Brooches within antiquity were items used as fasteners for cloaks, trousers and other clothing items which needed to be fastened. They were thought to be a fashionable addition to the style of the ancient Roman or Celtic outfit. The pin hinge was used to fasten cloaks within the early 1st century AD, they required a lot of pressure to open. Brooches as an accessory became associated with the upper class and the more elaborate the brooch the higher the status of its wearer.
In the Roman world, lions maintained a strong association with Hercules, as he famously encountered the Nemean Lion as one of his Twelve Labours. The lion was far from a mythological beast, however; and would have been a familiar sight across the Roman Empire. The ‘venationes’ (“hunts”) and other ‘spectacula’ (“shows”) of ancient Rome saw exotic species procured from all corners of the Roman Empire – a conscious demonstration in itself of the nation’s extensive reach and authority – and placed in the amphitheatre for gory entertainment. Notoriously, lions were integral to the form of capital punishment known as ‘damnatio ad bestias’, whereby condemned criminals were pitted against the beasts. Lions were also sought out by Roman army units as a pastime when not at war – the process of capturing the beasts is recorded in several Roman mosaics, as is ‘damnatio ad bestias’, which became a motif of Christian martyrdom in later antiquity.
For more information on Roman animal symbolism, please see our blog post: Animal Symbolism in Roman Art
