looking Roman boat for the live battle  scenes. To design the boats, they hired a person who had spent his  whole career studying Roman naval architecture. When he presented  his designs to the MGM engineers, Mauro Zambuto (qv) (set  engineer) exclaimed, "But this is top heavy! It will sink!" They  built the boat anyway and launched it in the ocean, and at first it  seemed to float. Then however, a little wave came along, a wake from  another boat, splashed against the highly unstable boat, and tipped  it over. MGM then put the boat in a large pond with a huge painted  sky backdrop. To steady the boat, they ran cables from the bottom of  the boat to anchors on the bottom of the pond.