James White - The First Protector

"The tactic favored by both sides was to overcome the initial inertia of their vessels and to build up as much speed as quickly as possible with the oars so that they would be able to pierce the hull of an opposing craft with the submerged, pointed ram in the bow and sink it to the bottom. Since the engagement was taking place in the muddied waters of a flooded arena rather than at sea, the stricken vessel did not sink very far and simply became immobilized with its decks awash. This meant that its crew had to fight either clinging one-handed to the upperworks or while stumbling and splashing waist-deep over an unseen deck. When one of the vessels suffered this fate a few of the spectators were amused by the incongruity of the sight of gladiators behaving like the most unsubtle of clowns, but the majority seemed to be bored by it and shouted loudly for more blood.

"More blood was forthcoming.

"But the tactic of ramming the opposing vessel broadside on was effective only once because the commanders of the defending craft immediately began countering it by turning their rams and strengthened forward hulls in a bow-to-bow collision. This was a difficult maneuver to perform with accuracy inside the restricted space of the arena and a misjudgment meant that the two vessels concerned either bumped and scraped heavily past each other, breaking off the oars on those sides and transfixing or grievously injuring the rowers with the splintering wood, or the rams tore open the length of their hulls with the same result for the oarsmen. For a short time the screams of the dying and drowning men could be heard over the noise of the crowd, and the muddy water around them was not dark enough to hide the spreading stains of red.

"Only one vessel was able to avoid damage and it turned, positioned itself, and rowed forward to ram amidships an opposing vessel that was already listing and beginning to sink. Due either to overenthusiasm or misjudgment, its ram completely transfixed the other craft and, unable to reverse the oars in time to pull clear, the sinking victim pulled its attacker down with it until the other's bow was submerged and it, too, flooded and sank.

"None of the four vessels remained afloat, but they were joined by their rams or otherwise tumbled together into an untidy mass of partially sunken wreckage. Their fighters could still move, in spite of having to climb and wade chest-deep, or swim with their heavy weapons, from one ship's deck to another, and so the battle continued slowly and awkwardly and without any clear indication of which side was winning it.

"Their Emperor, Severus had previously explained to me, had promised the crowd a unique and costly spectacle against which all others of the past would pale into insignificance, a bloody sea battle fought before their very eyes inside the arena rather than on the distant secrecy of an ocean. He had promised them that he would awe, amaze, and stir them to heights of excitement far beyond anything in their previous experience, and to ensure that the combatants would give of their best during individual and ship conflicts, he was introducing a new measure.

"For the greater glory of their Emperor and the entertainment of his beloved citizens of Rome, and to avoid tiresome pauses in the action while he was asked who among the fallen should or should not die, they had been instructed to fight each other to the death without exception. But on this occasion they had been given an even greater incentive to wage bloody battle. The survivors on the winning side would be rewarded and decorated by their Emperor, while those who had fought but did not die on the losing side would be killed in full view of the crowd. The fighting would, therefore, be all the more fierce and completely without mercy.

"But the great spectacle that Nero had promised was fast becoming the greatest of all anticlimaxes. Hampered by the depth of the water covering the decks, the gladiators had to feel their way with their feet across the timbers and fight slowly and carefully while those who lost their footing and fell overboard into deeper water had to discard their weapons if they were to remain afloat. Watching slow and awkward swordfights or men trying to save themselves from drowning was not what the crowd had expected to see. They began booing and hooting in disdain, and many of them were looking up at the Emperor's enclosure as they did so.

"It was plain from the color of Nero's already red and angry face that he did not like this mass show of disrespect to his august person, but there were not enough Praetorian Guards ranged around him, or even among the reserves in the palace barracks, to chastise the ungrateful crowd as it deserved. Instead he spoke sharply to one of the personages standing close to him, the man wearing the bright orange toga and diagonal red sash of the Master of the Arena, who quickly disappeared. For a long time the slow, waterlogged conflict and the angry, derisive shouting of the crowd continued while nothing else seemed to be happening except that the Emperor was standing beside his purple-draped divan, smiling broadly and pointing at the sunken ships. A few moments elapsed before the shouting from the crowd died away into a surprised silence as it was borne in on them that the sunken vessels were rising slowly out of the water and a new sound was heard, the loud splashing and gurgling of fast-flowing water. "The arena was being emptied.

"When the fighting men realized what was happening, they leapt down from the canted and slippery decks to continue the battle on what they thought would be the steadier arena floor, but in this they were wrong. The last of the water was slow to drain away and it covered the normally hard-packed ground in a layer of thick, wet mud. But they fought bravely and fiercely, singly or in groups that charged and countercharged between the canted, broken hulls of their vessels and over the splintered oars and the still and muddy bodies of those who had been killed or had drowned earlier.

"The crowd howled with laughter as they cut, thrust, slipped, and fell to rise again so muddy that it was no longer possible to tell the team colors apart. But moments later they were shaking their fists and screaming in frustration when the fighters regrouped and began using the shelter of the spaces between the hulks of their ships as strong points, which meant that they all but disappeared from the view of the audience. The battle became a long, bloody, muddy shambles, with few of the fighters knowing who were friends and who enemies, that continued until the sun dipped behind the high, banked terraces on the western rim of the circus. The clash of weapons could still be heard, but all that could be seen were a few glimpses of muddy figures fighting on a similarly muddy ground in the lengthening shadows of the vessels' hulls.

"It was not the spectacle to end all spectacles that the Emperor had promised, and he was screaming in exasperation and waving his fists as loudly and angrily as any of the crowd. Then Nero gestured for the senior officer of his Praetorian Guard to come forward, spoke to him briefly before the man disappeared on what seemed to be an urgent errand. Moments later a guard detachment armed with long body shields and spears emerged from the gateway under the Imperial enclosure, formed into a single line abreast to march slowly across the muddy ground toward the ships. Ex-gladiators all, they had gained their positions to Caesar's elite guards regiment by being the best or, more accurately, the very worst and most heartless members of that pitiless profession.

"Stronger and rested and better armed than the weakened or wounded fighters, they moved through the small groups of surviving combatants and unhurriedly and with a complete lack of drama or even effort, began spearing them to death regardless of whether their tunics showed traces of yellow or white under the mud. As they reformed and matched back the crowd went wild again, but not all of them.