Giraffes
Roman visual art offers evidence of how unusual animals were imagined and displayed, though most surviving examples are unrelated to Commodus himself. A large mosaic from Lod, ancient Lydda in modern Israel, includes a giraffe beside other animals such as a rhinoceros and an elephant. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s analysis of the Lod mosaic discusses the connections between its scenes and amphitheater imagery. It probably decorated an affluent residence around 300 CE, about a century after the emperor’s death. The mosaic shows continuing interest in exotic wildlife; it offers no evidence about Commodus’s hunt.
A separate mosaic fragment in the Art Institute of Chicago shows a handler leading a giraffe. It dates to the fifth century and carries the accession number 1993.345. The museum’s catalogue entry identifies the fragment, and a 2025 published discussion of the mosaic examines the object and its imagery. It portrays an animal under human control. The handler cannot be identified with anyone who worked at Commodus’s games.
Neither mosaic suggests that Romans regarded the camelopard as a mythical monster. It could signify distant lands, unusual wildlife or an expensive display, depending on the setting. Pliny’s description had already stressed the animal’s striking appearance and comparatively mild disposition. Hercules fought monsters in familiar mythological narratives, and Commodus borrowed his reputation for conquest. No surviving account says the emperor advertised the giraffe as one of the hero’s supernatural adversaries. The animal’s ordinary biological identity matters when separating the Roman spectacle from later storytelling.
Mosaics illustrating venatio scenes show how Roman patrons chose to represent staged animal hunts. The floor at Nennig, in the Moselle region, contains violent encounters involving animals and performers, making such entertainments visible in the decoration of a villa. It helps establish the imagery Roman audiences associated with amphitheaters. It cannot tell us how Commodus’s giraffe was restrained, which weapon struck it or what a particular group of spectators thought. The mosaic gives us no direct evidence for the details of that earlier hunt.
What the Crowd Saw and What the Senators Feared
Herodian describes visitors travelling to see the emperor’s displays from Italy and nearby provinces. He praises Commodus’s accuracy and recalls animals struck down with single blows. His picture allows for spectators who were impressed by what they saw, even if elite commentators condemned the emperor’s conduct. Dio, attending as a senator, emphasizes the humiliation of men ordered to appear and shout praise. Senators’ resentment and other spectators’ admiration could coexist at the same games.
Dio recounts one especially unsettling incident in Dio 73.21. Commodus approached the senators with an ostrich’s severed head and a bloody sword, then gestured toward them in a way Dio took as a threat. Dio says he chewed laurel leaves from his garland and persuaded neighbours to do likewise, hiding laughter that could have been dangerous if noticed. Dio’s account shows how a performance could threaten senators who could not safely refuse it. It concerns an ostrich, though, and gives no evidence about reactions to the giraffe.
Dio adds that some people avoided the spectacles or left them because they were ashamed or afraid. Herodian’s account of large audiences and the senator’s account of compulsion need not describe the same response from everyone present. Spectators could be curious or impressed; senators compelled to praise the emperor might also resent him. In a public space controlled by imperial authority, approval could be expected rather than freely offered. Those differing reactions reflect the authors’ positions and the audiences they describe.
Commodus used the arena to make his authority visible through his own body. Ordinary spectators could watch a powerful man kill creatures brought from far away, while the senators could be made to celebrate his victories whether or not they approved. The shows entertained the public while requiring senators to endorse the emperor’s authority. Dio’s list of animals, with its exceptional giraffe, records the extravagance of the games. It also belongs to a larger account of a ruler who made public performance inseparable from political intimidation.
The Arena, the Emperor and the Surviving Evidence
The building retains a passage traditionally associated with Commodus, although its construction probably predates his rule. The covered corridor known as the Passage of Commodus connected the emperor’s seating area with the exterior of the Colosseum. Archaeological dating places its construction in the late first or early second century CE. Restoration made it possible for the archaeological park to open the passage to visitors in October 2025, revealing decorations related to the amphitheater’s entertainments. Its existence says nothing about the route Commodus took on the day of the giraffe’s death.
His claims to heroic strength ended with a conspiracy inside the imperial court. On 31 December 192 CE Commodus was murdered after members of his inner circle turned against him, including the praetorian prefect Laetus, the chamberlain Eclectus and his companion Marcia. Dio reports that an attempt at poisoning failed, after which the athlete Narcissus strangled the emperor. The ancient accounts disagree on some particulars. Similar court conspiracies are discussed in the history of Roman emperors killed by their own circles. His murder took place outside the arena.
The bust, coins and Dio’s narrative show how Commodus joined Hercules imagery to the arena. Dio specifically records the animal’s death at Commodus’s hands, while other evidence documents the emperor’s hunts and his identification with Hercules. We do not know the weapon used against the giraffe, the steps taken by handlers or how spectators reacted at that moment. The unequal power in the arena is clear. Commodus could have a rare creature brought to Rome and killed as part of a public performance, while senators obliged to attend witnessed the emperor acting out his chosen vision of rule.
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