• “Gladiator II” features a naval battle set at the Colosseum for the audience’s amusement.
• The scene is rooted in real naval battles that began during the reign of Julius Caesar in Rome.
• But it is unlikely that the staged fights involved sharks in the water.

Ridley Scotts”Gladiator II” takes some creative liberties and deviates from history to upgrade the audience.

“Gladiator II” takes place 15 years after Russell Crowe’s Maximus Decimus Meridius died in the Colosseum in the 2000 film “Gladiator.” Now under the unhinged twin emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger), great entertainment has reached new levels in the arena.

Lucius (Paul Mescal), son of Maximus and Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), is one of the men forced to fight to the death in the Colosseum to amuse the emperors and the equally bloodthirsty crowds.

In one scene, the floor of the Colosseum is flooded with water in honor of Poseidon, god of the sea. To add to the danger, tiger sharks swim in the water, ready to feast on humans.

Naval warfare occurs when two boats enter the arena to fight each other, the Romans against Lucius and the other gladiators.

The boats circle the Colosseum before crashing into each other. Then the men start fighting fiercely. When some of them fall off the boats and to their deaths, the sharks in the water quickly tear them apart.

As far-fetched as the battle may seem, the scene was, at least in part, inspired by history.

Staged naval battles really happened in Rome

Water spectacles in Rome date back to the first century BC. Areas, including the Colosseum, were flooded with water for staged fights. These mock naval battles, known as naumachia, began during the rule of Julius Caesar in Rome.

According to National Geographicyear 80 AD two naumachiae occurred, one in an artificial lake and another in the Colosseum.

Its unclear if water entered the Colosseum via aqueducts or the arena’s sluice gates and chambers used to drain and fill the space.

“It was pretty amazing,” special effects supervisor Neil Corbould of Industrial Light and Magic said in the production notes for the film. “The boats they used in these battles were built just for that purpose. They were flat-bottomed because the water was so shallow.”

Alison Futrell, an associate professor of Roman history at the University of Arizona, told Business Insider that the Colosseum’s contained, confined size meant that actual boats were probably “tricky to maneuver” around the arena.

However, staged naval battles at the Colosseum could work if the boats were reduced in size.

“Maybe smaller sort of quasi-miniaturized boats that give the flavor of warships and maybe hold more visibility to the details of the battle as well,” Futrell said. “Because there are fans who really want to see what kind of fight is going on there.”

The battles probably didn’t involve sharks

History shows that people in Rome were at least aware that sea creatures existed.

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“There are encyclopedists from antiquity who talk about sea creatures, and they are aware of shark-like things,” Futrell said.

However, Futrell said these shark-like creatures appear to have been in the Indian Ocean rather than the Mediterranean. Also, most of the sea creatures referred to were mammals, not fish like sharks.

Futrell said the Romans were aware of dolphins and killer whales, both of which are mammals. That said, there isn’t much evidence that the Romans regularly built chariots large enough to allow humans to interact with the creatures up close.

“But they knew about them as a draw and made some effort at certain times to make them kind of a show somehow,” Futrell said.

There is evidence that in one such case, during the reign of Emperor Claudius, a killer whale traveled to the Tiber River and some effort was made to make the event a spectacle by blocking access points so that people could see the creature.

The sharks in “Gladiator II” are most likely an addition from Scott, who tends to include animals in their films. However, there seems to be no historical evidence of sharks being part of these naval battles.

“Probably not sharks, specifically, and only rarely killer whales,” Futrell said. “They are challenging to work with.”

“Gladiator II” is now in theaters.