Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
Spartacus’s rebellion starts with 70 fellow gladiator slaves in Italy, and then grows until he’s got an army of 60,000. They managed to take over southern Italy and were threatening Rome.
Your next choice is The Spartacus War – which is supposed to be a real page-turner.
Barry Strauss is a friend of mine, and I really admire his writing. This book is about the great slave revolt led by the gladiator slave Spartacus. The scholarship is impressive, but he also has this dramatic narrative style – leaving you in suspense at the end of each chapter. It’s also obvious that Strauss travelled extensively throughout Italy, visiting all these sites, and that really enhances it, it makes it really immediate because he’s been there, he’s able to absorb some of the spirit of it. I also chose this book because the cable TV show Spartacus: Blood and Sand is causing a big buzz in the States – everybody is watching it. People can now find out the real story in this book.
In what sense was Spartacus an enemy of Ancient Rome? Tell me a bit about him.
He was the enemy from within. He was created by Rome and then turned and attacked it. Spartacus was originally from Thrace, northeast of Greece, on the Black Sea. It was a land of warrior horsemen that had just been conquered by Rome. Spartacus survived and was welcomed into the Roman cavalry – he fought campaigns in Greece on Rome’s side. He learned Roman-style combat as a legionary in the Roman Empire. But somehow, and we don’t know how this happened, he lost his status. Maybe he was captured, or he was insubordinate, that would seem quite likely. Anyway, he was sold as a slave, and was such a good fighter that he was sent to gladiator school in Italy. There he was trained in brutal fighting skills and became a champion in them – and then he rebelled. He starts with 70 fellow gladiator slaves in Italy, and incites this rebellion which grows until he’s got an army of 60,000 – made up of slaves and farmers from southern Italy. They managed to take over southern Italy and were threatening Rome. So this is a deadly enemy that Rome itself created – from its policies of warfare and conquest and slavery and gladiators, and they had to really struggle to put it down.
What was Spartacus trying to achieve? Presumably he wasn’t trying to get slavery abolished at that early date?
That’s part of the legend. And that’s one of the reasons he’s become such a hero and martyr for Marxists and revolutionaries, inspiring revolutionaries and rebels for the past 2,000 years. Strauss goes into that – he analyses all the legends about Spartacus and comes out with a very rational, logical speculation on what Spartacus really wanted to achieve.
Which was?
Mostly, what he really wanted, was to go home. But he did have these noble ideals – everyone was treated equally within his army – and he certainly attracted people who had been oppressed and wanted to be free.
That theme of just wanting to go home, isn’t that Ridley Scott’s Gladiator?
Exactly. I think the movie Gladiator must have been inspired by the story of Spartacus, because in the end what he wants is to return to life and liberty.
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Adrienne Mayor is a research scholar in classics and history and philosophy of science at Stanford University. Her most recent book, Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates the Great, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy, was a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award. The comparison between Mithradates and Osama bin Laden is, she says, a tempting one – Mithradates began with a really terrifying act of genocide, which lured the Romans into a costly, long and unwinnable war in the Near East. ‘It was quite a wild goose chase he led them on. And they lost track of him at the end of the Third Mithradatic War. In 63BC he died, old and free.’
