Roman Triton Model / Mechanism

Enormous recreations of famous sea battles were one of the favourite spectacles of the Roman Coliseum. This reconstruction, using technologies which would have been well within the capabilities of the Romans, shows how a platform supporting a model could be raised from beneath the water by a pulley system; a relatively simple mechanism which would have been translated into an enormous scale by the Romans, using teams of men and oxes to raise vast figures from the water as if by magic.