"Gladiator II" features a naval battle that occurs at the Colosseum for the crowd's amusement. The scene is rooted in real-life naval battles that began during Julius Caesar's reign in Rome.

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. A naval battle taking ...

Lots of moments from “Gladiator II” are fiction. But some scientists think mock naval battles in the Colosseum totally happened. This is an article from our newsletter “Science Goes To The Movies.” To ...

Denzel Washington Main Genre Action Writers David Scarpa The website for the Roman Colosseum describes mock naval battles, or naumachiae, as events held on special occasions. The earliest ...

There, two fleets of biremes, triremes, and quadriremes with 4,000 galley slaves and 2,000 crew members on board clashed in a full-scale reconstruction of a naval battle. Roman historian Suetonius ...

There are claims that at some point, they didn’t just use the Colosseum for fights and hunts—they filled it with water. And then they staged full-on naval battles. Like, actual ships.

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 ...