![](http://ancientrome.ru/art/artwork/sculp/rom/headstone/sc0117.jpg)
Frontal panel of a sarcophagus with scenes of lions hunting. The right scene.
Spoleto, Piazza del Duomo.
Death of a civil person at hunt was considered as honorable as death of a military man in a battle. Hunting for a wild beast was а standard metaphor of virtus of the deceased in funerary sculpture. The most dangerous was hunt for a lion or for a wild boar. The latter is much more common in sarcophagi reliefs because the resembling myths of Meleager and Adonis were widely used in funerary art; and besides the natural habitat of the wild boar was the whole Roman Empire that made this choice actual for any region. And vica versa the choice of a lion as an object of hunt grounds the assumption that the deceased lived and possibly died in the Asia Minor or North Africa.