Colosseum’s drains reveal sausage dogs slaughtered in bloody bear fight bouts

Dachshunds were bred to hunt badgers and can be “courageous to the point of rashness”. Photo / 123RF

Sausage dogs were used for entertainment in the Colosseum and may have been pitted against bigger animals in bloody fights watched by ancient Roman spectators, archaeologists have revealed in a new discovery.

Archaeologists excavating the ancient drains that lie beneath the 2,000-year-old amphitheatre in Rome found, for the first time, the remains of small dogs that were similar to the modern-day dachshund.

The dogs would have been either used as part of staged battles on the blood-soaked floor of the arena or trained to perform acrobatics, just like dogs in modern-day circuses, experts said.

They were the ancestors of sausage dogs rather than true dachshunds – the breed did not evolve as we now know it until the 18th century.

“We found many bones from dogs which were similar to the modern sausage dog,” Alfonsina Russo, director of the Colosseum, told The Telegraph.

“They were less than 30cm in height. We think they may have been used to perform acrobatic tricks just as you would see in a circus today. Or it may be that they were used as part of staged hunts or even pitched against bears and animals like that. We don’t know for sure.”

The idea of sausage dogs pitched against bears may seem an unequal match, but despite their size the small dogs can be fierce. Dachshunds were bred to hunt badgers and can be “courageous to the point of rashness”, according to the American Kennel Club.

During a year-long study, archaeologists, often working in the mud on their stomachs, explored 70m of drains and sewers beneath the Colosseum, along which all sorts of detritus was flushed.

Along with the ancient remains of the small dogs, they also found the bones of large dogs and those of leopards, lions, bears and ostriches.

They came across more than 50 bronze coins from the late Roman period, as well as a silver coin from around 170-171 AD that commemorated 10 years of rule of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, who was played by Richard Harris in the film Gladiator.

They discovered the remains of the snacks that Roman spectators ate in the stands, from olives and nuts to seeds from cherries, peaches, figs, grapes and melons.

They also unearthed dice that would have been used in games as the crowd waited for the spectacles to begin.

The discoveries shed more light on the life of the Colosseum, which could hold up to 50,000 spectators. As the Roman Empire crumbled, it fell into disuse around 523 AD.