Whereas most realized Romans would know what a crocodile was, with the unique beast capturing the creativeness of many within the Greco-Roman world after the Greek historian Herodotus traveled to Egypt within the fifth century B.C., Romans skilled their very own century-long period of Egyptomania following first Julius Caesar’s adventures on the Nile after which Octavian (later renamed Augustus) basically securing his emperorship by defeating Mark Antony and Cleopatra and assimilating Egypt into the Roman Empire in 30 B.C.
Beasts from the sides of the empire proved a well-liked supply for “looking video games” or venationes. A venatio was a particular kind of spectacle throughout Roman video games/circuses the place condemned males, captives, or, sure, gladiators have been anticipated to battle towards unusual beasts from faraway lands. In a manner, it spoke to the breadth and astonishing mystique of the empire’s attain when creatures like lions, panthers, or ostriches have been introduced into an amphitheater and compelled to struggle males to the dying in entrance of a cheering crowd. And within the case of Egypt, the unique creatures most popularly delivered to Rome have been crocodiles and hippopotamuses.
As many as 11,000 animals might be killed in a single “recreation” or hunt, and the crocodile had particular which means in these spectacles as a result of Romans have been taught (largely by their Greek imperialist predecessors) to sneer at some Egyptian deities with their animal heads, together with Sobek, the crocodile-headed god who was related to the Nile and the specter of chaos. (Notably, nevertheless, the Romans did assimilate the worship of the Cult of Isis from Egypt.)
For the Colosseum—which was accomplished 150 years after Cleopatra’s dying—there are accounts of gladiators being compelled to battle crocodiles to the dying within the sand. Suppose a bit like what we noticed with tigers within the first Gladiator and the rhinoceros in Gladiator II. Nonetheless, there are accounts of water reveals the place males in boats have been tasked with looking crocodiles just like what happens in Gladiator II. Through the late reign of Augustus in 2 B.C., we’re advised that 36 crocodiles have been hunted in a specifically designed pool made inside Rome’s Circus Flaminius, a construction initially constructed a number of centuries earlier for chariot racing.
So sure, chariot-racing enviornment was retrofitted into an enormous pool the place males have been handed spears and in small boats tasked to “battle” crocodiles, which actually nonetheless sounds pretty one-sided. Nonetheless, I can’t discover an account of crocodiles getting used throughout a naumachia (naval battle) whether or not within the Colosseum, Circus Flaminius, or in any other case.
However when you inform a Hollywood screenwriter that “naval fight” was a well-liked spectacle within the Colosseum—as was crocodile battling, whether or not with out water within the Colosseum or with it in one other artifical construction—it isn’t onerous to think about somebody saying “let’s mix them for optimum spectacle!” After which, maybe, a British director shrugging, “Why not sharks?”
