A naumachia (in Latin , from the Ancient Greek /, literally "naval combat") was a mock naval battle staged as mass entertainment by the Ancient Romans. The staging would typically occur in a specially-dug basin, also known as a naumachia.
Early The first known was given by Julius Caesar in Rome in 46 BC on occasion of his quadruple triumph. After having a basin dug near the Tiber, capable of holding actual biremes, triremes and quinqueremes, he made 2,000 combatants and 4,000 rowers, all prisoners of war, fight. In 2 BC for the inauguration of the Temple of Mars Ultor ("Mars the Avenger"), Augustus gave a grander based on Caesar's model. This naumachia depicted a battle between the Greeks and the Persians and required a basin that was 365 by 550 meters, which was created straddling the Tiber. Res Gestæ (§ 23) claimed that 3000 men, not counting rowers, fought in 30 vessels with rams and several smaller boats.
In 52 AD, Claudius gave what was possibly the most "epic" of these on a natural body of water, Fucine Lake, to celebrate the completion of drainage work and tunneling on the site. It included one hundred ships and 19,000 combatants, all of whom were prisoners who had been condemned to death. Suetonius' account, written many years after the event, has them salute the emperor with the phrase "morituri te salutant" ("those who are about to die salute you"). There is no evidence that this form of address was used on any occasion other than this single .The phrase is attested in Suetonius, Lives, Claudius, 21, 1214 and a century later, by Cassius Dio, 60, 33, 3–4, who referred to the same event and probably used Suetonius or a now lost common source. Suetonius gives Claudius' reply as "aut non" ("or not"), which the naumachiarii misinterpret as a general pardon, much to the fury of the emperor. See Leon, HJ, Morituri Te Salutamus, Transactions of the American Philological Association, 1939, 70, 46–47: available online at Bill Thayer's website (accessed 1 January 2010)
The was thus a bloodier show than gladiatorial combat, which consisted of smaller engagements and where the combat did not necessarily end with the death of the losers. More exactly, the appearance of is closely tied and only slightly earlier than that other spectacle, "group combat", which did not pit single combatants against one another, but rather used two small armies. There again, the combatants were frequently those sentenced to death and lacked the specialized training of true gladiators. Caesar, creator of the , simply had to transpose the same principle to another environment.
Through the choreography of the combat, the had the ability to represent historical or pseudo-historical themes. Each of the fleets participating represented a maritime power of Ancient Greece or the Hellenistic east: Egyptians and the Tyrians for Caesar's , Persians and Athenians for that of Augustus, Sicilians and Rhodeans for that of Claudius. It required significantly greater resources than other such entertainments, and as such these spectacles were reserved for exceptional occasions, closely tied to celebrations of the emperor, his victories and his monuments. The specific nature of the spectacle as well as the historical themes borrowed from the Greek world are closely tied to the term . This word, a phonetic transcription of the Greek word for a naval battle (/), has since come to also refer to the large artificial basins created for them.
building Caesar's was probably a simple basin dug into the low-lying ground on the northern or southern banks of the Tiber, and fed by its waters; the exact location is unknown; most likely Trastevere or the Campus Martius.Coleman, K. M., "Launching into History: Aquatic Displays in the Early Empire", The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 83 (1993), p. 50; Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, The of Augustus is better known: in his Res Gestæ (23) Augustus himself indicates that the basin measured 1800 × 1200 Roman feet (approximately 533 × 355 meters). Pliny the Elder (Natural History, 16, 200), describes an island formed in the center, probably rectangular and connected to the shore by a bridge where the privileged spectators likely sat.
Taking into consideration the size of the basin and the dimensions of a trireme (approximately 35 × 4.90 meters), the thirty vessels used would hardly be able to manoeuvre. Knowing that the crew of a Roman trireme was approximately 170 rowers and 50 to 60 soldiers, a simple calculation allows us to see that to achieve the number of 3000 men the vessels of Augustus' fleet would have to have held more combatants than an actual fleet. The spectacle thus focused less on the movement of the vessels, and more on their actual presence in the artificial basin and the hand-to-hand combat which developed.
It was different for Claudius' . The two fleets each consisted of 50 vessels, which corresponds to the number of vessels in each of the two military fleets based at Misenum and at Ravenna. Lake Fucino was large enough that only part of it was needed, surrounded by pontoons, and there was room enough for the vessels to manoeuvre and ram each other. The of Claudius therefore truly reproduced naval combat.
According to Sextus Julius Frontinus in De aquaeductu (, 11, 1–2: ), the water supply for the of Augustus was specially constructed, with the surplus used to water neighbouring gardens in the Trans Tiberim. This was the Aqua Alsietina aqueduct, remains of which have been found on the slopes of Janiculum (the "8th hill of Rome") below the monastery of San Cosimato. There are several theories as to the precise location of the site; the latest of which places it between Via Aurelia in the north and the church of San Francesco a Ripa in the southeast, in the loop of the Tiber. The republican viaduct discovered in the Via Aurelia near San Crisogono may also have served as a conduit for the basin.
The basin did not last very long. During the reign of Augustus it was partly replaced (Suetonius, Augustus, 43, 1) by the (sacred forest of the Caesars), later renamed "forest of Gaius and Lucius" for the grandsons of Augustus (Dion Cassius, 66, 25, 3). This vast area was probably built upon by the end of the 1st century.
in amphitheatres
A new development occurred during the reign of Nero: a in an amphitheatre. Suetonius (Nero, XII, 1) and Dio Cassius (Roman History, LXI, 9, 5) speak of such a spectacle in 57 AD in a wooden amphitheatre inaugurated by the last of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Nothing is known of the site other than that it was built on the Campus Martius. Nero presented another in 64 AD. This was preceded by hunts and followed by gladiatorial combat and a great banquet (Dio Cassius, LXII, 15, 1). It is unknown what form these games took. It was probably the same wooden amphitheatre, given that there is no mention of its destruction before the Great Fire of Rome which happened shortly afterwards.
For the inauguration of the Colosseum in 80 AD, Titus gave two , one in the Augustinian basin, again using several thousand men, and the other in the new amphitheatre (Dio Cassius, LXVI, 25, 1–4). According to Suetonius (Domitian, IV, 6–7), Domitian organised a inside the Colosseum, undoubtedly circa 85 AD, and another one in the year 89 AD in a new basin dug beyond the Tiber; with the stone removed serving to repair the Circus Maximus, which had burnt on two sides. It was probably in the time between these two that Domitian completed the network of rooms underneath the Colosseum that are visible today, at the same time precluding such spectacles in the arena.
The arena at the Colosseum only measured 79.35 × 47.20 meters, far removed from the dimensions of the Augustinian basin. A in the Colosseum could therefore not have been as grand as the previous ones. One can imagine a confrontation between the crews of several reproductions of warships, potentially life-size or reasonably close to it, but actual maneuvers or even floating seems doubtful. It is known that stage-props were used to represent ships, sometimes with mechanisms to simulate shipwrecks, both on stage and in the arena (Tacitus, , XIV, 6, 1; Dio Cassius LXI, 12,2).
Water in the amphitheatres The use of enough water to float vessels in amphitheatres raises technical questions. Amphitheatres were not exclusively used for ; they would have been filled and drained rapidly enough for use in gladiatorial combats and other spectacles. The rapid transition between water shows and earth-based shows seems to have been one of the great attractions. Dio Cassius underscores this as it relates to Nero's (LXI, 9, 5); Martial does as well speaking of Titus' in the Colosseum (Book of Spectacles, XXIV). The only surviving written sources offer no descriptions of the mechanisms or engineering involved. Archaeology provides no clues: the basement of the Colosseum has since been modified. Only two provincial amphitheatres, those at Verona and Mérida, Spain, provide any technical evidence.
The central pit of the Verona amphitheatre was deeper than the rooms normally found underneath the arena, and served as a basin. It was connected to two axial conduits. One, circulating under the West gallery of the arena, was not connected to the drainage system and had to be connected to an aqueduct in order to fill the basin. The East conduit was deeper and designed to drain water into the Adige River. The basin at the Mérida amphitheatre, at only 1.5 meters, was shallower than that at Verona. Because it is so shallow—less than the height of a standing man—it cannot be confused with an underground service room. This basin was equipped with access stairs and covered with material similar to that used for swimming pools and Roman baths. It was also served by two conduits, the western one of which connected to the nearby San Lazaro aqueduct.
The dimensions of these basins rule out any but the most basic of : the one at Mérida measures a mere 18.5 × 3.7 meters. Only the most modest of water spectacles could have taken place here. This leads one to conclude that, even assuming that the Colosseum had a similar basin before construction of the hypogeum (underground complex), would have been performed on only a shallow layer of water covering the surface of the arena, the minimum required to float the ships.
Decline of Roman The introduction of new technologies initially led to an increased number of . The first three were spaced about 50 years apart; the following six, most of which took place in amphitheatres, occurred in a space of 30 years. Less costly in material and human terms, they could afford to be staged more frequently. Less grandiose, they became a feature of the games, but could not be considered exceptional. The iconography bears witness to this. Of some twenty representations of a in Roman art, nearly all are of the Fourth Style, of the time of Nero and the Flavian dynasty.
After the Flavian period, disappear from the texts almost completely. Apart from a mention in the Augustan History, a late source of limited reliability, only the town records () of Ostia tells us that in 109 Trajan inaugurated a basin. This site was discovered in the 18th century on the grounds of the Vatican City, northwest of the Castel Sant'Angelos. It is now referred to as the Naumachia Vaticana, with some sources erroneously calling it the Circus of Hadrian due to the similarities of its shape to that of other excavated circuses, along with the site's proximity to the Mausoleum of Hadrian. Subsequent digs have revealed the complete site plan. It had bleachers (tiered stands for spectators) and the surface was about one sixth the size of the Augustan . In the absence of any texts, it has to be assumed that it was only used at the time of Trajan.