Did Sea Battles Take Place in the Colosseum?

Mock sea battles did indeed form a staple part of the entertainment at the games in ancient Rome. Known as naumachiae, these gruesome spectacles were a bizarre and cruel mix of historical charade and capital punishment.

Although the ancient sources are somewhat spotty, we know that the battles pitted crews of slaves, condemned criminals and prisoners of war against each other in reenactments of famous maritime battles from ancient Greece. Spectators could literally feel history come alive as Corinth did battle with Corcyra, say, or watch the battle of Salamis unfold before their very eyes.

As can be readily imagined, the resources and technical solutions required to stage such sea-battles were immense, and so naumachiae were only performed in the most important games – those sponsored by the emperor himself to mark special occasions.

Naumachiae were a staple of the Roman entertainment schedule for only a relatively brief period of around 150 years. The first securely-recorded mock sea-battle was staged in 46 BC as part of the celebrations associated with Julius Caesar’s unprecedented quadruple triumph, which marked the general’s quickfire victories in Gaul, Pontus, Africa, and Egypt.

Suetonius recounts that Caesar’s naumachia simulated an ancient conflict between the maritime powers Tyre and Egypt in a temporary basin dug out near the Tiber river. Fully 6,000 men were forced to take on the doomed roles of oarsmen and soldiers. These were prisoners of war captured by Caesar’s troops and sentenced to death.

No less impressive was the mock sea battle staged by the Emperor Augustus in 2 BC as part of festivities staged to mark the construction of a temple dedicated to Mars, god of war. Thousands took part in this re-telling of the battle of Salamis, a glorious Greek victory over the Persians in 489 BC. Augustus had a custom-built arena built specifically for the purpose of staging his naumachia, which was provided with water by a new aqueduct called the Aqua Alsietina.

Half a century later, the emperor Claudius upped the ante still further. To celebrate the completion of a canal that would enable the draining of the Fucine lake – one of the most impressive feats of ancient Roman engineering ever attempted – Claudius organized an extravagant naval battle comprising 19,000 would-be soldiers representing Rhodes and Sicily, divided amongst two fleets of 50 ships each, on the waters of the soon-to-disappear lake.

As noted above, a number of custom-built venues were constructed to stage the conflicts during the 150-year heyday of the naumachiae. These arenas took the form of wide shallow basins located near a ready supply of water. Thankfully, ancient Roman engineers were highly expert in hydraulics, and the series of aqueducts that funneled fresh water to the city could also be deployed to provide the infrastructure for the naumachiae.

The grandest of the sites was the Stagnum Augustae, a massive pool measuring 536 meters long and 357 meters wide, immersed in a grove of trees and surrounded by grandstands which was fed by a new aqueduct that the emperor incredibly had built just for this purpose.

Archaeological evidence drawn from across the Roman empire also indicates that sea-battles were sometimes staged in smaller venues, typically the mighty stone amphitheaters that were a distinctive feature of the major Roman cities – like the Colosseum.

But there is a problem: the Colosseum as we know it today, with its underground section consisting of a warren of rooms that were filled with complex machinery enabling the games to function, could never have been flooded with water to enable the sea spectacles to take place. For this reason some authors believe that the ancient writers were taking poetic license and that this naumachia also took place in Augustus’ arena. Others believe that the Colosseum naumachia was little more than a stage show rather than a fully-fledged battle.

Current academic consensus is that the sea-battles really did take place at the Colosseum during the inaugural games, however. As the underground area hadn’t been completed when the first games were held, there is no good reason to believe that the Roman engineers didn’t have the wherewithal to flood the arena to stage a naumachia, albeit on a reduced scale. Furthermore, a ready supply of water would have been available as the amphitheater was built over the site of the artificial lake that served as the centerpiece of Nero’s destroyed Domus Aurea.

Martial closes his account with the claim that the Flavian Amphitheater was the greatest site for mock sea-battles ever created: “So no more of Fucinus and the lake of direful Nero. Let this be the only sea fight known to posterity.”

Writing around a century later, Cassius Dio also affirms that naumachiae took place in the Colosseum, adding that a bizarre wild animal hunt was also performed in the flooded amphitheater: “Titus suddenly filled this same theater with water and brought in horses and bulls and some other domesticated animals that have been taught to behave in the liquid element just as on land.”

Eagled-eyed watchers of the Gladiator II trailer will have noticed that the Colosseum features some exotic wildlife, but Ridley Scott’s imagination takes us a long way from Cassius Dio and historical record – we can say with 100% certainty that man-eating sharks were not scudding through the flooded arena!

The Colosseum’s battles were amongst the final naumachiae, and the construction of the underground hypogeum beneath the amphitheater rendered further events like this impossible here. Domitian is recorded to have organized a sea-battle in another purpose-built structure in 89 AD, but after this no further unambiguous references to the practice exist.

We must also take the claims that the Colosseum could be flooded and drained quickly enough to allow for nautical and dry-land spectacles to take place rapidly one after the other with a pinch of salt. Regardless of the extraordinary hydraulic abilities of ancient Roman engineers, the technology required to guarantee an adequate water pressure to flood the arena to an adequate depth in such a short time and drain it just as quickly didn’t exist.

Latest estimates suggest that the Colosseum could feasibly have been flooded in a matter of hours rather than minutes – certainly impressive, but not quick enough to facilitate the blink-and-you’ll miss it transformation described by Martial. Of course, as the programme of the games lasted all day this wasn’t necessarily a fatal problem. Alternatively, non-water based events could have taken place on a temporary wooden platform built over the already flooded basin of the amphitheater, allowing for a freer mix of land and sea based combat.

So there you have it. Whilst historical evidence for exactly how sea battles worked at the Colosseum is lacking, we can confidently say that naumachiae played a role in the lavish entertainments that took place at the amphitheater during the inaugural games in 80 AD. Whether they were quite as spectacular as the upcoming events of Gladiator II is another matter!