Film Review: Spartacus

The first 200 words of this essay...

Film Review: Spartacus

What is clearly justified by the historical sources In Stanley Kubrick's film of Spartacus, many events that are documented in the historical sources are accurately portrayed. In the film, we see Spartacus and other slaves seize kitchen implements from the cookhouse in which they are eating and attack the guards. This is clearly justified by Plutarch in Fall of the Roman Empire; "seventy-eight, who realised this, managed to act in time and get away, armed with choppers and spits which they seized from some cookhouse".

The film shows that in the summer of 73 BC, "about seventy slaves escaped from Batiatus's training school at Capua and established a defensible position on Mount Vesuvius some thirty kilometres away. " This is clearly justified by the historical sources and is accurately portrayed in the film.

The film also correclty portrays the Cilicians pulling out of an agreement with Spartacus, in which they were going to transport slaves to Sicily. The Cilicians are bribed by the Romans to pull out of the agreement, so that they can quell the slave revolt. This left the slaves trapped near Rhegium in the Peninsula of Brittium, and with armies marching