Spartacus (1960): Roman Slavery and Historical Accuracy

Introduction: A Film That Claims History

The 1960 film Spartacus claims to tell the story of the famous slave revolt, also known as the Gladiator War, which terrorized Rome for years and can be identified as one of the most influential causes of the eventual destruction of the Roman Republic and its descent into imperialism and tyranny. One must say "claims to tell," rather than "tells," because the film is wildly inaccurate historically. The creators of this work were, of course, aware of its lack of historical authenticity, which is partly attributed to the artistic necessity of condensing four years of political upheaval and constant warfare into less than four hours.

Indeed, the condensation of time is the most significant historical inaccuracy — for example, many main Roman characters are indiscriminately compressed chronologically, such as Gracchus, who appears to be a combination of two Gracchus brothers active fifty years before Spartacus, or the merging of Crassus with Sulla as a military tyrant. Among the film's many historical inaccuracies is a serious distortion of the facts regarding slavery in the Roman Republic. This distortion is not so much made explicit as it is subtly portrayed throughout the film. The bare realities of slave demographics and culture are obscured, the slave revolutionaries are simultaneously idealized and made less effective warriors than they were historically, and Spartacus as an individual suffers the same fate.

Distortions of Roman Slave Demographics and Origins

The obfuscation of slave life is subtle but pervasive, in that slavery in Rome is frequently made to appear more like American slavery than is quite accurate. There are several ways in which this happens. First, in this film the source of slaves appears to be mainly through natural reproduction and occasionally the kidnapping or enslaving of free adults from other countries. This is evidenced in all the slave stories presented. Spartacus's story, for example, is told by the narrator: "In the conquered Greek province of Thrace, an illiterate slave woman added to her master's wealth by giving birth to a son whom she named Spartacus." Varinia, meanwhile, appears to have been kidnapped from across the ocean in Britannia when she was thirteen years old — most likely already considered an adult by Celtic standards. Characters speak about going home to the countries from which they were kidnapped, as if — like American slaves — they all originated from some specific foreign continent.

Historically, however, the ways in which individuals became enslaved were far more numerous. The historical Spartacus, for example, appears to have been a soldier before he was a slave. One account holds that he was a Roman legionnaire who mutinied and was thereafter enslaved (the film actually addresses this rumor and dismisses it in its discussion of "royal blood"), while more credible sources suggest that he was a captured Thracian soldier. Historically, slaves were frequently criminals, captured enemy soldiers, or Roman children who had been "exposed" at birth.

John Madden wrote an important article on this subject demonstrating conclusively that, though there did exist vernae — children born to enslaved mothers who remained as slaves — they were not the primary source of slaves, nor were captured noncombatants. A great many slaves in the early Republic were either foundlings abandoned by their birth parents, people sold into slavery by their own families, prisoners of war, or criminals. The latter two categories were especially common among gladiators.