Romans were the decadent civilization by excellence, and perhaps its biggest demonstration was that of watching blood sports. Everyone is familiar with the famous gladiatorial fights which took place all over the Roman world, but it was nothing compared to the naumachies. One of Caesar's biggest -- in physical terms -- yet more obscure innovations, the naumachy consisted of a battle between full-sized warships which took place in immense river basins dug up just for that purpose. Rather than sacrifice a few dozen unfortunate souls at a time as was the usual fare of the circus, these naumachies saw several thousand prisoners of war cast as mariners, soldiers and rowers, slaughtering each other wholesale for the fun and profit of their captors.

The second such event was ordered by Augustus, who indeed had the rather salutary habit of imitating his great-uncle and predecessor, and invested even more in decadence, having had a small island erected at the brand-new basin's center, connected to the mainland by a bridge, for the most privileged spectators to enjoy unique angles of the bloodletting. It's perhaps worth emphasizing that, like the gladiator fights, the attraction here was the man-to-man combat itself taking place aboard the warships, as the approximately 30 vessels barely had space to move around, let alone conduct proper ship warfare.

Only one more naumachy reached this level of decadence, but reducing it somewhat by taking place in an existing lake. Arguably tho, it was more than compensated by the sheer scale, with no less than 50 warships at each of the two warring sides. This one was ordered by Claudius, thus showing that emulating Caesar wasn't just a tic of Augustus but a Roman habit.

At any rate, the next naumachies were most likely reduced in scope, yet what they might have lacked in scale, they made up for in engineering canniness. Nero had a wooden amphitheater built within the city, able to hold enough water for actual warships to, if not sail, at least bobble around. Filling it with water, however, was the real challenge, which Roman engineers met by building several new waterways which brought fresh water to the building. This is no mean feat, because, remember, these aqueducts had to rely on gravity alone. All of them collected their water at points higher in altitude higher than its destination. This amphitheater is an unsung marvel of Roman engineering. Or rather, it was, because nothing of it survived to the modern day.

Despite the reduced magnitude, the sheer convenience that this added to the brutal spectacle certainly was appreciated by the populace -- despite libelous historical record, Nero was a remarkably popular ruler. He even ordered a second naumachy at the same building. Both such events were only the crowning moments of a series of suitably decadent activities.

The next two naumachies were made in Titus' reign, to celebrate the inauguration the famous Colosseum. One took place in Augustus' basin, the other in the wooden amphitheater. The next two naumachies were Domitian's rulings, and he innovated by having one of them in the Colosseum itself -- in its early years, the unseen parts of the arena were far less complex, allowing it to be able to hold water. As work on the notoriously complex tunnels and mechanisms below the Colosseum took place, however, it lost such a capacity. For his second naumachy, Domitian made up for it by having yet another basin dug up just for such an occasion. This was most likely for the better, because although the wooden amphitheater's dimensions are a mystery to us, it's definitely a fact that the Colosseum was far too small to hold even a 30-ship event. The ships might not even have been able to float, for that matter. Maybe the historical records lack the average Roman's negative opinion of that one naumachy at the Colosseum as the worst one ever. A few naumachies took place in other cities of the empire, and chances are all of them were even smaller than that one, being mostly just large gladiatorial fights with various props to spice up the violence.

After all this early boisterous display of decadence, the naumachies slowly were abandoned. Rome's amphitheater built for them burned down at an unknown date, and, as mentioned before, such spectacles in other Roman cities were literally farsical, or simple naval games, without actual bloodshed. As such, small naumachies were part of sports festivals within the empire. It seems the only reported post-Domitian naumachy of a scale approaching that of the goold old days took place in the Moselle river, but even then, it was just a sporting event between local youth. European powers in the centuries that followed Rome's end would occasionally stage a naumachy, but let's not bother with those, regardless of which scale they might have had. What interest do the follies of the second, third, fourth and whateverth Romes hold for us, if all of them take place beneath the vast shadow cast upon by the first one?

I hope you enjoyed this impromptu historical trivia. This site being what it is, however, odds are that, if you're reading this, you were interested in stimulation of the navel. May Abeona see you take the correct path to your libidinous goal!

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