“Gladiator II”: Fact vs. Fiction — Were There Sharks in the Colosseum? Did Romans Eat Rhinos? (Exclusive)

A Roman culture expert reveals which of Ridley Scott’s arena battles are based on real history — and which are “fun, but preposterous”

Sure, Gladiator and its new sequel are based on real events and cultural practices of the Roman empire. But come on, Ridley Scott… sharks and rhinos in the Colosseum?

“It's fun, but preposterous,” Roman culture expert Shadi Bartsch, the University of Chicago’s Helen A. Regenstein Distinguished Service Professor of Classics, tells PEOPLE of the liberties that director Scott, 86, and writers David Scarpa and Peter Craig take. Gladiator II stars Paul Mescal, Pedro Pascal, Denzel Washington and a returning Connie Nielsen in a follow-up to the Russell Crowe-starring 2000 historical epic.

“Of course, Hollywood wants everything to be bigger and bolder, and it can now because of digital technology,” says Bartsch. “So that first scene in the trailer, when the rhinoceros comes stomping in, and there's somebody riding him, and he's bigger than life? I couldn't decide whether to chuckle or to shriek.”

Related: Gladiator II First Reviews Praise Paul Mescal's 'Magnetic' Performance in Sequel Full of 'Eye-Popping Spectacle'

But audiences chalking up such spectacle to the filmmakers’ imagination may be surprised to know that some of Gladiator II’s wildest elements are based in historical accuracy. For example, “Romans did bring all sorts of really exotic animals into the amphitheater, not just for the pleasure of watching them be killed, but also because it symbolized allegorically the might and the reach of the Roman Empire,” explains Bartsch. “Animals from Asia and Africa really came to represent the way the Romans had completely mastered everything around them.”

Which animals were on the list? “We're talking a lot of dead bears, tigers, lions,” says the professor. “Elephants. Big cats. Ostriches... The more exotic the better.”

And yes, rhinoceroses made the cut — but, says Bartsch, the one-horned Asian variety rather than the two-horned African rhino shown in the new movie. “They didn't ride the rhinos at all,” she adds, and as for the later glimpse of the rhino’s head offered at a buffet, it’s likely not accurate that nobles ate such creatures.

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“Evidence suggests that the dead animals were cut up and given to the spectators to take home and to eat. But there was no giving away a whole rhino to a nobleman so that he could feast.” (There are also accounts of Commodus — played in Gladiator by Joaquin Phoenix — fighting a rhino from a safe distance, she says. The emperor wanted “to show off, big time, and the people loved it. Imagine if Donald Trump fought a lion. I'm sure he would have a huge audience.”)

The hairless baboons that appear in a smaller arena earlier in Gladiator II are a fictional invention, continues Bartsch. “There is also no record of baboons in fights,” she says, and apes in general were “very rare” in ancient Rome. In the movie, co-emperor Caracalla (played by Fred Hechinger) has a pet monkey; in actual history, Caracalla had a “favorite lion.”

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And then there is the epic naval fight, in which Mescal’s gladiator character takes on adversaries on boats in a water-filled Colosseum. Such practices “were meant to recreate real battles, and that was part of the fun of it,” Bartsch confirms. “They had to be shrunken versions, miniature versions of the actual boats.”

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But Gladiator II’s most glaring flight of fancy are that battle’s shark-infested waters. “There were no sharks — ever — in the arena,” says Bartsch. “It would've been very hard to transport sharks for one thing, given that they'd have to be transported in water vessels.” And while it’s true there were and are shark species in the Mediterranean sea, none liked “to bite humans, and in fact, they probably didn't because they were small.”

Furthermore, ancient Romans “had no concept of the shark separate from fish. They just knew a bunch of different fishes and one of them happened to be what we [now] would call a small shark.”

Gladiator II is in theaters now.