In the film, there is a scene where they re-enact a sea battle by flooding the arena in the Colosseum.
Now, I understand that this actually was possible and did happen. But in the film there is a shark, and this feels far-fetched (wiki backs me up here).
In theory, would it actually have been possible for the Romans to get a shark (alive) into the arena?
I vote unlikely, but possible.
Having worked in a public aquarium, a shark, like most other fish, gets easily stressed when it is captured, and even if they could somehow catch a large shark, transport it to the Colosseum after it had been filled with tens of thousands of gallons of unfiltered salt water at who knows what temperature, the shark, should it survive the trip, would be in such shock it wouldn’t be much of a threat to anybody. I vote pure fantasy, but kudos to the screenwriter who thought of it!
There is significant doubt to this. It seems that there was some staged “sea battle” when the Colosseum was opened, but it was most likely somewhere else, not at the Colosseum itself. There is nothing in the building’s remains that suggests it could be flooded or made watertight.
That issue is not at all straightforward, as the substructures below the arena are not original, having been inserted during the reign of Domitian. And, of course, almost nothing of the surface of the arena from that later phase survives. One theory is that the earlier form of the arena surface might have been watertight, whereas the later one might not have been. But it is impossible to be sure either way.
Supplying the water wouldn’t have been a problem. The site had previously been that of the artificial lake built for Nero’s Domus Aurea. That had been supplied by the Aqua Claudia aqueduct. But, for obvious reasons, the water from all the aqueducts in Rome was freshwater.
In theory, yes. Did they occasionally fill the area with water? Doubtful.
Did anyone jump the shark? (It is Hollywood)
Seriously, what would happen with a shark (or any other salt-water fish) immersed into fresh water? Why would they die and how long would it take?
Bull sharks are occaisonally reported off of the coast of Italy. Bull sharks are also “euryhaline”, meaning they can adapt to living in freshwater environments like rivers and lakes. They also have a wide tolerance for different temperatures.
They’ve been found pretty far up the Mississippi River.
Any reason a shark couldn’t be “towed” up the Tiber?
Don’t sharks require constant flow over their gills for respiration? That’d be hard in a portable cart. I’d imagine the problem would be hard to figure out as well.
In the first scene, we saw some ship-mounted catapults (or trebuchets? can’t remember) used during a siege. Maybe they built a really, really big one and used that to launch a shark into the coliseum right from the sea. Shark would probably be pretty angry after that.
(Oops, didn’t realize this was an older thread. Just saw the movie).
Decades ago when I was contemplating a “History of Technology” course in university, I was chatting with the prof who offered it. He mentioned an egineering student in a previous class who did an essay on captapults on ships, and why the Romans did not use bigger ones. The point was that when the catapult lets fly, there is an equal and opposite reaction, all Newton’s fault. If the cataputing is not facing along the keel, the resulting force is a twisting motion on that part of the ship. Since ships’ hulls are parallel planks caulked with tar and resin-soaked rags or rope, the twisting motion would tend to break the seal and cause a lot of leaking. Catapults straight forward or back would interfere with some of the rigging and still stress the hull.
Of course, a ship catapult would have a limited amount of ammunition too.
Couldn’t they mount them on wheels like they later did with cannons?
I assume even with dampened recoil, there’s still the twisting motion. Plus, it seems to me the giant ships of the line are much more heavily constructed than those Roman galleys would be - thicker oak framing and all. Not sure how canon recoil compares to a catapult. How accurately could catapults be aimed?
This video, near the beginning, shows some seriously thick wood construction for 1600’s ships. I wonder how much this was influenced by the bigger forests of northern Europe?
https: //www. youtube. com/watch ?v=3pYqXrFx6S8
(It won’t let me put in the address of the video so I added spaces)