Paul D’Amato, Socialist Worker, January 15, 2010
MANY OF us have heard the name Spartacus, if only because of the famous scene in the 1960 Stanley Kubrick film by that name, where the Roman General Marcus Lucinius Crassus, played by Lawrence Olivier, demands that the bedraggled remnants of the defeated slave army hand over Spartacus. As Spartacus, played by Kirk Douglas, stands up to say, “I’m Spartacus,” his best friend Antoninus (Tony Curtis) jumps up, along with dozens of others, all exclaiming, “I’m Spartacus.”
Who was the real Spartacus? He was a Thracian soldier who was captured and sold into slavery by the Romans, and forced to train as a gladiator. There, he led a slave rebellion in 73 B.C.
In the whole of history, there have been only four recorded slave revolts on the scale of a genuine war: Two in Sicily (135-132 B.C. and 104-100 B.C.), one in Italy (73-70 B.C.), and one in Haiti in 1804. Only Haiti’s slave rebellion–the one Pat Robertson disgustingly claims was the result of a “pact with the devil”–was successful.
Tags: gladiators, Paul D'Amato, Roman General Marcus Lucinius Crassus, slave revolts in history, Spartacus, Spartacus' revolt
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