Leo (constellation) thus, the warriors' clubs, swords, and spears were rendered useless against it. Realizing that he must defeat the Lion with his bare hands, Hercules slipped into the Lion's cave and engaged it at close quarters. When the Lion pounced, Hercules caught it in midair, one hand grasping the Lion's forelegs and the other its hind legs, and bent it backwards, breaking its back and freeing the trapped maidens. Zeus commemorated this labor by placing the Lion in the sky. The Roman poet Ovid called it "Herculeus Leo" and "Violentus Leo". "Bacchi Sidus" (star of Bacchus) was another of its titles,
Panthera leo leo developed for West and Central Africa. Results of a phylogeographic study indicate that lion populations in West and Central African range countries are genetically close to populations in India, forming a clade distinct from lion populations in Southern and East Africa. In 2017, the Cat Classification Task Force of the IUCN Cat Specialist Group subsumed lion populations to two subspecies, namely "P. l. leo" and "P. l. melanochaita". A lion from Constantine, Algeria was the type specimen for the specific name "Felis leo" used by Linnaeus in 1758. In the 19th and 20th centuries, several lion zoological specimens from Africa