Spartacus in the Television Arena

Essays on the Starz Series

Spartacus, the Thracian gladiator turned rebel leader, endures as a near-mythic hero who fought for the oppressed against a Roman oligarchy built on the backs of slave labor. The image of Spartacus as a noble if doomed avenger is familiar and his story has been retold through history as a cautionary tale about social injustice. The television series Spartacus takes a different view, with a violent depiction of the man and his times and a focus on the archetype of the gladiator—powerful, courageous and righteous. This collection of new essays studies the series as an exploration of masculinity. In the world of Spartacus, men jockey for social position, question the nature of their lives, examine their relationships with women and with each other, and explore their roles in society and the universe. The series also offers a compelling study of the composite nature of historical narrative in television and film, where key facts from original sources are interwoven with period embellishments, presenting audiences with a history and a fiction whose lines remain blurred by a distant yet all-too-familiar past.