Dan Snow's History Hit - Spartacus: Life or Legend?

Episode Date: December 10, 2020

‘I’m Spartacus!’ In the field of epic film making, the 1960 historical drama ‘Spartacus’, is legendary. Directed by Stanley Kibrick, adapted from the Howard Fast novel by Red Scare blacklisted screenwriter, Dalton Trumbo, and starring Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier, Peter Ustinov and Jean Simmons; it is a classic. But how much of the plot has emerged from the true story of a Thracian gladiator and slave who escaped his Roman captors and led an unsuccessful but impressive rebellion against their oppressors? How much of the film’s message was formed by the personalities involved in its creation, and the context in which it was made. In her own words, Dr Fiona Radford devoted years of her life to the man with the most memorable chin cleft in the world - Kirk Douglas, specifically as Spartacus. Her thesis traced the production history of this film, examining in particular the effect that the turbulent process had on the portrayal of female characters. Having taught at Macquarie University, ANU and the University of Sydney, she currently teaches history at secondary school level, and her conversation with Tristan in this episode is an eye-opener to 1950s film making as well as the legend of Spartacus.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. We're talking Spartacus in this episode. Spartacus. Dr Fiona Radford, in her own words, has devoted years of her life to the man with the most memorable chin cleft in the world, Kirk Douglas. Her doctoral thesis is all about the film Spartacus. She is a Spartacus expert. She's here to talk to us about the great slave revolt that shook Roman rule. This is, of course, an episode of The Ancients, our new sibling podcast. The Tristorian at the helm. We've given the Tristorian another outing on History Hit this week. The Ancient's growing so fast, soon he'll be too grand, too elevated to deign to come on History Hit. But for the moment, the Tristorian

is happy for us to share some of his best content so if you enjoy it please go and check out the ancients the live tour goes on sale friday very excited about that history hit is hitting the road big cities all around the uk and don't forget if you want to give the gift of history this christmas go to historyhit.tv become a subscriber you can send gift subscriptions to your friends you can subscribe yourself show a little self-love there, people. It's been a tough year. Go to historyhit.tv, use the code POD1, P-O-D-1. You get a month for free and your second month for just one pound, euro or dollar.

But in the meantime, everyone, enjoy this discussion of Spartacus, Kirk Douglas and chin clefts. Here is Fiona Radford. Here is Fiona Radford. Fiona, great to have you on the show. Thank you so much for having me. Now, Spartacus, and in particular Spartacus, the film, 1960, this is, could we say, one of the definitive, if not the definitive, sword and sandal epic of the 20th century.

I'm always happy to talk Spartacus up. So yes, let's say that. And I mean, truth or no, the story of Spartacus itself, it's caught people's attention throughout the whole of history. It certainly has. I mean, it would be a mistake to think that Spartacus was languishing in the ancient sources, just waiting for a man with a chin dimple to discover him. He's been a popular figure. I mean, really with the Romans themselves, you couldn't say that they forgot about him. But then he really takes off in a major way, really during the Enlightenment. And then from then on, he's always at the forefront of someone's mind in the world. And why do we think that? Is it because of the underdog idea, this idea of someone rising up against an oppressive regime, as it were? I think that is definitely a big part of it. He definitely

comes across as the underdog, someone who stands up for the little guy. But I think it's also because even though the Romans didn't forget about him, the material that we're working from that has survived from antiquity, it's enough of a blank slate once you take into account the fact that the pro-Roman sources have a clear bias against him, that you can kind of make Spartacus into a little bit of whatever you want. I mean, there are a couple of things that we know for sure, but otherwise he's relatively malleable. And most importantly, he has a love interest, which always goes down well when you're reimagining ancient stories. Of course, especially in the film industry.

So let's go on to that, the film itself now, because why do they decide in the 20th century to create an epic about Spartacus? Oh, OK, this is a big question. OK, well, Spartacus was picked up by various causes since the Enlightenment, as we've mentioned, but he certainly comes to the attention of Marxists, of communists, of people who are working on behalf of labor unions and the working class and that sort of thing. So much to the point that in the early 20th century, when we're looking at Germany, you know, obviously things aren't going so well for Germany in World War I, there is an attempt by a left-wing group to seize control of

the government, headed by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. They name their group after Spartacus, a clear nod to his role, I suppose, in being the leader of the underdog against the big oppressive forces of the world. Now, the reason why I bring that example up in particular is because when Howard Fast is sentenced to serve a term in jail for contempt of Congress after he's run afoul of the House of Un-American activities in the mid-20th century, he decides he wants to write a story about them. But then he's like, ugh, too soon. And instead, he decides to write a story about the man that seems to have inspired them or they've taken as their figurehead. And so he ends up writing the novel Spartacus, which comes out in 1951. That novel eventually finds its hands into the wife of Edward Lewis. And Edward Lewis works for Kirk Douglas. Now, Kirk Douglas

is feeling rather sad at this point in time in the 1950s because he was really, really keen to play the character of Ben-Hur. And he was turned down for that. They offered him instead the role of Ben-Hur's adversary, Masala. But he wasn't in for that. He didn't want to play a villain. He thought they were two-dimensional. And so he's feeling a bit mopey about that. He really, really, really wants to star in some sort of sword and sander where he's the hero.

And then Spartacus is put into his hands and the rest is history. I mean, that's amazing how this comes about in the aftermath of, I guess we can't call it a failure, but Kirk didn't get what he originally wanted in Ben-Hur, but from it, this Spartacus idea actually emerged. Absolutely, yeah. If it hadn't been for his disappointment, Spartacus may never have come

about. Although I should say, I shouldn't really say that because of course, one of the big factors in this whole production of the 1960 Spartacus that most people are familiar with is that there was actually another Spartacus film in production with Jules Brunner at the helm and so maybe Jules Brunner would have been the Spartacus that we all know and love if Kirk Douglas hadn't been turned down for Ben-Hur. Fascinating what if of the 20th century. Yeah. Looking at that then so the the idea comes to Kirk Douglas. How long does it take for it to materialise into the production itself, into the start of filming? Almost as long as the revolve itself. No, not really. Basically, it's in about 1957 that Kirk Douglas starts along

his Spartacus journey. And he actually rushes into production, and that's largely because he knows that there is this Yul Brynner version out there. I think that previous studies of Spartacus have sometimes underestimated how much of an impact the rival production had on Kirk Douglas making his movie. So the production is somewhat rushed, but producing a movie is a long process from conceiving the idea to writing the script, getting the cast, getting everything set up, finding locations, shooting it, editing it. All that kind of stuff does take a while. So it is finally released in 1960.

So it does take a few years. If you look at it from where to go, it is really as long as The Slave Revolt itself. But that's probably being a bit unkind. And of course, I think one of the main figures in the production, is it Stanley Kubrick? He does become one of the major figures, but he wasn't involved in the planning stages. This is the thing about Spartacus. It's got a very complicated production history, which is why I like looking at it. Stanley Kubrick comes in very last minute. Basically, they start filming. They film for two weeks. And then their original director, Anthony Mann, is fired. Some sources say that he quit, but I think he was fired.

And over the weekend, they recruit Stanley Kubrick. And so he basically is asked if he wants to do it on the Friday. He's there on the Monday, and he starts working on the film. It sounds very much from what you've been saying so far that there is a lot of, I don't want to say last minute, but as you say, there is this idea of it being rushed, as it were, or there is this idea that things emerge that they have to resolve very quickly, these problems that emerge that they have to resolve. Yeah, it probably seems a bit more frantic to people like me who are looking back, looking at the documentary remains.

But it does certainly seem as though they are always up against a clock of some kind. First, it's they have to secure the rights to the book. And then they have to extend their option on the book. And then they have to find financial backing. And then they have to secure the British actors that they want for the part. And then they have to race against Yul Brynner. And then they have to find a new director. This is always something that's going on in the background there, which I think is, again, part of the craziness of this film, that there is always something ticking in the background. And this rushing against the clock, as it were, do you

think, did it hinder Stanley Kubrick's ability, especially as he's called in the last minute, to research the whole story of Spartacus? From Stanley Kubrick's point of view, I would say yes. He was quite obsessive in his film preparation normally. There are boxes and boxes of the research that he did for films like Napoleon, which never even got made. His research was usually very detailed. He would spend years preparing for a project. Spartacus was out of

the norm for him. But then again, I think that's also a bit anachronistic to say that because it was so early in his film career. I don't know that I could really say he had a norm by that stage. And he certainly wasn't a director of stature by the time he came on board Spartacus. My theory is that Spartacus really helped to make Stanley Kubrick's career. He would hate me for saying that. So I'm really glad that he's dead. Okay. But going back to the production, let's focus on that a bit more because you mentioned the big English actors, the big British actors at the time that were involved in this production. I mean, of course, Kirk Douglas is there from the beginning and of course he's not British,

but getting these British actors on board, who are we talking about here? We are talking about Laurence Olivier, Sir Laurence Olivier. We're talking about Charles Lawton and we're talking about Peter Ustinov. And Peter Ustinov, has he already done Nero by this time? Yes, he has. In fact, Charles Lawton and Peter Ustinov have both played Nero by this stage. So it sounds like they're diving into the classical history market of the 1950s. Context is very important for this film. One of the things that's the important backdrop from the making of this movie, and especially in terms of your earlier question about why an epic, why now? The 1950s are known for these sword and sandals epics,

partly because of what was happening in the wider film industry. The 1950s television was becoming a big deal. A lot of people were moving to the suburbs, the white picket fence deal in America. And so the movies were trying to make sure that people would still come. There was some sort of reason for them to come out of their living rooms and go and see an actual movie. What a thing to say in the COVID world.

And so one of the things that they would try and do was make film even more spectacular. They partially did this with new technologies, and Spartacus was no exception in terms of it being a widescreen epic. And if you were going to put film on a large scale like this, you needed to have stories that match the technology, something that was weighty enough. And so history was seen as being something very serious and something that would match these new technologies. And so you often see that these new gimmicks premiered with these sorts of ancient world epics, starting with The Robe in 1953.

Spartacus 1960 is a really fascinating case study because it's at once a film that's very much of its time, but then there's something also that happens within the making of it, which is particular as well. So it's very much of its time in that it is affected slightly by things like the civil rights movement, which are going on all around it, particularly being a movie about slavery. And it's also affected by what's going on in the film industry itself. So the studio system

is starting to show signs of weakness. I mean, Kirk Douglas himself is a symptom of that. He set up his own production company, Brunner, and he was making Spartacus as a part of that, basically, and as was Yul Brynner, who was making the rival Spartacus film. And obviously, it's very much tied to what was happening with the Red Scare that was happening in the 1950s and the Blacklist. A lot of the most notable people to work in connection with this project, like Howard Fast, who wrote the novel, and then who contributed a lot to the screenplay, as well as Dalton Trumbo, were both notorious blacklistees. And Dalton Trumbo had a particular interest in seeing Spartacus succeed, because it started to become apparent that he might actually be able to get a screen credit on this film.

So he obviously had a particularly vested interest in this project being a smash hit. But then when you look at it, it's also a film that's very much about the particular dynamics that were going on on the set. And that's where we sort of step away from the context a bit and think about the particular personalities that were involved. So there were a lot of strong personalities working on the set and a lot of them had directorial experience. Quite unusual, I think, to see that many big actors with a variety of experience from writing to directing, as well that many big actors with a variety of experience from writing to directing, as well as being big stars working on the one picture.

And just to have people who had such a strong perspective on things. So people like Stanley Kubrick, who brought along their own agenda, influenced by a different novel to Howard Fast, coming along and really stirring the pot. And so that's why Spartacus is so interesting. It's very much affected by context, but it's also very much affected by the particular blend of personalities that worked on this film. So the 1950s, because of the context of the time, it seems to be this golden age for these sword and sandal epics

or these ancient history epics. Definitely, yeah. It is the golden age of Hollywood. And let's just focus on the production a bit more, because something I read from one of your articles, you mentioned all these problems with the production. But something that really stuck out was this large versus small Spartacus issue. What was that? Ah, yes. This is something that Dalton Trumbo, who was one of the screenwriters on Spartacus and the one that got the credit for it

in the end, identified once he saw the rough cut of the film. So they're thinking that they're getting close to finished. So he's apparently smuggled onto the lot to see how it's all come together in August of 1959. And he is horrified beyond belief. He can't believe what he's seeing up on the screen. Now, Dalton Trumbo was definitely someone who would sympathize with the large Spartacus idea. And the large Spartacus idea is that Spartacus is a man who is fighting for something more than himself. He's fighting for an idea. He's after freedom and justice for all. He's not just looking out for, now's my chance to make a break from these Roman characters. I'm just going to scarper off into the sunset with my

wife and child. Thank you very much. That's definitely more the small Spartacus point of view. Someone who's really only looking out for himself. And the large Spartacus is someone who, you know, takes on the burdens of leadership and all these sorts of things. Whereas a small Spartacus has leadership foisted onto him and he's constantly filled with doubt and yeah so what he saw when he watched the rough cut was the fact that the film was not coherent at all and it was a mishmash of these two different versions of Spartacus and so what he argued was they needed to do something to make a coherent film now obviously his sympathies lie with the large Spartacus if you look at all the stuff that he's written and the scripts that he's written but he he did say, look, at the end of the day,

I don't really care what you decide, but you need to make a decision. And we need to fix this film, because this does not make sense. And people are not going to like this guy and are not going to understand the story that we're trying to tell. So we need to do something to fix the story. So what do they decide to do? Well, they do some reshoots where they try and restore some of the more large Spartacus elements. Kirk Douglas was really persuaded. This report that Dalton Trumbo wrote, he went home and he basically wrote it in two days, 80 pages long. It's crazy. He writes like a scene by scene analysis of all the things that's

wrong. And it's hilarious reading if you ever want to read it. But yeah, Kirk Douglas is quite convinced by this report on Spartacus. And so they desperately try and insert more large Spartacus material. So they're trying to give the impression that Spartacus was a good leader, someone who was wise and just and someone who was beaten by overwhelming odds rather than someone who was wise and just, and someone who was beaten by overwhelming odds rather than someone who just kind of let things get away from him and that sort of thing. And so they try and do this, but there's obviously only a limited amount of money and time that they can throw at this. So it's still not quite the large Spartacus, not quite as coherent as they might have liked.

That's why I, and I'm going to point this out here, I say that you end up with a medium Spartacus not quite as coherent as they might have liked that's why I and I'm going to point this out here I say that you end up with a medium Spartacus Kirk Douglas totally ripped me off and said the same thing but I said it first right okay going up against the Hollywood man himself fair enough that's right so as you say this once again this time idea once again it seems to come to the fore with the production of this whole epic. But as you say, at the end, they seem to finalise with this medium Spartacus. Yeah, you can still see the effects of the time rush and new people coming on board like Stanley Kubrick, who introduced new ideas that confused their original vision. And also Howard Fast was still contributing all throughout the production, not to mention the actual actors themselves.

Everybody had a piece of this movie, so it's no wonder it's slightly lacking in coherence. On the slave side of the story, on the Roman side of the story, it's actually relatively stable. And I say relatively stable because I'm comparing it to the slave side. But yeah, it's pretty stable. And I say relatively stable because I'm comparing it to the slave side. But yeah, it's pretty stable. Well, let's now focus on the history itself and particularly on the slave story that you mentioned there. Because first of all, big question, what do we actually know about the real Spartacus? Okay. I would say that there's a reasonable amount of information that's recorded, but the stuff that you can actually say for certain, not a lot. Of course, being a gladiator and a slave, he's not someone that the Romans would have paid any attention to or have any reason to write about

before he decides to lead a rebellion. So what I think we can say for certain is that he was serving as a gladiator in Eludis in southern Italy. And he did decide in the late Republic in around 73 BC to break out from that ludus, which was owned by a guy called Batiatus, and lead a rebellion against Rome. He does have some successes against the Roman forces that are sent against him. At first, it's whatever the Romans can throw at him and get together in a quick manner. But gradually, he's dealing with consular armies. And so he's facing some more impressive troops, and they do score numerous victories. And then, of course, they are defeated. That we can say for certain, by Marcus Licinius Crassus, who basically puts some of his own money on the line

and comes to the rescue of the Republic, probably for his own interests. And the survivors are rounded up, partly with the help of Pompey the Great, and they are crucified up and down the Appian Way. Lovely. It sounds like from what you were saying there, the stuff that we can say, probably for certain, is that we have a rough idea of the chronology of main events during the revolt. Yeah, we do. I mean, we can be fairly certain of some of the Romans that were sent against him. We know that his victories were impressive in terms of the fact that he's just gathering together people as they join him.

The numbers, very uncertain. The Roman sources are notoriously unreliable for providing us with numbers, so I'm not even going to bother. But it might have been as many as 100,000 people following him. The rest of it though is a bit of a mystery because of course we have absolutely nothing from Spartacus or any of his followers point of view so what they were actually trying to accomplish like were they trying to escape? What they were actually trying to do apart from the obvious run is a little unclear. I would wager they were trying to escape somewhere but where do you

escape to? The Romans are in charge of a lot of things. No, exactly, exactly. And of course, the Roman sources just there, the fact that we don't actually know anything from the actual slaves themselves. I mean, I'm guessing the immediate people who write about this revolt, the portrayal of Spartacus, the portrayal of the slaves is overwhelmingly hostile. Yes, there is a certain amount of truth in that. Some of our earlier sources are people like Cicero, who doesn't write a history of the slave revolt or anything like that, but the mentions he makes of Spartacus, which is basically a burn that he uses in speeches, they're negative, yes. However, there are fragments preserved of

sources like Sallust, and also we've got a very very tiny bit of Varro which are earlier sources and they're actually not hostile. They actually preserve a vision of Spartacus as remarkably positive. Sallust actually describes him as having an outstanding measure of strength and courage and he comes across as quite an impressive military leader. It's a bit hard to know for certain because Sallust is so fragmentary, but it does seem as though he has respect for Spartacus. And Varro says that Spartacus was an innocent man and that he was condemned to a gladiator's lot. We've only got that one sentence, but that is very intriguing. The idea that Spartacus might have broken out because he wasn't even supposed to be there in the first place. Yeah, that's very interesting, especially when you consider that famous saying,

history is written by the winners. But as you say, in some of these earlier sources, Spartacus is not as derided as it were. No, and personally, I see there being a couple of traditions that seem to evolve. Our main sources where we get more detail and more of a narrative, they are much later. So they're about 200 years after the revolt. I'm referring to sources like Plutarch and Appian. And of course, they're not writing about Spartacus. They're writing about Roman history and he just happens to come up. But again, you can kind of see potentially some of that more positive view of Spartacus preserved, particularly in a source like Plutarch. He also says that Spartacus in sagacity and culture was superior to his fortune and more Hellenic than Thracian. Now that's a high compliment coming from a Greek. So there's

definitely at first a slightly more positive view of Spartacus that seems to survive. Appian is a bit more negative. His Spartacus is a bit more gritty, but there is that sense of positivity, but it fades. Once we get into the later sources that are preserving what has gone before, that's when we start to see Spartacus become a much more negative figure who's really a bogeyman, like someone that would terrify the Romans because of what he did. Do you think this is when we start to see the myth of Spartacus starting to emerge? There are scholars who have argued that Spartacus from fairly early on could be said to be made to fit a sort of noble bandit trope. So Plutarch might be trying to use that a little bit. And

he's made to resemble people that have gone before like Viriatus in the way that he conducts himself. And that would make sense because Plutarch is writing about him in a biography of Crassus and Plutarch does not like Crassus. And so Spartacus is a way of showing Crassus's flaws. The fact that Spartacus, this bandit, gladiator, slave, rebel, what have you, has good qualities is meant to be a bit of a commentary on where Crassus is at in his personal development. Everyone, you're listening to History Hit. More from Fiona Radford and Spartacus after this. Land a Viking longship on island shores,

scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits.

There are new episodes every week. I mean, that's quite interesting. So it sounds like as time goes on, there's these two different strands as it were, in the portrayal of Spartacus from noble bandit or bloodthirsty rebel who should be an infamous name. Yeah. And do these two strands seem to continue past antiquity into the Middle Ages and from there on? I think that whilst the negative, more hostile tradition is what lingers in the Roman imagination after a time, I do sort of wonder if those earlier sources, it's just a

matter of because Spartacus is Spartacus and he's not a Roman, he's just being made to serve whatever purpose the writers are serving. So whether it's to write a moral biography that teaches people lessons or whether it's to write a commentary on the late Republic and what was going on then, or whether it's to talk about the civilized Roman world as opposed to the barbarian world. There's always a purpose, there's always an axe to grind. So he's probably just being used to serve whatever purpose is going. But I think the more negative tradition survives for the Romans. But there's enough of that early positive tradition to give rise to the more noble, heroic Spartacus, the leader of the oppressed, that we see rise up in the Enlightenment.

And does that continue into the 1960 portrayal of Spartacus? I think so. Yeah, he's often used to tell the story of what's going on at the time. So during the French Revolution, late Republican history is very popular. When you look at Italy and the Risorgimento movement, Spartacus is there. They write about Spartacus then. When Napoleon is marching into Austria, Spartacus is used there in a play. In America, he's used to comment on the British-America dynamic and potentially a bit of the whole slavery thing they had going there. And then, of course, Marx says that Spartacus was, you know, a smashing chap. And so there's definitely lots of people talking about him and generally in a way that is holding him up to be a more noble figure. Of course, as you mentioned earlier in this interview,

Kirk Douglas, he wanted to be the hero. He didn't want to be the villain, did he? So I'm guessing this more noble, virtuous portrayal of Spartacus really appealed to him. Yes, definitely. Again, context, I think, is important. A lot of the people that worked on Spartacus were themselves Jewish and from really poor immigrant backgrounds. Kirk Douglas being no exception, I mean, that wasn't even his real name. So I think a lot of them felt a sympathy with the slaves and the underclasses of Rome. So yeah, I think playing the hero definitely appealed to him in that sense. And he felt, rightly or wrongly, a connection with the slaves that had helped to build Rome. Let's look at the film then again. And there's a

particular, I think there's a particular part in the film where there seems to be this conflict between the slaves when they're debating what they need to do. Yeah. Is there any evidence in the historical record that there was this difficulty in managing the whole revolt? Definitely, yes. And that comes from our earlier source as well, Salus. There's definitely a sense that Spartacus sometimes struggles to control his followers. As you can imagine, if you've been a slave and in a ludus or something like that, when you finally get to break free, you probably want some revenge and you probably don't mind a spot of looting and raping and that kind of thing, as horrible as it is. You've been treated pretty badly. And so we do, from the earliest time,

get this idea that some of the slaves had different ideas about what they were going to do. And if you just look at their movement, whilst we don't have an account from the slave point of view, if we just look at their movement, it does seem a bit confused. They wander all over Italy. We're not really sure, were they trying to get across the Alps? Were they trying to escape via the sea? It is confusing what exactly they were trying to accomplish by wandering around. The ancient sources explain it by the fact that there was a divide in the slave army

about what they should do, whether they should make a break for freedom, how they should do that, where they should go, because of course, they're probably all from different places. So going home means different things to all of them. And definitely some of them are more interested in just looting, just continuing to live off the land, whereas others may have had more long-term aspirations. And the really interesting thing for me is that when we do see potential division in the army, they tend to split along ethnic lines, at least as far as the pro-Roman sources have recorded. So Spartacus seems to be the leader of the Thracian, et cetera, group. But then there are other slave leaders who are mentioned. Spartacus does seem to be the

main leader of this but he does seem to have lieutenants I'm going to call them and some of them seem to be from Gallic background, Germanic background and so when we do see the slave army splitting it tends to be along ethnic lines. along ethnic lines. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed.

We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. That's interesting in itself because of course I guess that's something we need to remember is that

the Slave Revolt, it consists of slaves from all across the Roman Empire, all parts of the Roman Empire and it sounds as if from what you're saying, Spartacus' leadership, he didn't just have to deal with the Romans he had to deal with his own people as well. Is this really emphasised one of the key points of Spartacus's leadership? Definitely. And that's one of those things in the sources that I just don't know we have enough material to resolve exactly what was going on. The Romans do seem to have got a hint that the division was happening. And whenever there's a

divide, unfortunately, it seems like the people that leave Spartacus end up being defeated. So his numbers are whittled down gradually. So that can't have been good. But every now and then he's able to come and save the day and help them out. But yeah, generally, it's not good. You leave Spartacus, you're not fated for a good end. And talking about Spartacus's close connections, and you mentioned the love interest thing earlier, did Spartacus have a wife? I don't know. I mean, Plutarch says yes. Plutarch is the only source. As I say, he is one of the most important sources, but Plutarch is the only source to record Spartacus having a wife. And it seems a really weird occurrence because he says that this wife was from the same background as Spartacus and that she was somehow sold along

with him into the Ludus, which for anyone who knows anything about Roman slavery, the Romans just aren't that nice or organized. So it does seem a little strange, but she apparently is there according to Plutarch and she apparently has this prophecy. She sees a snake crawling around his face when he's sleeping and she has connections to Dionysus and she seems to be some sort of a prophetess or something. And she sees that as a sign of his fortune ahead that he's going to be destined for glorious things. Okay, so we don't know because it sounds very interesting, as you say, the whole story in Plutarch compared to if you know about slavery in ancient Rome, whether it's actually true or not.

But then again, it does seem like a weird thing to make up. So he probably did have a woman, obviously, that he spent time with. But how does Plutarch know that she's from the same tribe? Like, what is going on? I don't know. Well, leading on from that, how is this love interest portrayed in the 1960 film and in who? Oh, OK. This is another big question.

And this is my main area of interest. So strap yourself in. Basically, the character of Varinia is Spartacus' love interest in this particular film. Spartacus always has a love interest, by the way. In all the many creative interpretations, there's always a love interest. In this particular version in Fast Novel, it's Varinia. And that is kept for the film. It seems as though Fast may have picked up that name from one of his research sources because, again, for anyone who knows anything about Rome, you'll know that's not really a slavish name.

It sounds a little Latin. So the name is a bit weird. But, yeah, basically they decide they're obviously going to make her a big part of his story because it always works well to have a love interest in movies and that sort of thing. But her storyline is one of the most changed throughout the production of the 1960 film. In Fast's original vision, he had this real idea of the slave community as a whole as being a sort of utopian community in a way. Clearly, the slaves are meant to be like the communists, right? Where everyone's equal and all is hunky-dory. And so the slave women are seen as quite equal to the men in fast

vision of things and quite important to the story. And so the women help when the slaves decide they're going to break out. They fight along with the men. They're ferocious. They're seen as being Amazons on the battlefield veronia says things like i can fight like a man can fight and obviously when people are trying to put it back into the place so there's this real idea of equality and veronia is seen as being almost the mother to the revolution because spartacus is the father and she's very important because it's through her in fast that spartacus's story survives because she survives and her son by Spartacus survives and they're the ones that bear out the legend in Fast's novel. Not true,

obviously, but whatever. Anyway, when it came to putting that into a film, Fast is the person who first has a go at adapting his own novel and we do see Verinia being more or less in keeping with the Verinia of his novel. No surprises there. But then when Dalton Trumbo gets involved and starts to take over from Howard Fast, we definitely see women being ever-present throughout the revolt. They are definitely an important part of the slave following. And Verinia, again, is quite a fierce character. You know. She's basically first given to Spartacus at the Ludus because she's too resistant to Batiatus, who's her master. Every time he tries to have sex with her, she fights like a cat in a bag and he's just sick of it.

And so he's like, there, go to a vicious gladiator, see if I care, enjoy. And so she's definitely a fierce character and she's definitely a slave leader. She's definitely someone who has a real presence alongside Spartacus. She's revered amongst the slave women to the point that they actually have a cult of Varinia developed. She becomes almost like a goddess to them. So she's this really important person and it's through her fame that the Romans hear about her and start to become really intrigued with her. Because of course, one of the funny things about Verunia's storyline, according to Fast, is that it seems like every man who beats her falls in love with her, whether they're Roman or slaves or whatever. So it's because of this that they hear about her.

And that is kept throughout a couple of drafts of the script, that Verunia is this very important person who's very present and is a real slave leader, very involved, capable of being fierce, capable of playing her part, working, leader, very involved, capable of being fierce, capable of playing her part, working, fighting, doing all that kind of stuff. That really falls apart in the latter stages of the development of this project. And this is one of the things that Dalton Trumbo had such a problem with when he was watching the final cut. Varinia starts to really only exist in the background. She's not really a slave leader. She really seems to just exist for love scenes and to be impregnated. That seems to be her main thing. And so you end up in the final film, even though some of the reshoots that they ended up

shooting after the report on Spartacus, they try and restore some of Dalton Trumbo and therefore Howard Fast, because Dalton Trumbo was basing his vision on Howard Fast. They do try and restore some of the sense of the slave community by doing reshoots where women are more present, but it's too late to fix all of the problems that have arisen with Varinia. And so you end up with a much more bland character and someone I like to call Stepford Varinia in the final film. I mean, why exactly does this change in portrayal seem to happen? It's a little hard to say exactly, because there's just so much chaos going on on set. And some of it happened behind closed doors. I can really only study what people decided to write

down. And the only reason why this film and the production is so easy to study is partly because the 1950s, the technology is different, but also because Dalton Trumbo was blacklisted, he had to write so much from a distance. He had to send memos and do a lot of correspondence rather than being more present on the set and therefore having verbal exchanges that were never recorded. So lucky for us. I think it partially is due to the fact that Jean Simmons, who ended up being cast to play Verinia, she was actually brought along around the same time as Stanley Kubrick. They had had a bit of trouble deciding exactly who to cast to play Verinia. They had originally decided on this blonde, gorgeous girl called Sabina Bethman, and she had been their original Varinia. But when

Stanley Kubrick saw her lack of acting ability, she was out and they brought Jean Simmons in. And then fairly early on after she was brought in, she had to have emergency surgery. So she was out for a little while. So that couldn't have helped her gain control over a project that had already started without her and then on top of that they were essentially writing the script as they went particularly the slave side of the story they were constantly rewriting the script as they went so much so that both Jean Simmons who played Verinia and Tony Curtis who played Antoninus they really had no sense of what had happened in the past for their character and what was up ahead for their character

so it was very hard for them to get an idea of the storyline that they were dealing with. And they both, even though Jean Simmons is a fairly mild-mannered person, she even admits that it was really frustrating. And so I don't know that she was really able to fight for her character in the same way that the British actors who were playing the Romans certainly did because their story was a little bit more stable, and they were involved from an earlier time period. And they also had more weight, let's face it, than Jean Simmers did, even though she was

a well-respected actor and everybody loved her on set. And so in my conclusion, she is really like one of the main casualties of this battle over the vision of Spartacus. I mean, you mentioned the British actors there being the Romans. First of all, is this another idea of the British always being the bad guys in these films? Yes, Kirk Douglas very deliberately cast it that way. Of course. That's actually why he didn't initially want to hire Jean Simmons, because she's British. And he's like, she can't be a slave because she has a British accent. So...

But in the long scheme of things, of course, Sir Lawrence Olivier as Crassus, good choice. Oh, fantastic. I think most people are in agreement that the British actors really make this film worth watching to this day. They are brilliant in their roles, even though it might have been dragged out of them

kicking and screaming. They are really, really good in their roles. roles i mean one of the reasons why kirk douglas had to race to secure them is that yul brinner apparently had his eye on a very similar cast for his movie so hence why kirk douglas had to snatch them out from underneath him oh thank goodness and just before just before we go on let's hang on ver, Varinia, a little bit longer. Because the portrayal of Spartacus's love interest in other films, in other media in the 20th century and beforehand, do they more represent the portrayal of Varinia as this equal figure or more as Kubrick's Varinia? No.

Generally, Spartacus's love interest, and they have all sorts of different names, they come from all sorts of different backgrounds too. A popular idea is that Spartacus falls in love with the daughter of Crassus, very Romeo and Juliet. So there are all sorts of different imaginings of Spartacus's love interest. I think it's just the idea that he had one. That's what really hangs around. Verinia very particular to howard fast and the 1960 version of spartacus's story the recent tv series the stars tv series has a really interesting take on spartacus's origin story and it's really his wife that he's fighting for at the beginning you know for a long time because they have a whole season to fill she's also an interesting

character but the love interest does change depending on the bigger story. And it's generally, she's going to change in relation to what kind of story about Spartacus they're telling. It sounds like a very suitable microcosm for understanding the whole flexibility of the Spartacus story that you were mentioning earlier. Exactly. I mean, all we know about her is that she's with him in the gladiator school that she seems to come from the same tribe somehow and that she has potentially prophetessy powers that's really it we don't know her name flutarch doesn't give us a name so you can again reinvent her to suit your love story now i must focus on a couple more scenes before we wrap it up and the first one i want to really look at is the final battle itself i'm remembering now that hill and of course those fiery i don't think

they're bulls but they're long haystack kind of things which they send down against the romans haystack is probably completely the wrong word but oh well but this battle i mean it's worthy of a hollywood epic film yes but it was a very late edition ah oh really so it was a last minute thing as well basically because they wanted to go for this large Spartacus storyline, they wanted to focus on Spartacus as being the equal, if not the superior of the Romans. Someone who was a talented strategist, you know, someone with a military mind that made him a worthy adversary of Crassus. And that's not entirely out of keeping with the historical sources.

Some of the stuff that we do know about Spartacus that's attested across a few different sources are pretty crazy stories, like how they managed to escape via Vesuvius when no one was watching the secret exit using vine ropes and how they use fake centuries, like they use dead bodies as fake centuries to escape when the Romans are getting too close. There definitely are lots of pieces of evidence that Spartacus is conducting this war like a real war, like a real general. His followers have armor, they have weapons, they seem to be trained. So that's not completely something that they've made up just for their own fancy. But they definitely want Spartacus to be a character who is worthy of facing the Romans, and they want to keep the focus therefore on his victories, on the amazing things that he managed to accomplish. So in the first couple of

drafts of the script, they're definitely trying to highlight all the things that Spartacus managed to do to triumph over the Romans. They really want to highlight him as making the slaves train and doing things methodically and thinking things through. And they show the victories, and they talk about the victories, and they show the Romans panicking about the victories. They do this in a couple of different ways. They have a few different ideas. Sometimes it's a montage. Sometimes it's like a battle map and that kind of thing.

But that's definitely a focus. And then the final battle, they very deliberately did not want to show because they're like, everybody knows how this story ends. And so for a while they had this symbolic final battle which is one of those classic things right where you hear the clash of swords far off and then you're watching a river and suddenly the water starts to turn to blood and then you see a helmet that kind of stuff and that's what they really wanted to do and they wanted to make it clear that Spartacus was defeated by overwhelming odds, not because

he was not thinking strategically enough or anything like that. And so they actually have Spartacus being beaten by the three armies of the Cullis, Pompey and Crassus, rather than just Crassus alone, which is what historically happens. So they wanted to change that detail to make it clear that it wasn't Spartacus's failure. It was just inevitable, I suppose. When Stanley Kubrick comes along, he says, what are you crazy? This is an epic. We need to have this final battle. But part of the large Spartacus vision, which fell away at the same time, was they stopped really highlighting these slave victories and they found it difficult to reinsert them. There's actually a bit of debate about whether they did actually reshoot some extra battle scenes and they weren't put in because a lot of the extra material to do

with Spartacus was chucked out in 1975. So we'll never know. It seems unlikely that they did, but certainly the final battle was something that they really stretched the budget to do, and they had to shoot it in Spain because it was cheap. Okay, fair enough. So it's interesting how Kubrick's influence on that final battle is very evident from what you're saying. And I guess the other scene that I really want to raise before the whole ending is perhaps the most famous scene of all, the I'm Spasska scene.

But it sounds like this scene, Kirk Douglas, was he actually enamored with it? Yes, he was. It seems to have been a scene that Kirk Douglas had something to do with. Certainly he did insert a lot of ideas and it's sometimes hard to track what are actually his ideas, particularly because Kirk Douglas is not averse to claiming credit for things that he maybe shouldn't. But yeah, it does seem like, certainly in the last book that he published, not long before he died in a bat in 2012, his memoir, I Am Spartacus, he claims very much so that the I Am Spartacus scene was his idea and that Kubrick hated it and didn't want to do it.

But I think it's probably a bit more accurate to say it was probably a collaboration between Dalton Trumbo and Kirk Douglas. Kirk Douglas may have had the idea of the slaves showing their unity and their love for Spartacus in that kind of a way. But I think Dalton Trumbo probably had a bit more to do with the final scripting that we see. Because there's various versions of the scene or like that kind of idea, which we see throughout the early draft of the script. And then it's really not until the early 1959 script that we see it pretty much solidified as you see in the final film so douglas it looks like liked it trumbo liked it kubrick wasn't so sure but he did go along with it in the end apparently yes and to wrap it all up the whole sparska story i'm guessing because there is so much myth around it there's so much that we really

don't know and the whole story itself the flexibility that it allows for a TV crew or for a film, do you think that's one of the things that really appeals to TV crews looking to do epics in the ancient world? Do you think that is why the story of Spartacus really stands out? Yeah, I do think so. I think there is definitely a mythology that's grown up around Spartacus, which does make him a very appealing character. That's the thing about looking at classical reception. You can't just look at the ancient sources and then look at the version that you're studying.

You have to think about all the versions that have happened in between. And you really have to look at what were the people making this film looking at? Were they even looking at the ancient sources? I mean, I've looked at some of the research sources that people like Trumbo looked at as informing their vision of Spartacus, and I can totally see how they came up with what they came up with. And they were often doing it deliberately. You know, they weren't stupid. They weren't making a mistake and say, looking at Juvenal, even though he's in completely the wrong era. They had a particular vision that they wanted to promote. And there was a story

they wanted to tell about the Romans as well, was part of the whole movie and so they made choices to fictionalize to fudge things here to lean into the myth I mean they openly say in one of their earliest research documents that all this source we're using is a bit pro-Spartacus but hey that's what we're trying to do right so let's just roll with it and I'm guessing in turn of course the famous 2000 film Gladiator can we say that the whole film and how it was made was a big influence on the creation of the Russell Crowe epic? I think so. I see Spartacus as being a bit of a bastard love child

between Spartacus and Fall of the Roman Empire, which was directed by Anthony Mann, who was fired from Spartacus. There you go. Small world. All the small world in the film industry. Fiona, that was fantastic. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Oh, no, thank you if you could do me a quick favour. Head over to wherever you get your

podcasts and rate it five stars and then leave a nice glowing review. It makes a huge difference for some reason to how these podcasts do. Madness, I know, but them's the rules. Then we go further up the charts, more people listen to us and everything will be awesome. So thank you so much. Now sleep well.