Glorious, sure, but also sort of ridiculous, like the opening ceremonies of the Olympics only with way more blood. Gaius Julius Caesar was the father of Gaius Julius Caesar the Elder who was the father of Julius Caesar, the Roman dictator. You can probably imagine just how much money this spectacle cost the Roman empire, which is likely why the event only happened a handful of times over the next couple centuries. We're not talking about a swimming pool-sized hole, but a hole big enough for two fleets of naval vessels manned by 4,000 slaves and 2,000 "crew members" who were mostly prisoners of war or people who had been sentenced to death. The reforms proposed by Tiberius and Gaius Sempronius Gracchus, and the supremacy of general Gaius Marius, had deeply shaken the political world.
The end of the second century BCE witnessed the rise of new families in Roman politics. To stage the first naumachia, Caesar had his people dig a hole and fill it with water from the Tiber River. Gaius Julius Caesar Strabo (c.130-87): Roman politician and author. So he devised a novel new form of entertainment, called naumachia, which it will probably not surprise you to hear was yet another glorious spectacle of fantastic death. According to National Geographic, after he defeated his pal-turned-rival Pompey the Great, Caesar headed home with his cameleopard, a bunch of elephants carrying torches, and "practically the entire populace escorting him," but later decided his homecoming hadn't been fancy enough.
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