To mark the opening of the Colosseum in 80 C.E., the Roman emperor Titus staged a staggering spectacle, flooding the arena with water and bringing in “horses and bulls and some other domesticated animals that had been taught to behave in the liquid element just as on land,” according to the Roman historian Cassius Dio.
“He also brought in people on ships, who engaged in a sea fight there.” The stakes were high: In most naumachia e , as these mock naval battles were called, the participants were prisoners of war or convicted criminals who were expected to fight—perhaps to the death—for the crowd’s amusement. This potentially fatal predicament takes center stage in Gladiator II , Ridley Scott’s new sequel to his blockbuster 2000 film, Gladiator .
In the movie’s trailer , an archer takes aim at an enemy soldier, firing an arrow that sends the man plunging over the side of his ship—and into the waiting jaws of a shark. (Despite Scott’s insistence that the Romans would have had no trouble trapping “a couple of sharks in a net from the sea,” historians have pointed out that no evidence supports the animal’s presence in the ancient amphitheater.) Aquatic apex predators aren’t the only challenge faced by Gladiator II ’s Lucius Verus (played by Paul Mescal).
The film, which takes place around 20 years after the events of Gladiator , also pits Lucius against a rhinoceros , a monkey and hordes of fellow gladiators, not to mention an invading army, power-h.
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