Could sharks flood the Colosseum like in Gladiator 2?

Gladiator 2 is open and people are having a wonderful time, with the idea of sharks flooding the Colosseum set to be one of those jaws-dropping cinematic moments that is set to wow audiences.

Director Ridley Scott certainly aims to elevate the stakes and use it to bring a sense of spectacle to ancient history.

Yet, while it makes for stunning cinema in a Hollywood blockbuster, creating the sword and sandal and shark genre, the plausibility of such an event raises several questions about ancient Roman engineering ("what have the Romans ever done for us?") and biological realism.

It goes without saying that the Colosseum, was one of ancient Rome's architectural masterpieces. Completed in 80 AD, the Colosseum featured a complex system of subterranean structures called the hypogeum, where cages, lifts, and pulleys enabled the dramatic release of wild animals into the arena.

The Colosseum was built to host a variety of events, including gladiatorial combat, animal hunts, and even simulated naval battles, known as naumachiae.

The concept of flooding the Colosseum with water is not entirely fictional. Historical records suggest that the Romans had staged mock naval battles by flooding the arena.

The process relied on aqueducts and an intricate drainage system, making it possible to hold water-based spectacles.

However, even though ancient Roman engineering was impressively advanced, filling the Colosseum with enough water to sustain large, predatory sharks would have presented significant challenges. To paraphrase Matt Hooper from JAWS (1975), those proportions are not correct.

To host marine life like sharks, the arena would need to be flooded to a depth of several metres. For context, large sharks such as great whites typically inhabit deeper waters, requiring considerable space to swim and manoeuvre.

Assuming a minimum depth of three to five metres, the volume of water needed would be immense, straining the limits of the aqueduct system.

While the city’s aqueducts delivered millions of gallons daily to serve Rome's extensive public baths, fountains, and private households, continuously filling and maintaining an artificial marine environment would likely be impractical.

Additionally, it would have needed extraordinary measures to prevent the water from seeping into the hypogeum or causing structural damage to the Colosseum’s stonework.

And then there are the sharks. Sharks are not just any fish; they have specific environmental needs, such as salinity, temperature, and oxygenation levels. Transporting and sustaining sharks in an artificial marine habitat would be unthinkable in the first century AD.

The water quality needed to keep large, active predators healthy involves complex filtration systems to remove waste and maintain oxygen levels—technology far beyond the scope of Roman engineering.

Sharks need a stable environment with sufficient prey to sustain their metabolism. Keeping these creatures alive would be an ongoing ordeal, even for a short duration. Any stagnation or contamination in the water would quickly turn deadly for marine life. Not that the Romans would have cared about the conditions the sharks would have been kept in.

While the sight of sharks thrashing about in a flooded Colosseum might make for an exhilarating cinematic sequence in Gladiator 2,  it's just not possible.

Although it is something that it's director Ridley Scott has defended in a recent interview with Collider. He said: "The Colosseum did flood with water, and there were sea battles... Dude, if you can build a Colosseum, you can flood it with fucking water. Are you joking? And to get a couple of sharks in a net from the sea, are you kidding? Of course they can."

On the flipside, Dr Shadi Bartsch, a classicist from the University of Chicago, told The Hollywood Reporter: "[It’s] total Hollywood bullshit, I don’t think Romans knew what a shark was."

Yet, cinema often bends the rules of reality for the sake of visual impact and storytelling, and a film doesn’t necessarily have to adhere to historical accuracy to be entertaining.

To quote Russel Crow's Maximus Decimus Meridius in the original Oscar-winning Gladiator (2000), "Are you not entertained?'

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