Citizen Beast: The Place of Animals in the Roman Empire

Animals, power, and belonging in the Roman Empire.Animals were everywhere in the Roman world: in labor, ritual, entertainment, warfare, and luxury. In Citizen Beast, Martin Devecka argues that they were not merely background figures but central participants in the formation of empire. He examines how animals came to belong to Rome and how their incorporation mirrored the processes that shaped human citizenship, subjection, and exclusion.Birds, mice, elephants, bears, pigs, donkeys, eels, and oysters serve as case studies for understanding how imperial power organized life itself. Through these examples, Citizen Beast reveals an empire that governed humans and animals together, treating both of them as economic resources and symbolic instruments. Roman writers often understood animals as intentional beings whose cooperation—or resistance—mattered. Devecka shows how these ideas helped structure legal practices, religious rituals, systems of punishment, and regimes of extraction. Animals helped enforce violence, stabilize hierarchy, and produce elite distinction, while also exposing the limits of imperial control.By treating the Roman Empire as a multispecies world, Citizen Beast reframes familiar histories of power, agency, and governance. The result is a striking account of how empire functioned by managing living beings—and why animals must be understood as historical actors in their own right.

About the Author

Martin Devecka is an associate professor of classical studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the author of Broken Cities: A Historical Sociology of Ruins .