Jeff's Reviews > اسپارتاکوس

Spartacus (1951)

This historical novel by Howard Fast is clearly the source of the Kirk Douglas movie, filmed around ten years later, and directed by Stanley Kubrick. The novel couldn’t find a major publishing house to publish it, and was sponsored by people buying a copy in advance. It’s a great novel, though not what I expected. It’s frame story is told after the rebellion, and mostly through the point of view of the Romans who opposed and eventually destroyed Spartacus’ rebellion. Crassus, the bisexual general (Laurence Olivier in the movie I think) who destroyed him, is one character. So is the old senator Gracchus (Charles Laughton in the movie I think.) There is a very vivid scene early in the book where some young privileged Romans are riding up a road lined with crucified slaves. The brutality and the “highly civilized” nature of ancient Rome are constantly juxtaposed. The rebellion itself is never featured the way it is in the film, but that’s a different medium. This novel is driven largely by talk, in the tradition of Plato and Socrates and Aristotle, and that sort of makes sense. The bits and pieces of the rebellion are filled in, with some attention to tactics, but in general this novel is much talkier than I expected. And yet it works. The main plot taking place within the frame story is the fight between Crassus and Gracchus to own Varinia, Spartacus’s widow. She is a beautiful, large breasted Teutonic woman who charges naked into battle like a berserker warrior. It’s hard to imagine enough people ever reading this novel for it to be a threat, but its tale of a corrupt empire that would always inevitably have to face rebellion was clearly one that touched a nerve for America in the fifties. There are a number of political speeches (or monologues or whatever you want to call them) by Gracchus that are thinly veiled shots at our own Republic. Good stuff.