Would there have been monkeys in ancient roman times?
There were monkeys in Roman times but not actually in the wild in Rome. The Roman physician Galen seems to have dissected them, so they did presumably exist in some form in Rome, possibly as pets. I have no problem imagining monkeys in Roman markets, and in the Roman provinces in Libya, there would have been some. I suppose it’s also possible that there were some in the wild in Hispania. All of these would have been the Barbary Macaque. Edit: There’s a theory that the Barbary Macaques are all that’s left of a larger European population which existed before, so it depends on how long it took them to disappear.
