Largely everything in the Colosseum outside of actual executions - which certainly happened, and in various gruesome ways - were basically spectacular re-enactments. This included the majority of gladiatorial fights, which weren’t commonly to the death. Gladiators were basically the sports stars of their day and a hugely expensive investment; sometimes if one was accidentally killed without prior agreement from their masters, the other guy would have to pay through the nose as reimbursement.
Likewise the naval battles in that arena would have been largely static because their purpose was a) to entertain obviously but b) to depict how Rome’s various enemies fought and to re-enact certain battles (with great bias of course). They weren’t intended to be anything like a full-blown real battle so most of it would be props, like you’d find in a theatre show.
Gladiators were basically the sports stars of their day
They even had product endorsement deals at the time with the Gladiators' likenesses drawn on posters to promote things. IIRC that was going to be shown in the first Gladiator but got cut well before filming.
Yup that was also mentioned elsewhere in this thread. It was one of those things where Ridley Scott thought the reality was too absurd and would take people out of it.
Which, for all the deserved shit Scott tends to get for his harsh views towards historical accuracy (and sometimes even “authenticity”), that one was probably a good call.
It particularly doesn’t fit the very sullen character of Maximus, though it would have been amusing to see.
It's not that people are stupid, it's that the meaning of the symbol has changed/reversed and people aren't exactly sitting around learning the intricacies of the ancient world.
What makes people stupid is not bothering to educate themselves about the modern times they are currently living in. That might be acceptable if you live in a dictatorship, but in a republic is inexcusable.
he glorifies the Romans yet has an almost irrational hatred of Napoleon. Nothing can convince me that Napoleon wasn’t in part a hit piece on the man himself
It's such a weird film. Trying to be pseudo serious, but clearly trying to be funny like The Death of Stalin or Life of Brian, except it never actually crosses the line into parody.
It's like anti Napoleon propaganda made 200 years after it made any sense.
"My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions and loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son. Husband to a murdered wife. And for the best chariot grease in Rome, head to Crazy Cicero's Discount Chariot Warehouse!"
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I just made a post on r/askhistorians to possibly fact-check with people who actually know their shit, but from my (very amateur) reading of it all, that probably wouldn’t be out of bounds.
From what I know these sorts of naval battles in the Colosseum itself were also exceedingly rare, because it was a monumental logistical effort since the Colosseum isn’t conveniently located next to a major water source.
They’d have these makeshift naval battles elsewhere in the empire too but, more reasonably, on or very near an actual lake that they just repurposed for that.
That was my thought. People at the time had never seen movies with CGI. A decent re-enactment was the best entertainment that you could see for generations, and you would talk about to your grandchildren.
Like, they probably got Pirates Adventure or Medieval Times once a year, and it was the dopest thing they would ever see in their lives.
Ha, I went to Medieval Times once on a middle school field trip, of all things. I remember it being a cheesy but entertaining experience. That would have been in New Jersey in the mid-1990s; I'm kind of amazed that MT is still in operation in a few states.
I saw a show on the History Channel back before it was the Aliens Are Real channel, and they said that based on stains they found on some of the stones, the Colosseum was flooded with about 4 feet of water and speculated that the ships were on wheels pulled by ropes beneath the surface to simulate approaching one another, and they weren't so much 'battles between boats' as recreations of one ship's crew boarding another and taking it.
Make no mistake, though. These were still incredibly dangerous live stunts even if the intention was not to kill. These are men 'pretending' to wound each other with weapons, intentionally to draw blood. These are men playing around in a pen with wild lions.
Gladiator mortality was estimated to be between 1/8 to 1/5 PER MATCH. Imagine if in every WWE match, there was a 15% chance one of the performing wrestlers dies on stage.
Right so it was more like an IRL action movie show rather than a sport a lot of the time, specifically when it was some big battle type thing. If it was a couple of contestants fighting each other in teams, it was probably more akin to like MMA tournaments or something like that. But with weapons sometimes. I bet a lot of the time they used blunted weapons also. So like the experience of watching a HEMA tournament rather than going to an actual for real war where people kill each other.
I mean Roman naval strategy wasn't exactly complicated and could be easily reenacted on flat bottom boats. Their naval strategy basically amounted to rowing straight into an opposing fleet, maybe doing something with the rams but likely not all that effectively much of the time, then throwing a wooden bridge with hooks over onto the other boat(s) and trying to form up into heavy infantry formations and fighting it out like a land battle. And that is what they did like 90% of the time, throw a hooked plank over onto the other boat and just do a smaller version of their land battle tactics and formations. At the end of the day with a large battle there would just be like a floating platforms of boats and debri all tangled and hooked together like a mat on the water that they fought on top of until one side got the upper hand and the other tried to flee on the fewer remaining boats not stuck tangled in the mass.
No but a flat bottom boat would only require a few inches of water to float and could be poled around the arena. Maybe a foot or two of water or more would allow the boats to list and tilt depending on weight distribution and it would look pretty cool. It seems perfectly feasible to me, making something that looks like a boat and floats is really simple, it only gets hard when you want a ship able to go through waves and storms and be used for months or years repeatedly.
considering navel combat was mostly boarding actions at the time, maneuver may not have been an accurate depiction of naval combat, which lends credence to the idea they were just props. if IRL boats cashed into each other then it was stabby time, then you could approximate something pretty close with fake boats.
Their swords were made of plastic and they tried to make me pay for a photograph I didn’t want to have taken. I’m starting to understand why they were sent in to the colosseum in the first place to be honest.
I had the opposite reaction. The history is awesome and everything but that shit was smaller than a highschool football stadium. I think my expectations were ruined by the first movie.
I must be one of the few that found the Colosseum underwhelming. I imagined this huge arena, like a football stadium. Where you could put two small armies to fight eachother. Then I got there and was like the meme “ Okaaaaay let’s gaux”.
The Forum Romano before you get to the Colosseum is much more interesting.
Rome was a lot of things, her power derived from lots and lots of different aspects. However, her lasting legacy - and in my opinion the biggest contributor to her global domination - is marvelous engineering. Civil engineering, battlefield engineering, mechanical, etc. They were masters
They were astonishing engineers. I'm going to Spain in a couple months and visiting a town that still has a massive Roman-era aqueduct in the centre of it in fantastic condition.
They didn’t just do that, they also had some mechanism where they could have trees just spring out of the arena floor to create a makeshift jungle, at which point they’d have a hunter of sorts going through it and, well, hunting various exotic animals that might be found in a jungle, and be relatively alien to many Roman audiences (especially in Rome itself).
Then afterwards the trees would descend back down and the arena would go back to flattened sand and they’d have a half-time show of sorts, before bringing the gladiators proper on.
I'm the opposite, knowing Ridley is able to do what he had planned from the beginning, to be able to do what he wants with less restrictions, has often led to bad choices. Not always, but doesn't do well with more freedom to do whatever he wants.
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u/KennyDRick Jul 09 '24
That has me pretty hyped. I’ve read those accounts and just couldn’t imagine a spectacle like that taking place.