60 Fun Facts About Spartacus

Spartacus came from which ancient region, largely in what is now Bulgaria?

Thrace: Plutarch calls him a Thracian of nomadic stock yet 'more Hellenic than Thracian', crediting the slave with a wit and culture above his fortune.

Ancient accounts say Spartacus had been what before he was enslaved and made a gladiator?

A soldier with the Romans: Florus says he went from mercenary to soldier, then deserter and highwayman, before his strength made him a gladiator, so Rome may have trained the man who routed its armies.

According to Plutarch, Spartacus's wife, who escaped with him, was what?

A prophetess: when a snake coiled on the sleeping Spartacus's face as he waited to be sold in Rome, Plutarch says, she declared it the sign of a great and formidable power.

The gladiator school Spartacus broke out of was based at which city?

Capua: when the city sent troops after the runaways, the gladiators beat them, took their army weapons and threw away their own arena gear as dishonourable.

Who owned the gladiatorial school from which Spartacus escaped?

Lentulus Batiatus: Plutarch blames the breakout on his injustice, saying he kept his gladiators in close confinement through no misconduct of their own.

Historians usually call Rome's war against Spartacus by which name?

The Third Servile War: Rome's two earlier slave wars were fought overseas, but this one broke out in Italy itself, and it took eight legions to end it.

What stopped most of the 200 gladiators planning to escape with Spartacus?

A betrayal: someone informed on the 200 plotters, Plutarch says, and only the 78 who got wind of it in time managed to break out.

Per Plutarch, what did Spartacus and his fellow gladiators grab as weapons to break out of their school?

Kitchen utensils: they seized cleavers and spits from a cookhouse, then came upon wagons hauling gladiator weapons to another city and armed themselves properly.

On which mountain did Spartacus and the escaped gladiators first make camp?

Vesuvius: its summit could be reached by only one narrow path, which made it easy to hold, and the volcano would not erupt and bury Pompeii for another 150 years.

Per Plutarch, what did Spartacus do when his horse was brought before the final battle?

Killed it on the spot: drawing his sword, he told his men that if he won he would have plenty of fine Roman horses, and if he lost he would not need one.

How did Spartacus's men escape the Roman force besieging their mountain camp?

Down ropes woven from vines: they lowered themselves off cliffs the Romans had left unguarded, circled round and stormed the camp from behind.

Which praetor led the first Roman force, a militia, that besieged Spartacus on the volcano?

Rome treated the outbreak as a policing matter, its legions being busy in Spain and against Mithridates.

By Appian's count, Spartacus's 70 or so gladiators grew into an army of what size?

70,000: by then the rebels had beaten two Roman forces and even captured a praetor's horse, and the same writer later puts the army at 120,000.

Which co-leader split from Spartacus and was killed by a Roman army near Mount Garganus?

Crixus: he had led some 30,000 Gauls and Germans away from the main army, and the Romans caught them on their own; Appian says two-thirds died with him.

Crassus, the general who crushed Spartacus, was killed in 53 BC while invading where?

Parthia: his legions were destroyed at Carrhae, and a later story says the victors poured molten gold down the throat of Rome's richest man to mock his greed.

Which ancient punishment did Crassus revive for legions that ran from Spartacus?

Decimation: the men who had fled drew lots and one in ten was put to death in front of the army, so that the legions feared Crassus more than they feared the enemy.

Per Plutarch, Spartacus paid which seafarers to ferry 2,000 men across the strait, only to be abandoned?

Cilician pirates: they came to terms, took his gifts and then sailed away without him, leaving his army stranded on the shore as Crassus closed in.

Crassus walled in Spartacus's army after it tried to cross to which island?

Sicily: the island had a history of great slave revolts and Spartacus hoped to rekindle them, so Crassus sealed him in with a ditch and wall dug from sea to sea.

Whose legions, returning from Hispania, made Crassus rush to finish off Spartacus for fear of losing the credit?

Pompey's: he mopped up the fugitives, then wrote to the Senate that Crassus had beaten the slaves in battle but he himself had ended the war.

What happened to Spartacus's body after the final battle in 71 BC?

It was never found: Appian says he fought on from one knee after a spear wound to the thigh, until he and the men around him were surrounded and cut down.

What did Crassus do with the 6,000 rebels captured after Spartacus's final defeat?

Crucified them: the crosses lined the Appian Way all the way from Rome to the city where the revolt had begun.

Plutarch says Spartacus wanted his victorious army to do what?

Cross the Alps and go home: he judged that Rome could not be beaten for good, but his men, flushed with success, refused to leave and went on plundering Italy.

Fresh from defeating Spartacus, Crassus and his rival general both won which office for 70 BC?

The consulship: neither general would disband his army first, and once in office the two quarrelled over almost everything until the people begged them to make peace.

Which Enlightenment writer called the war of Spartacus the most just of all wars, 'and perhaps the only just one'?

Voltaire: the line comes from his article on slavery, which notes that the peoples proudest of their own liberty, Athenians and Romans among them, passed the harshest laws against slaves.

Which Haitian revolutionary leader has been called the 'Black Spartacus'?

Toussaint Louverture: born into slavery, he led the revolt that broke it in Saint-Domingue, but was tricked into arrest and died in a French prison months before Haiti declared independence.

Adam Weishaupt took the code name Spartacus as founder of which secret society?

The Illuminati: Weishaupt founded the order in Bavaria in 1776, and because its members hid behind classical aliases he signed himself Brother Spartacus.

Which philosopher called Spartacus a 'real representative of the ancient proletariat'?

Karl Marx: he wrote it to Engels in 1861 after spending his evenings reading Appian in Greek for relaxation, adding that Spartacus was 'the most splendid fellow in the whole of ancient history'.

The Spartakiad, named after Spartacus, was the Soviet Union's rival to which sporting event?

The Olympic Games: Moscow shunned them on ideological grounds and staged a workers' Spartakiad of its own in 1928, then reversed course and sent its first Olympic team in 1952.

Which NHL team's mascot, Spartacat, is named after Spartacus?

The Ottawa Senators: a team named after lawmakers borrowed the rebel who defied Rome's own Senate, and the lion Spartacat has been its official mascot since the club's first season in 1992.

Which Soviet composer, best known for the Sabre Dance, wrote the ballet Spartacus?

Aram Khachaturian: his ballet reached the stage in Leningrad in 1956, and its sweeping Adagio became famous in Britain in the 1970s as the theme of the BBC drama The Onedin Line.

Which blacklisted novelist self-published Spartacus in 1951, the book behind the 1960 film?

Howard Fast: after three months in prison for refusing to give Congress names, he found the big publishers had blacklisted him, so he printed the novel himself.

Which German playwright's second play is said to have first been titled Spartacus?

Bertolt Brecht: set in Berlin during the Spartacist uprising of January 1919, it was renamed Drums in the Night and in 1922 became the first of his plays to reach the stage.

Who directed the 1960 film Spartacus?

Stanley Kubrick: he was 30 and hired after the first director was fired, but he never had full creative control of the picture and later disowned it.

Who played Spartacus in the 1960 film and executive-produced it through his company Bryna Productions?

Kirk Douglas: by his own account he insisted the film's blacklisted screenwriter be credited under his real name, though the credit was made public months after another producer openly hired the same writer.

Which original director of the 1960 film was removed after three weeks of shooting?

He went on to direct El Cid a year later; David Lean had turned the job down earlier.

Which blacklisted Hollywood Ten writer was openly credited for the screenplay of Spartacus in 1960?

Dalton Trumbo: he had spent a decade writing under false names, one of which won an Oscar, and wrote this script as 'Sam Jackson' before the film credited him under his real name.

Which US president crossed an anti-communist picket line to see the film Spartacus?

John F. Kennedy: two weeks after his inauguration in 1961 he went to the Warner Theatre to watch a film written by a blacklisted screenwriter.

Which actor won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar as the gladiator-school owner in the 1960 film Spartacus?

Peter Ustinov: the star complained that the first director let him direct his own scenes by taking his every suggestion, and the performance won the film's only acting Oscar.

Who played the Roman general Crassus in the 1960 film Spartacus?

Laurence Olivier: one of his scenes was cut before release, and when it was restored in 1991 the soundtrack was lost and he was dead, so a mimic had to dub his lines.

Which actress played Varinia, the wife of Spartacus, in the 1960 film?

Jean Simmons: the German actress first cast lasted only two days before the incoming director fired her, and Simmons took over the part.

Which actor played Antoninus, the slave who first shouts 'I'm Spartacus!' in the 1960 film's famous scene?

Tony Curtis: one captive after another then claims the name, a show of solidarity often read as the blacklisted screenwriter's answer to hearings that pressed witnesses to name names.

Which California estate stood in for the villa of Crassus in the 1960 film Spartacus?

Hearst Castle: much of the epic was shot on its Hollywood studio lot, but for the home of Rome's richest man the crew travelled up the coast to a newspaper tycoon's estate at San Simeon.

In which country were the battle scenes of the 1960 film Spartacus shot, using 8,000 local soldiers?

Spain: the director wanted to shoot in Europe and the studio in Hollywood, so they compromised, keeping the intimate scenes in California and marching Spanish infantry as Rome's legions near Madrid.

Which war film first paired the director and star of Spartacus?

Paths of Glory: it cost about $1 million, and when the far costlier epic lost its first director, its star turned to the young film-maker who had made it with him.

When a cut scene was restored to Spartacus in 1991, who dubbed the late actor playing Crassus?

Anthony Hopkins: a gifted mimic who had been brought into the National Theatre by the dead star, he was recommended for the job by the actor's widow.

Which 1970 film finally overtook Spartacus as the highest-grossing film in Universal's history?

Airport: the all-star airliner drama ended the epic's ten years as Universal's biggest earner and set off the disaster-movie craze of the 1970s.

Which star's rival Spartacus film, The Gladiators, was in development alongside the 1960 epic?

Yul Brynner: his planned version was postponed while the 1960 epic went before the cameras, and he never made it.

Which composer of 'Unchained Melody' wrote the score of the 1960 film Spartacus?

Alex North: his Spartacus score was one of fifteen Oscar nominations that never brought him a win, though the Academy gave him an honorary award in 1986.

Which actor first played the title role in the Starz series Spartacus, in 2010?

Andy Whitfield: he was diagnosed with lymphoma after the first season and died in 2011 at 39, so Liam McIntyre took over the part for the rest of the run.

Which ER star played Spartacus in a 2004 television miniseries?

Goran Višnjić: then ER's Dr Luka Kovač, he headed a cast that included Alan Bates, who died before the miniseries reached the screen.

Which comedy film spoofs the 'I'm Spartacus!' scene with prisoners all claiming to be the one man being freed?

Life of Brian: it flips the scene, because here the man named is the one being let go, so every prisoner shouts 'I'm Brian', and one adds 'and so's my wife'.

Crassus, who crushed Spartacus, later formed the First Triumvirate with his old rival and which rising politician?

Julius Caesar: Crassus had bankrolled his career, and around 60 BC the two joined the general who had claimed the credit for ending the slave war in a secret pact that came to dominate Roman politics.

Appian says recruits flocked to Spartacus because he did what with the plunder?

Shared it out equally: an even split of the loot drew in fugitive slaves and even free men from the fields, and a band of dozens swelled into an army of tens of thousands.

Who played Lucretia, wife of the gladiator-school owner, in the Starz series Spartacus?

Lucy Lawless: best known as the heroic Xena, she switched sides to play a slave-owning mistress, in a series produced by her husband, Rob Tapert.

Plutarch says only two of 12,300 of Spartacus's rebels killed in one battle were wounded where?

The back: every other man, he wrote, died standing in the ranks and fighting the Romans, which is to say that almost none had turned to run.

The Starz series Spartacus, set in ancient Italy, was filmed in which country?

New Zealand: every season was shot there, and when the star's illness halted production in 2010 the crew stayed on to film a six-part prequel instead.

Which Spartacus prequel did Starz make while its lead actor was being treated for cancer?

Gods of the Arena: with the second season on hold, the writers expanded a single planned flashback episode into six, set in the gladiator school before Spartacus arrives.

Which revolutionary co-founded Germany's Spartacus League and was murdered after its failed 1919 uprising?

Rosa Luxemburg: Freikorps soldiers seized her once the rising was crushed, shot her and threw her body into Berlin's Landwehr Canal, where it lay undiscovered for more than four months.

Which Darkness at Noon author also wrote a novel about Spartacus called The Gladiators?

Arthur Koestler: he finished The Gladiators in 1938, the year he quit the Communist Party, using the doomed slave revolt to ask how idealistic revolutions go wrong.

Crassus did not dare ask for a full triumph over Spartacus's slaves and settled for which lesser honour?

An ovation: Plutarch calls it the minor triumph, celebrated on foot, and says even that was thought mean for a war against slaves; only centuries later did the word come to mean applause.