Spartacus

By Theresa Urbainczyk

For many today Spartacus is Kirk Douglas. The influence of Kubrick's film has been enormous, but Spartacus was famous before 1960. For hundreds of years he has been a byword for resistance, revolution and the fight for freedom. He has given his name to a revolutionary party in Germany and a political group in the USA; he is the subject of several novels and films, and even a ballet. Though only a slave, he is as famous as Julius Caesar. Not much information, and much of it negative, survives about him from the ancient world, yet his reputation has survived this character assassination and he is still famous as a popular hero two thousand years after his death. Theresa Urbainczyk explores the man and the myth in this fascinating short treatment of an icon of revolution.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1853996688
• ISBN13: 9781853996689
• Release Date: August 2004
• Publisher: Bristol Classical Press
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.8" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Finally Spartacus Enters The Non-Ficton Arena

Theresa Urbainczyk's has written an admirable brief study, published by the venerable Gerald Duckworth and Co. Ltd, as an entry in their recent Ancients in Action series of short incisive books which "introduces major figures of the ancient world to the general reader, including each subject's life, works, and significance for later western civilization." A senior classics lecturer at University College Dublin who has previously been known for her works on the history of church and state under the late Roman Empire, Ms. Ubainczyk fills her publisher's prescription to a tee in this, her first work on slavery and slave rebellion under the late Republic. In it she offers an explanation of how a gladiator rebel against slavery from two thousand years ago who ultimately failed, was vilified by the establishment of his own time, and left no disciples or writings to carry on his ideas, still managed to become so influential in the modern era. She begins with a brief survey of the impact of Spartacus on such diverse historical phenomena as the French Revolution, the slave uprising under Toussant L'Overture in Haiti, the Italian Risorgimento under Garribaldi, the Marxist movement of the ninteenth century, the failed German revolution in 1918, and the communist regimes of the twentieth century. Stepping back into the Roman Republican period she leads the reader through the background of conquest, slavery, gladiatorial games, and previous slave rebellions that ultimately led to the great Italian servile war. What follows is an up-to-date account of the revolt of Spartacus, his rise, many victories, and final defeat by his arch enemy Marcus Licinius Crassus. Although writing for the general reader the author is not afraid to examine with a critical eye some of the heretofore accepted academic conclusions regarding Spartacus's aims, accomplishments, and potential for greater, more lasting success. The narrative section of the book concludes with a chapter on slaves and slave rebellions in the centuries following Spartacus's uprising which contains accounts of some little known episodes and even major military campaigns which are to be found in the surviving ancient historical texts. In the central chapter of the book the author illumines how despite the negative press Spartacus received from contemporary ancient historians, Plutarch, one of our main surviving sources on the slave rebellion, presented him in a positively heroic light in his Life of Crassus, thereby transforming him into a timeless hero. She presents an in-depth analysis of how Plutarch, in an attempt to express the anti-Roman and pro-Greek sentiments clearly evident in his accounts of other Greek and Roman lives, contrasted Spartacus's admirable moral and martial qualities with the far baser characteristic traits of his opponent, Crassus. While her arguments are certainly original and convincing, I would suggest that without the more sympathetic accounts of Plutarch's sources, th