Lions detail

One little thing about the lions: I heard another artist talk about his wanting to paint a realistic Daniel and the lion’s den piece because so few representations feature realistic lions. And then he went on to populate his den exclusively with African males. The lions here would have been Asiatic and though we have just about zero background info on how the Persians kept their dens stocked, in the wild males don’t hang around the females much once they reach maturity. Males fight it out for possession of a group of females and then normally only come around when they want to mate. I suppose it’s possible that Darius could have had a collection of males rounded up and held in captivity but it still looks weird.