I’d been reading about the lion in the Bible before I went to Europe and I met a lot of paintings, statues and references to them when I got there.
Indeed, the more I thought about it, I wondered if they were rampant across the continents two thousand and more years ago, something like vicious rats with teeth and claws.
Certainly, the king of the jungle appeared in many coats of arms of real kings.
The whimsey struck me and so I took photos whenever I encountered their images. Here are a few.
Of course you expect to see lions at Rome’s Colosseum. They killed a lot of wild animals there.
According to the colosseum website:
“During just one festival in 240 AD a staggering: 2,000 gladiators, 70 lions, 40 wild horses, 30 elephants, 30 leopards, 20 wild asses, 19 giraffes, 10 antelopes, 10 hyenas, 10 tigers, 1 hippopotamus and 1 rhinoceros were slaughtered. So many wild beasts were killed in the Colosseum and other Roman arenas that some exotic animals became virtually extinct.”
The Assyrians liked to kill lions, too. From an entire room about hunting lions at the British Museum, we have friezes showing lions fighting for their lives.
Society considered lion hunting the sport of kings. I looked away from many exquisite depictions of dying lions, feeling so sad.
Did lions live in Europe?
Lions did exist in Europe in ancient times. Thought to be about the size of African lions, rather than Asiatic lions which usually lacked abdominal and lateral manes, according to Wikipedia.
They stood about four feet high at the shoulders and weighed about 400 pounds.
Cave paintings in France depict a “cave lion,” but they died out long ago.
Homer wrote about them in Greece, but Dio Chrysostom, a Greek writer, claimed they were extinct by the first century, AD.
Their carvings turned up in the Vatican museum, where the lion wasn’t lying down with the lamb, he was eating it!
Venetian lion
We saw lion statuary all over Venice–where the coat of arms is a lion with wings, who obviously never existed.
The winged lion is a symbol of the city as a representation of St. Mark–for whom St. Mark’s Basilica and San Marco square is named. Tradition has it that the bones of the 
apostle are buried in Venice.
As Wikipedia explains:
“Venetian tradition states that when St. Mark was traveling through Europe, he arrived at a lagoon in Venice, where an angel appeared to him and said “May Peace be with you, Mark, my evangelist. Here your body will rest.”
“This (possibly apocryphal) tradition was used as justification by Rustico da Torcello and Bon da Malamocco in 828 for stealing the remains of St. Mark from his grave in Alexandria, and moving them to Venice, where they were eventually interred in the Basilica of St. Mark.”
Various pictures, statues, drawings and stuffed animals depicting the Venice lion are for sale all over the island. One is even used in cartoon format to teach visitors how to use the walkways erected in San Marcos square when the water is high (or when it’s raining as it was during our visit).
We ran into a lion in Salzburg as well. Lions represented the king as a way to ennoble the government. Of course a bench may not have been the best example of what he had in mind!
I enjoyed the whimsy of hunting for lion sightings all over the continent (I have many more photos). It meant I had to keep a sharp eye out and quick fingers.
It also amused me–all those big cats in such a cold place!
Tweetables
Lion hunting in modern day Europe Click to Tweet
Amusing to see all those lions in Europe Click to Tweet
Assyrian lions and their Venice cousins Click to Tweet
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