1,800-year-old Roman mosaic of a topless woman battling a leopard proves female gladiators were real

Twas beauty who killed the beast.

An 1,800-year-old mosaic fragment featuring a topless leopard fighter confirmed that female gladiators battled animals in the arena, challenging popular perceptions of gender roles in ancient Rome.

While theories of women-vs-beast arena bouts had been described in ancient text, this long-lost piece presented the first visual evidence of the phenomenon, per a her-storical study published in The International Journal Of The History Of Sport.

“She is a female arena fighter (and performer),” wrote Alfonso Mañas of the University of California, Berkeley in the groundbreaking study.

The combatant was specifically a venatrice or huntress, a type of female performer was like a gladiator but they battled beasts instead of people in the amphitheater. In this third century artwork shard, the fighter is depicted engaging a leopard with a whip.

Originally uncovered in 1860 in Reims, France, the initial mosaic measured 36 by 30 feet and depicted elaborate scenes from the arena, including gladiators and staged hunts, each of which is framed by diamond or rectangular decorations called “medallions,” Arkeonews reported.

This masterpiece decorated the house of a wealthy person who sponsored these interspecies bouts, per Mañas, who told Livescience that it likely adorned a banquet hall so that the guests of the host could admire it while feasting.

Unfortunately, the opus was destroyed by bombs during World War I, and now only exists in 19th-century drawings by archaeologist Jean-Charles Loriquet. Nonetheless, these representations mirror the aforementioned fragment of the original surprisingly well, experts say.

Nonetheless, researchers were unsure whether the person in question was male or female with some experts initially speculating that the figure was a paegniarius, an agitator with a whip that encouraged the beasts to tussle — like a lion tamer meets a rodeo clown. However, Mañas said this was unlikely due to several reasons, most notably that there was no evidence supporting the existence of the agitator role in history.

Even if it did, the catfighter doesn’t have the stick or armguard characteristic of this professional bear poker, so to speak.

One obvious tipoff that catwoman is female? Her sizable bosoms. While these might seem like revisionist fan-fiction, having a women go topless and helmetless in the arena was a surefire way to distinguish her from her male counterparts.

This ancient topless scene also served the purpose of arousing the spectators — one of the main goals of the huntress shows, per Mañas.

In fact, there are also two surviving statuettes depicting female gladiators, both of which are bare-chested.

Mañas did deduce that the pussycat-battling pugilist was from society’s lower strata as a noblewoman would’ve not been permitted to go topless in the arena.

That being said, the presence of the whip suggests that she was a trained beast-fighter rather than a prisoner condemned to die by animal — a popular form of entertainment at the time.

Along with ostensibly proving the existence of female arena fighters, the mosaic also proves that the practice went on for longer than previously thought.

It reportedly dates back to the third century, a time when female gladiatorial matches were banned in the Roman empire.

This suggests that the ban did not affect the huntress exhibition.

This tracks because while human-on-human were seen as male-centric, the Roman goddess Diana was known for pursuing game, making the idea of a female beastmaster much easier to stomach.

Plus, dispatching animals did not carry the same stigma as it does today.