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Toussant Louverture, the hero of the successful slave revolts on the island of Santo Domingo in the Caribbean, had read about Spartacus.Īnother distortion in the movie is the impression that the coming of Christianity put an end to Roman slavery. For a description of how former slaves with luck and superior abilities could do well under the Roman system, see The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant, by John Dominic Crossman, Harper San Francisco, 1991, pp.
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However, when slaves received manumission they became full Roman citizens. They were considered expendable and little better than cattle or oxen. Most slaves worked on the land or in the houses of the wealthy as domestic servants. The children of these prisoners were slaves for life. Slavery was brutal and degrading for most Roman slaves. In the movie, after the defeat of Spartacus, his fictional “wife,” the slave Varinia, would have submitted to the sexual advances of Crassus if he had so commanded her.
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The slaves had to accept their master’s sexual advances or flee. Roman men also sexually exploited their female slaves. The scene in which Crassus attempts to seduce his slave Antoninus has a ring of truth to it. Many men of the Roman upper class were bisexual.
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Neither Gracchus nor Julius Caesar had anything to do with the suppression of the rebellion. There are many fictional characters in this movie. The captives were crucified lining the 132 miles of the road from Capua to Rome. More than ten thousand of Spartacus’ soldiers were killed and another six thousand were captured. The slave army was eventually defeated and Spartacus killed by a Roman army led by M. They defeated several Roman expeditions, including five Roman armies, and for a time controlled much of Southern and Central Italy. They were joined by about 70,000 slaves fleeing from harsh conditions. About 70 slave gladiators broke out of the school and set up camp on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius. Spartacus himself was a captured Thracian soldier (he was not born into slavery as stated in the movie) who had been sent to a gladiatorial school for slaves in Capua. Slavery is about oppression, exploitation, violence and reprisal.įew facts are known about the slave rebellion led by Spartacus. This movie has many scenes that are appropriately offensive: scores of captured slaves are crucified along the Appian Way, slaves are flogged, women and men degraded, etc. However, we are shown slave women parceled out to the gladiators for sex and Crassus attempting to seduce his male slave, who promptly runs away to join the rebellion. There are no graphic scenes of sexual activity. See the Helpful Background section below. There are several distortions of the historical record that should be corrected, especially the impression that the coming of Christianity to the Roman Empire ended slavery.
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There is much fighting and killing but gore raises its ugly head on only two occasions, once when Crassus stabs a rebelling gladiator in the back of the neck and is spattered with blood and once when Spartacus cuts off the arm of a Roman soldier in battle. While the movie captures the essence of the times, the historical record is very sketchy and the specific events are fictionalized.