Spartacus
スパルタカス
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
Gladiators, orgies and green-screen blood; here as the calibration point for maximum television explicitness.
The man the Romans will call Spartacus is a Thracian fighting for Rome as an auxiliary under the legate Claudius Glaber, until Glaber, urged on by his wife, Ilithyia, abandons the Thracians' war for his own glory. The Thracian leads a mutiny, comes home to find his village destroyed, and is captured with his wife, Sura, who is sold into slavery. Condemned to die in the arena at Capua, he kills the four gladiators sent to execute him, and the lanista Quintus Batiatus buys him, names him after a Thracian king and has him trained by Oenomaus, the slave known as Doctore. He becomes the Champion of Capua. Batiatus arranges to buy Sura, but she arrives dying: he has had her killed to keep his champion content. Forced to kill his only friend, Varro, in an exhibition match, and learning the truth about Sura, Spartacus makes common cause with his rival Crixus. At the end of the first season, Blood and Sand, the gladiators rise, kill Batiatus and much of Capua's elite, and leave Batiatus's wife, Lucretia, for dead.
Andy Whitfield, who played Spartacus, fell ill with cancer, and while production waited Starz made a six-episode prequel, Gods of the Arena, about Batiatus's rise and his champion Gannicus. Whitfield died in 2011, and Liam McIntyre took over the role.
In the second season, Vengeance, Glaber is sent to crush the growing band of freed slaves. Spartacus hunts him while holding together an army of Gauls, Germans and Thracians with grudges of their own, and Crixus searches for his lover, Naevia. On the slopes of Vesuvius the rebels destroy Glaber's legion; Oenomaus dies, and Spartacus kills Glaber. In Capua, Lucretia takes her revenge on Ilithyia and ends her own life, taking Ilithyia's newborn son with her.
In the third, War of the Damned, the Senate turns to Marcus Crassus, the richest man in Rome, who brings a young Julius Caesar with him. The rebels take the coastal city of Sinuessa and lose it to Caesar's infiltration, break out of a snowbound mountain trap, and divide: Crixus marches on Rome and is killed. In the final battle Spartacus defeats Crassus in single combat and is struck down by soldiers behind him. Pompey arrives to take the credit, and Gannicus and the captured rebels are crucified. Spartacus dies in Agron's arms, saying that his greatest victory is to die a free man. Agron, his lover Nasir and the survivors head for the mountains and a life beyond Rome's reach. Spartacus is buried in an unmarked grave, his true name never spoken; after the credits, Andy Whitfield appears once more in the arena, proclaiming that he is Spartacus.
Starring
Andy Whitfieldas Spartacus (first season)
A Thracian auxiliary betrayed by Rome and sold into the arena, who rises from slave to champion to rebel.
Spartacus (first season)’s story
The Thracian leads a mutiny when the legate Glaber abandons his people, and is captured with his wife, Sura, who is sold into slavery. Sent to die in the arena at Capua, he kills the four gladiators set against him, and Batiatus buys him and names him Spartacus. He trains to win Sura back, surrenders to Crixus in the arena and is sent to fight in the pits, then kills the unbeaten Theokoles and becomes Champion of Capua. Sura arrives dying, supposedly after an attack by bandits. He embraces the gladiator's life and hails himself Spartacus to the crowd. Forced to kill his only friend, Varro, in an exhibition match, he learns that Batiatus ordered Sura's death, joins forces with Crixus and, having killed Batiatus, leads the gladiators out of the ludus, vowing to make Rome tremble.
Liam McIntyreas Spartacus (second and third seasons)
The leader of a growing slave army, torn between his own vengeance and the lives of those who follow him.
Spartacus (second and third seasons)’s story
Free, Spartacus wants only Glaber's death while his band hides in Capua's sewers. He frees Naevia from the mines for Crixus at a heavy cost, brings down Capua's arena to rescue Crixus and Oenomaus, and holds together Gauls, Germans and Thracians who distrust one another. On Vesuvius he loses Mira and Oenomaus, destroys Glaber's legion and kills Glaber. Against Crassus he takes Sinuessa and spares many of its citizens, loses the city to Caesar's infiltration, breaks out of a snowbound trap and parts from Crixus, who marches on Rome and is killed. In the final battle he defeats Crassus hand to hand, is struck down by soldiers behind him, and dies in Agron's arms, calling it his greatest victory to die a free man. He is buried in an unmarked grave.
Lucy Lawlessas Lucretia
Batiatus's ambitious wife, who schemes for the house's rise, survives the uprising and plots her revenge.
Lucretia’s story
Lucretia schemes beside Batiatus to raise their house, courting Glaber's wife, Ilithyia, and forcing their champion, Crixus, to sleep with her in the hope of a child. When Ilithyia kills a Roman noblewoman in the course of Lucretia's plotting, Lucretia and Batiatus use it to force Glaber's patronage. On the night of the uprising Crixus stabs her and she loses the child. She survives, is taken by the Romans for an oracle, and works in secret with Ashur, who rapes her again and again. She turns Ilithyia and Glaber against each other. When Glaber orders Ilithyia to kill her, Ilithyia goes into labour; Lucretia kills her and takes the newborn son, then ends her own life with the child in her arms.
John Hannahas Quintus Lentulus Batiatus
The owner of a gladiator school in Capua, desperate for status, who buys Spartacus and secretly has his wife killed.
Manu Bennettas Crixus
A Gaul, once Batiatus's champion and Spartacus's rival, who becomes the rebellion's second leader and loves Naevia.
Crixus’s story
Crixus is the undefeated Champion of Capua, forced to sleep with his master's wife, Lucretia, while he secretly loves her body slave, Naevia. He beats Spartacus in the arena, is nearly killed beside him against Theokoles, and loses his title. When his love for Naevia is exposed he is flogged and she is sold. Learning that he was poisoned to lose a fight to the death with Spartacus, he joins the revolt and stabs Lucretia, who is carrying his child, leaving her for dead. Free, he finds Naevia in the mines and stands by her until she kills their old enemy, Ashur. Clashing with Spartacus over the war, he at last leads his own army towards Rome. Fighting Caesar, he is struck down from behind by Crassus's son, Tiberius, and killed on Crassus's order in front of Naevia.
Peter Mensahas Oenomaus (Doctore)
A former champion who trains the gladiators for Batiatus and becomes a reluctant counsellor to the rebels.
Why it matters
Spartacus is about a society that turned people into property and spectacle, and it makes the point with the excess it depicts: bodies, sex and stylised slaughter staged for the pleasure of masters in a house where slaves exist to serve ambition. Its hero comes from a real revolt against Rome between 73 and 71 BC, but his early life is barely recorded, so the history is a frame rather than a record. What the series takes seriously is the cost of freedom, and it pays that cost on screen: nearly everyone dies, and the only victory it grants its hero is to die free. The production carried a real grief. When Andy Whitfield fell ill with cancer, Starz made a prequel to wait for him; he died in 2011, having, in Steven S. DeKnight's account, given the show his blessing to go on without him. Two men in love, Agron and Nasir, are among the few who walk away.