Gladiator 2: The incredible true history of Colosseum water battles

When Ridley Scott’s Gladiator 2 arrives in cinemas this week, some viewers may assume that the spectacular scenes of the Colosseum in Rome being flooded in order to host naval battles are merely figments of the director’s overactive imagination.

Indeed, classics professor Dr Shadi Bartsch recently described some elements of the film as “total Hollywood bulls***.”

However, Scott has vocally pushed back against the idea that he invented the idea of water battles in the Colosseum.

“You’re dead wrong,” the 86-year-old told an interviewer from Collider. “The Colosseum did flood with water and there were sea battles.”

When the interviewer asked whether it’s true the battles involved sharks, a point Dr Bartsch particularly criticised, Scott responded: “Dude, if you can build a Colosseum you can flood it with f***ing water. Are you joking? And to get a couple of sharks in a net from the sea? Are you kidding? Of course they can!”

Scott’s assertions are largely backed up by the historical record. When the Colosseum was opened by Emperor Titus in 80 AD, it was inaugurated with ceremonies lasting 100 days, which included two staged naval battles known as naumachiae.

One of these was held in the nearby Augustinian basin, while the other was held inside the Colosseum itself.

The Roman historian Cassius Dio wrote that animals were involved in the performace, albeit horses and bulls rather than sharks, which imply the water was relatively shallow.

“For Titus suddenly filled this same theatre with water and brought in horses and bulls and some other domesticated animals that had been taught to behave in the liquid element just as on land,” wrote Cassius Dio. “He also brought in people on ships, who engaged in a sea-fight there, impersonating the Corcyreans and Corinthians.”

That battle between the Corcyreans and Corinthians precipitated the Peloponnesian War, in 434 BCE, so would have taken place a little over 500 years before it was recreated in the Colosseum.

Meanwhile, Dr Bartsch’s claim that the Ancient Romans wouldn’t have even known what a shark was is clearly untrue. They were written about by Roman naturalists, such as Pliny the Elder, and depicted in art including a well-preserved second-century BCE mosaic from Pompeii.

The scenes in Gladiator 2 that depict combatants riding rhinos in the Colosseum may be artistic licence, but it’s true that exotic animals including rhinos, elephants, bulls, bears, lions, panthers and crocodiles were all brought to Rome and often pitted against each other in the arena.

Gladiator 2 is out now in the UK and the US.