There, their ranks swelled with runaway slaves inspired by the stories that were spreading across the countryside. Through a combination of skill, guile and apparently limitless charisma, he led an uprising that saw 70 trained gladiators escape bondage and take refuge on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius. Spartacus was a Thracian who had previously fought in the Roman army but who somehow fell afoul of the authorites and found himself in chains in the Roman city of Capua. Romans had slaves some of those slaves trained as gladiators to fight in the arena for the amusement of their masters. Whether it Stanley Kubrick’s film (written by Dalton Trumbo no less, and starring Kirk Douglas), or the more recent Starz TV series (starring a whole lot of well-oiled, largely naked studs ‘n’ babes), the various permutations of the Spartacus story loom so compellingly large because, perhaps, the ethical lines are so clearly drawn. In part, this is due to previous treatments of the story, but then again, those treatments are testament to the power that it exerts on our collective imaginations. The appeal of the Spartacus story is striking many people with only the faintest grasp of Roman history still know about the gladiator-slave-turned-rebel-with-a-cause.

Not a lot of subtlety here, in other words. Despite its many flaws, it’s a big, fat book with big, rousing battle scenes, obvious heroes (Thracians! Slaves! Priestesses of Dionysus!) and even more obvious villains (Romans, eww! Especially the fat greedy ones!) and characterization done in the literary equivalent of wax crayon. (See what I did there?)īut for readers who have already read Fast’s novel-or, more likely, who are looking for something a little racier, a little less highbrow– Spartacus the Gladiator might appeal. Howard Fast’s 1951 Spartacus remains the high-water mark of literary treatments for this story, and Ben Kane isn’t about to defeat him in a literary gladitorial death match. Okay, so this ain’t exactly great literature.

Spartacus fast novel