Other Romans and Greek writers provide important details about Spartacus, all drawn, more or less accurately, from earlier histories. The most important of them are Velleius Paterculus (c.20 BC - AD 30s?), Frontinus (c. AD 30-104), Florus (c. AD 100- 150) and Orosius (c. AD 380s-420s). An important study of Florus on Spartacus is H.T. Wallinga, ‘Bellum Spartacium: Florus’ Text and Spartacus’s Objective’, Athenaeum 80 (1992): 25-43. Cicero lived through Spartacus’s revolt as a grown man and referred to it in several of his speeches, most notably in his orations against Verres, especially Oration 6 (also known as II,5). An English translation of the speech by Michael Grant is conveniently found in Cicero, On Government (Hardmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1994), 13-105. For an overview, see M. Doi, ‘Spartacus’ Uprising in Cicero’s Works’, Index 17(1989): 191-203.
Two brilliant but speculative and ultimately unconvincing studies argue that Spartacus’s revolt was primarily nationalist and anti-Roman rather than a slave revolt: W.Z. Rubinsohn, ‘Was the Bellum Spartacium a Servile Insurrection?’, Rivista di Filologia 99 (1971): 290-99, and Pierre Piccinin, ‘Les Italiens dans le “Bellum Spartacium” ’, Historia 53.2 (2004): 173-99. See also Piccinin, ‘À propos de deux passages des œuvres de Salluste et Plutarque’, Historia 51.3 (2002): 383-4 and Piccinin, ‘Le dionysisme dans le Bellum Spartacium’, Parola del Passato 56.319 (2001): 272-96.
The following are important studies of specific topics in the history of Spartacus’s revolt: R. Kamienik, ‘Die Zahlenangaben ueber des Spartakus-Aufstand und ihre Glaubwuerdigkeit’, Alter tum 16 (1970): 96-105, on the number of rebels at various points in the revolt; K. Ziegler, ‘Die Herkunft des Spartacus’, Hermes 83 (1955): 248-50, on the possibility that Spartacus was a Maedus; M. Doi, ‘Spartacus’ Uprising and Ancient Thracia, II’, Dritter Internationaler Thrakologischer Kongress vol. 2 (Sofia: Staatlicher Verlag Swjat, 1984): 203-7, and M. Doi, ‘The Origins of Spartacus and the Anti-Roman Struggle in Thracia’, Index 20 ( 1992): 31-40, on the influence of Spartacus’s Thracian background; G. Stampacchia, ‘La rivolta di Spartaco come rivolta contadina’, Index 9 (1980): 99-111, on the rural character of Spartacus’s supporters; C. Pellegrino, Ghosts of Vesuvius: A New Look at the Last Days of Pompeii, How Towers Fall, and Other Strange Connections (New York: W. Morrow, 2004), 147-66, on Spartacus’s sojourn on Mount Vesuvius; E. Maróti, ‘De suppliciis. Zur Frage der sizili anischen Zusammenhange des Spartacus-Aufstandes’, Acta Antiquae Hungariae 9 (1961): 41-70, on Spartacus’s planned crossing to Sicily; Maria Capozza, ‘Spartaco e il sacrificio del cavallo (Plut. Crass. 11, 8-9)’, Critica Storica 2 (1963): 251-93, on Spartacus’s sacrifice of a horse during his last battle. Allen Mason Ward, Marcus Crassus and the Late Roman Republic (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 1977), esp. 83-98, ‘Chapter IV: The War with Spartacus’, offers a fundamental study of the crucial last six months of the war.
The titles of the following all make the subjects clear: R. Kamienik, ‘Gladiatorial Games during the Funeral of Crixus. Contribution to the Revolt of Spartacus’, Eos 64 (1976): 83-90; M. Doi, ‘Why did Spartacus Stay in Italy?’, Antiquitas. Acta Universitatis Wratislaviensis 598 (1983): 15-18; M. Doi, ‘On the Negotiations between the Roman State and the Spartacus Army’, KLIO 66 (1984): 170-74; M. Doi, ‘Female Slaves in the Spartacus Army’, in Marie-Madeleine Mactoux and Evelyne Geny, eds., Mélanges Pierre Lévêque, II: Anthropologie et Societe, Annales littéraires de I’Universite de Besançon, 377; Centre de recherches d’histoire ancienne, 82 (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1989): 161-72; R.M. Sheldon, ‘The Spartacus Rebellion: A Roman Intelligence Failure?’, International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 6.1 (1993): 69-84. Also valuable are B. Baldwin, ‘Two Aspects of Spartacus’s Slave Revolt’, Classical Journal 62 (1966-7): 288-94, and J. Scarborough, ‘Reflections on Spartacus’, Ancient World 1 no.2 (1978): 75-81.
Study of the Spartaks fresco begins with the publication by Italian archaeologist Amadeo Maiuri, Monumenti della pittura antica scoperti in Italia; Sezione terza: La pittura ellenistica romana; fasc. 2. Le pitture delle case di ‘M. Fabius Amandio’, del ‘Sacerdos amandus’ e di ‘P. Cornelius Teges’ (reg, I, ins. 7) (Rome: La Libreria dello Stato, 1938). Jerzy Kolendo makes the case for scepticism in ‘Uno spartaco sconosciuto nella Pompei osca. Le pitture della casa di Amando’, Index 9 (1980): 33-40 and ‘Spartacus sur une peinture osque de Pompei: chef de la grande insurrection servile ou un gladiateur inconnu originaire de la Thrace?’, Antiquitas. Acta Universitatis Wratislaviensis 10 (1983): 49-53. Fabrizio Pesando weighs possible changes in the architecture of the building where the fresco was found in ‘Gladiatori a Pompei’, in Adriano La Regina, ed., Sangue e Arena (Milan: Electa, 2001), 175-98. A sensible overview of the debate in English can be found in van A. Hoof, ‘Reading the Spartaks Fresco Without Red Eyes’, in S.T.A.M. Mols and Eric Moormann, eds., Omni pede stare. Saggi architectonici e circumvesuviani in memoriam Jos de Waele (Naples: Electa Napoli and Ministeri per i Beni e le Attivite‘ Culturali, 2005), 251-6.
Spartacus in Fiction, Film and Ideology
Brent D. Shaw offers an excellent overview of Spartacus in western culture before Marx in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with a look forward to the present in ‘Spartacus Before Marx: Liberty and Servitude’, Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics Version 2.2, November 2005, http://www.princeton. edu/~pswpc/pdfs/shaw/110516.pdf. On Marxist scholarship on Spartacus in the Soviet Union, see W.Z. Rubinsohn, Spartacus’ Uprising and Soviet Historical Writing (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 1987).
Three twentieth-century novels about Spartacus are available in English: Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Spartacus (New York: Pegasus Books, 2006), originally published in 1933; Arthur Koestler, The Gladiators, trans. Edith Simon (New York: Macmillan, 1939), a work by a disillusioned ex-Communist that sees in Spartacus’s revolt the excesses of revolution; and Howard Fast’s famous 1951 Spartacus, republished in 1996 by North Castle Books (Armonk: New York) with a brief introductory essay by Fast about his experiences as an American Communist in the McCarthy era.
Stanley Kubrick’s 1960 film is available in DVD, in several versions; the Criterion Collection version is the best. A 2004 remake, Spartacus - the Complete TV Miniseries, is also available on DVD. A fascinating and enjoyable collection of essays about Kubrick’s film is M.M. Winkler, Spartacus: Film and History (Malden, Mass. and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007).
Khachaturian’s ballet Spartacus, with choreography by Yuri Grigorovich and performed by the Bolshoi Ballet, is also available on DVD. The 1990 Arthaus DVD version, one of two starring Irek Mukhamedov as Spartacus, is probably the best. Recordings of the music alone are available.
Among documentaries on Spartacus, there is The Real Spartacus, a 2001 production by Britain’s Channel 4; Decisive Battles - Spartacus, from the History Channel in 1994, available on DVD; Spartacus, Gladiator War, from the National Geographic in 2006.
Rome and Romans
A good introductory textbook to Roman history is M.T. Boat-wright, Daniel J. Gargola and Richard Talbert, The Romans (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). Michael Crawford, The Roman Republic, 2nd edn (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), offers a brief and incisive scholarly analysis. A lively and accessible overview is P. Matyszak, Chronicle of the Roman Republic (London: Thames & Hudson, 2003). A classic and more detailed alternative is T.R. Holmes, The Roman Republic and the Founder of the Empire, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923). There are excellent introductory essays in Nathan Rosenstein and Robert Morstein-Marx, A Companion to the Roman Republic (Malden, Mass, and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006).
Tom Holland offers a vivid account of the final decades of the Roman Republic in Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic (New York: Anchor, 2005). A scholarly introduction is Mary Beard and Michael Crawford, Rome in the Late Republic: Problems and Interpretations, 2nd edn (London: Duckworth, 1999). The indispensable scholarly analysis of Roman politics in those years is E.S. Gruen, The Last Generation of the Roman Rep
ublic (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974).
An essential reference book for Roman officials is T.R.S. Broughton, with the collabouration of Marcia Patterson, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, 2 vols. (New York: The American Philological Association, 1951-2). See also T.C. Bren-nan, The Praetorship in the Roman Republic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
On the economy of Late Republican Italy, see Neville Morley, Metropolis and Hinterland: The City of Rome and the Italian Economy, 200 BC - AD 200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Nathan Rosenstein, Rome at War: Farms, Families and Death in the Middle Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004).
On the demography of Late Republican Italy, see P.A. Brunt, Italian Manpower 225 BC - AD 14 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971); T. Parkin, Roman Demography and Society (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992); W.W. Scheidel, ‘Human Mobility in Roman Italy, I: The Free Population’, Journal of Roman Studies 94 (2005): 1-26, and ‘Human Mobility in Roman Italy, II: The Slave Population’, Journal of Roman Studies 95 (2005): 65-79.
On individual Roman politicians of the Spartacan War, see A. Keaveney, Sulla, the Last Republican (London: Routledge, 2005); A. Keaveney, ‘Sulla and Italy’, Critica Storia 19 (1982): 499-544; Allen Mason Ward, Marcus Crassus and the Late Roman Republic (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1977); F.E. Adcock, Marcus Crassus, Millionaire (Cambridge, England: W. Heffer & Sons, 1966); B.A. Marshall, Crassus, a Political Biography (Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1976); B.A. Marshall, ‘Crassus’s Ovation in 71’, Historia 21 (1972): 669-73; B.A. Marshall, ‘Crassus and the Command Against Spartacus’, Athenaeum 51 (1973): 109-21; P. Greenhalgh, Pompey, the Roman Alexander (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980); R. Seager, Pompey the Great, a Political Biography (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2002); Anthony Everitt, Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome’s Greatest Politician (New York: Random House, 2003); B.A. Marshall, R.J. Baker, ‘The Aspirations of Q. Arrius’, Historia 24.2 (1975): 220-31; I. Shatz man, ‘Four Notes on Roman Magistrates’, Athenaeum 46 (1968): 345-54.
On Sertorius, see Philip O. Spann, Quintus Sertorius: Citizen, Soldier, Exile (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1976); C.F. Conrad, Plutarch’s Sertorius: A Historical Commentary (University of North Carolina Press, 1994). On Mithridates, see Adrienne Mayor, Mithridates (Princeton: Princeton University Press, forthcoming).
Other valuable studies include M. Beard, The Roman Triumph (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007); J. Percival, The Roman Villa: An Historical Introduction (London: B.T. Batsford, 1976); J.S. Ackerman, The Villa: Form and Ideology of Country Houses (London: Thames and Hudson, 1990). C.V. Sutherland, The Romans in Spain, 217 BC - AD 117 (London: Methuen & Co., 1939); J.S. Richardson, The Romans in Spain Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, (1998); J.S. Richardson, Hispaniae: Spain and the Development of Roman Imperialism, 218-82 BC (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Wilfried Nippel, Public Order in Ancient Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
Gladiators
Two accessible and readable recent introductions to the subject are Alison Futrell, The Roman Games (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), and Fik Meijer, The Gladiators, History’s Most Dangerous Sport (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2003). S. Shadrake, The World of the Gladiator (Stroud: Tempus Publishing, 2005), offers reconstructions of gladiatorial combat, as does M. Junkelmann, Das Spiel mit dem Tod. So kampften Roms Gladiatoren (Mainz am Rhein: von Zabern, 2000); the latter is in German but the excellent photos speak for themselves. An English-language summary of some of Junkelmann’s ideas is found in M. Junkelmann, ‘Familia Gladiatoria: The Heroes of the Amphitheatre’, in Gladiators and Caesars: The Power of Spectacle in Ancient Rome, Eckart Koehne and Cornelia Ewigleben, eds., English version edited by R. Jackson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 31-74; see also M. Junkelmann, ‘Gladiatorial and Military Equipment and Fighting Technique: A Comparison’, Journal of Roman Military Equipment Studies 11 (2000): 113-17.
Karl Grossschmidt and Fabian Kanz, Gladiatoren in Ephesos: Tod am Nachmittag (Vienna: Osterreichisches Archaologisches Institut, 2002), summarizes important discoveries from a gladiators’ cemetery in Ephesus. Luciana Jacobelli, Gladiators at Pompeii (Los Angeles; John Paul Getty Museum, 2004), focuses on the important evidence of the first century AD but contains much of interest.
Other valuable books on gladiators and their place in Roman society and culture include D.G. Kyle, Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome (London and New York: Routledge, 1998); T. Wiedemann, Emperors and Gladiators (London and New York: Routledge, 1992). K.E. Welch theorizes a Roman initiative behind Campania’s first stone amphitheatres: K.E. Welch, The Roman Amphitheatre: From Its Origins to the Colosseum (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), along with an article by the same author, ‘The Roman Arena in late-Republican Italy: A New Interpretation’, Journal of Roman Archaeology 7 (1994): 59- 80. Carlin A. Barton, The Sorrows of the Ancient Romans: The Gladiator and the Monster (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), is speculative but often insightful. On gladiators in the armed gangs and bodyguards of the Late Republic, see Andrew Lintott, Violence in Republican Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 83-5.
Slaves
The best introduction to Roman slavery is K.R. Bradley, Slavery and Society at Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). See also his very thoughtful earlier study, Slaves and Masters in the Roman Empire: A Study in Social Control (Brussels: Lato mus, 1984). The little book by Michael Massey and Paul More-land, Slavery in Ancient Rome (London: Bristol Classical Press, 2001), is also a good start. T. Wiedemann, Greek and Roman Slavery (London: Routledge, 1981), is an excellent collection of documents. J.C. Dumont, Servus. Rome et l’Esclavage sous la République. Collection de l’École Française de Rome 103 (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, Palais Farnèse, 1987), is fundamental on slavery in the Republic. Two important introductory studies are John Bodel, ‘Slave Labour and Roman Society’, in K. Bradley and P. Cartledge, eds., The Cambridge World History of Slavery. Vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), and Willem Jongman, ‘Slavery and the Growth of Rome. The Transformation of Italy in the Second and First Centuries BCE’, in Catherine Edwards and Greg Woolf, eds., Rome the Cosmopolis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003): 100-122.
M.I. Finley, Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology (Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1998), is an essential discussion of the problem of slavery in the classical world. See also Joseph Vogt, Ancient Slavery and the Ideal of Man, trans. Thomas Wiedemann (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975); Keith Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978); Niall McKeown, The Invention of Ancient Slavery, Duckworth Classical Essays (London: Duckworth, 2007).
F.H. Thompson, The Archaeology of Greek and Roman Slavery (London: Duckworth, 2003) is valuable, but there remains much work to do on this subject. See Jane Webster, ‘Archaeologies of Slavery and Servitude: Bringing “New World” Perspectives to Roman Britain’, Journal of Roman Archaeology 18(1)(2005): 161-79.
On the Roman slave trade, see John Bodel, ‘Caveat Emptor: Towards a Study of Roman Slave-Traders’, Journal of Roman Archaeology. 18(2005): 181-95, and the debate represented by such works as W.V. Harris, ‘Demography, Geography and the Sources of Roman Slaves’, The Journal of Roman Studies 89 (1999): 62-75, and by W. Scheidel, ‘Quantifying the Sources of Slaves in the Early Roman Empire’, The Journal of Roman Studies 87 (1997): 156-69.
Revolts and Resistance
There is an excellent introduction to the subject in K.R. Bradley, Slavery and Rebellion in the Roman World, 140 BC - 70 BC. (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1989). See also Theresa Urbainczyk, Slave Revolts in Antiquity (Stocksfield, England: Acumen, 2008). Although the emphasis is on Greece, not Rome, a seminal discussion is found in Paul Cartledge, ‘Rebels and Sambos in Classical Greece: A Comparative View’, in his Spartan Reflections (London: Duckworth, 2001), 127-52. Brent Shaw’
s Spartacus and the Slave Wars (Boston, Mass.: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2001) offers translation of the major sources and a valuable introductory essay. Also useful is Zvi Yavetz, Slaves and Slavery in Ancient Rome (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1988). W. Hoben, Terminologische Studien zu den Sklavenerhebun gen der roemischen Republik (Wiesbaden, Germany: Steiner, 1978), represents an important study of the terminology of revolt used in the ancient sources. On the First Sicilian Slave War, see P. Green, ‘The First Sicilian Slave War’, Past and Present 20 (1961): 10-29, with objections by W.G.G. Forrest and T.C.W. Stinton, ‘The First Sicilian Slave War’, Past and Present 22 (1962): 87-93. On the Sicilian Revolts, see also G.P. Verbrugghe, ‘Sicily 210-70 BC Livy, Cicero and Diodorus’, Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 103 (1972): 535-59, and G.P. Verbrugghe, ‘Slave Rebellion or Sicily in Revolt?’, Kokalos 20 (1974): 46-60.
Thomas Grünewald has written a fascinating study in Bandits in the Roman Empire, Myth and Reality, trans. John Drinkwater (London and New York: Routledge, 2004).
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