Swords, Sandals, and Sex…(Or, “Do You Prefer Snails or Oysters?”)

I recently viewed the entirety (thus far) of the new(-ish) STARZ series, Spartacus: Blood and Sand (13 episodes) and Spartacus: Gods of the Arena (6 episodes). And, while I don’t wish I had those 18 hours of my life back necessarily, I’m a bit conflicted on what I’ve seen for a variety of reasons.

Of course, this series has drawn some comparisons with the recent HBO/BBC series Rome, which (despite its faults) managed to remarkably and rather accurately (to a point) portray the religious atmosphere of ancient Rome. But, there was an awful lot of sex in Rome, to the point that Jeremy J. Baer said in review of its second season that:

The problem with Rome is precisely that its sex is better than its history and left me feeling like a dirty whore for watching it. I believe that Rome helped inaugurate an era of so-called historical dramas that play more like costumed soft porn. Showtime’s The Tudors seems like a direct response to HBO’s Rome–-even lighter on history and heavier on sex. I can forgive this in The Tudors as it never pretended to be anything other than what it is. However, the 1st season of Rome amply demonstrated that one could have a sexy drama without totally mutilating history, and it strove to be something grand.

Is the same true of the new STARZ Spartacus? Unfortunately, yes–and perhaps even more so.

Thus far, the basic details, as known from history, are fairly correct–the man history eventually knew as Spartacus was a Thracian, possibly a Roman auxiliary, who was sold into slavery and trained as a gladiator by Lentulus Batiatus. Eventually, with the fellow slaves of Gaulish descent, Crixus and Oenomaus, he lead a major slave revolt that lasted several years and was known as the Servile Wars in the late 70s BCE. The film version of this most familiar to people is the 1960 Stanley Kubrick film Spartacus, starring Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis, Sir Peter Ustinov, and a variety of other Hollywood luminaries. I have only seen the latter once–and not in its entirety; but, the version I saw was televised in the 1990s, after it had been restored with its “racier” scene featuring a veiled discussion of homoeroticism (“Do you prefer snails or oysters, Antoninus?”).

However, my main critique of the newer Spartacus isn’t its history, nor its sexuality (although more will be said on the latter in a moment), it is precisely the matter that Rome got right (even though some bits weren’t quite right in terms of timing, e.g. the taurobolium in the first episode)–the religious aspects of Spartacus: Blood and Sand and its successors is very off. In the 1960 Spartacus, the character of Crassus (a member of the First Triumvirate) says to the very young Julius Caesar at one point that he’d like to obtain a pigeon for a sacrifice, to which Caesar replies that he thought Crassus did not believe in the gods; Crassus replies, “Privately, I believe in none of them; publicly, I believe in them all!” And this is precisely the matter that the newer incarnation of Spartacus goes wrong on–it makes the matter of the gods too much about “belief,” when that is not what pre-creedal religion’s spirituality was based upon.

I mentioned Clifford Ando’s The Matter of the Gods recently, and I’d like to pick up on some matters raised in it that I think apply to every form of ancient paganism currently known to me, many forms of modern polytheism (including Hinduism and Shinto), and certainly the majority of modern paganism, which is that practitioners of these religions don’t have “faith” or “belief” (as conventionally understood), they have knowledge. The gods get involved in people’s lives directly in a variety of ways that no longer require (and usually never necessitate) that someone “believe” in them, their interventions are simply obvious in a variety of ways. Yes, modern atheists would dispute these forms of knowledge, and would suggest there are other ways in which they could be interpreted–and they may be correct in this, but they need not be of necessity…that’s a whole other argument, though! But, it does play into this matter to a certain extent, because in the newer Spartacus series, as well as in Troy and in the newer Clash of the Titans, we are essentially presented with an “atheist” protagonist in several cases. Spartacus, in this new series, is an atheist, and says many times that he doesn’t believe in the gods, but his wife used to. She had a premonition before he went to battle alongside the Romans in the first episode (and, there is some cause to think that she was some sort of seeress in history), and this premonition proves to be correct by the end of the first episode. Many strokes of luck that could only be ascribed to the direct intervention of the gods occur over the next several episodes, and at last Spartacus has a kind of “conversion” experience in which he accepts that the gods and fate do have a role to play in his life…he “begins to believe.” But, this is entirely a post-Christian, post-creedal religious view of religion, and one not at all appropriate to the pre-Christian period.

The other major area that Spartacus falls behind on is its portrayal of sex and sexual realities. In the first episode, Claudius Glaber’s wife Ilithyia (in a scene shown here, edited slightly!) sneaks into his legionary camp in order to have sex with him; and it seems pretty obvious that the first thing Glaber does is perform cunnilingus on her, though the act is not actually shown. The likelihood of this is extremely sparse on every count–not only would it be nearly impossible for a legate’s wife (or any woman apart from a gutter camp-follower) to sneak into a legionary camp, but any Roman man, least of all a legate trying to maintain the highest stereotypes of masculinity that culture subscribed to, would ever in a million years perform cunnilingus on anyone.

As Holt N. Parker writes in an article called “The Teratogenic Grid” from the anthology Roman Sexualities, to be a cunnilictor was the absolute lowest-of-the-low person in Roman sexual terms, because such a person submitted orally (which was much worse than submitting anally–the mouth was the source of speech and therefore of reason and everything that made one properly human) to something that, by definition, should not be able to have any “penetrative” capacity at all…in short, he allowed himself to be face-fucked by a cunt. In the Roman reckoning, the only thing that should be able to fuck (i.e. to penetrate another sexually) is a penis, and as long as a Roman male was on the penetrating end of the penis, as it were (which is to say, he was the one penetrating), any and every orifice of any person socially inferior to him (in gender, class, education, citizenship, etc.) was available to him for penetration without undermining his gender. If he allowed himself to be penetrated anally, that was clearly a lapse, but not as bad as if he allowed himself to be penetrated orally…and thus, to be penetrated by something that by definition cannot and should not penetrate was totally out-of-bounds and the worse one could be. (Please note, I do not remotely agree with this sort of construction of gender, sexuality, and sexual activity; but I am accurately reporting the ancient Roman views on the matter, as they have come down to us.)

This is particularly annoying in terms of the new Spartacus because, among the Thracians at the beginning for example, the insult “boy-lover” (apparently as the ancient equivalent of “fag”) was thrown about rather a lot, when in reality to be a boy-lover, for Romans or for Thracians or for Greeks at the time, would have been something that practically everyone would have done, and which wouldn’t have been frowned upon hardly at all…so long as the man in question wasn’t allowing the boy to penetrate him. In this, the writers were obviously taking their cues from the Zack Snyder 300 film, which also missed the boat on that matter entirely…the Spartan military/educational system was intimately tied up with homoeroticism, and thus Spartans insulting Athenians for being “boy-lovers” would be the highest form of hypocrisy and stupidity imaginable, and is an entirely modern, homophobic message, and not something at all accurate.

It is these small matters, of both sex and religion, that really give realism to a show such as this in my opinion. It has been assumed, unfortunately, that sex is a universal matter, and that religion’s “basic conflict” of belief versus non-belief (which is only the basic conflict of creedal religions) is also a universal human experience, when in fact both are entirely shaped and influenced by matters of culture, context, time, and place. Better research into sex and religion in 1st c. BCE Italy would have benefited this series greatly, even to the point of spending a bit more of the budget on doing so rather than on blood and gore CGI effects.

Also, the lesbianism–or, perhaps more accurately, bisexuality–of several of the female characters in Spartacus: Gods of the Arena, is also not very likely to have been a reality. Female homoeroticism has always been frowned upon, even in good ol’ Greece, when male homoeroticism was more generally accepted (under certain conditions), because of the reasons mentioned above. Female homoeroticism implies, to a Greek or Roman mind, that one woman is appropriating a male sexual role that she does not deserve and cannot rightly play, and that another is allowing herself to submit to such a “fantasy,” which completely upsets the sexual economy of those systems of thought on sexuality. Bernadette Brooten’s Love Between Women is an excellent examination of this issue, and demonstrates quite effectively and thoroughly that early Christian thought on this matter (as reflected in Paul’s Epistle to the Romans chapter 1–the only explicit condemnation of female homoeroticism in the entire Judeo-Christian biblical corpus) was very much in line with classical Greek and Roman tradition on the subject–with the single exception of Graeco-Egyptian erotic spells, some of which survive that are clearly between women, or that express the desire of one woman for love and sex with another.

While I’m perfectly willing to admit that I may be extremely unusual in this regard, I have to say that despite the rather gratuitous (but somewhat culturally/historically appropriate) amount of exposed male flesh in this series, and the general nudity, sexuality, and so forth that occurred, I didn’t find very much of it “sexy.” (Yes, if I ever watch porn, I’m one of the people who complains immediately about plot and characterization’s lack…the physicality and visuality of it is never enough for me!) So much of the sex is exploitative and non-consensual, since it is often slaves being commanded or used by their masters (and their master’s friends) in an indiscriminate, objectifying manner. And, while that is accurate to some extent for the time, I think it was a bit overplayed in this show, in a way that emphasized the salaciousness of modern writers and directors (and their intended audiences) playing out fantasies of such domination rather than done in a manner that seemed to me realistic or believable in the context of what was occurring.

Nonetheless, something about the show was compelling, and it kept me watching episode after episode for several days. Is it my own violent tendencies and suppressed desires simply playing themselves out in terms of desiring to watch such spectacles? Perhaps…and if it is, I’m willing to admit it and be honest about it, but in the manner of not admitting to enjoying it, but to finding the exposure of such tendencies and desires problematic and risible. But, I shall leave that matter aside for the moment, to discuss some things about the series that I found at least somewhat interesting in terms of characterizations.

The story of Spartacus has been used since the 19th century to speak of the human desire for freedom, and as a cautionary tale against the institution of slavery and the general matter of human oppression. The new Spartacus series certainly pushes all of those buttons, and perhaps even better than the older film, demonstrates how cheaply many Romans held human life when it was their slaves. (Though not exclusively–Ilithyia snaps into a rage at one point when she is ridiculed by the superior-in-rank-and-wealth cousin of Crassus, and kills her; such objectification of slaves and of life in terms of watching gladiators battle to the death without any qualms for entertainment certainly, in this portrayal, spills over into holding any and all human life rather cheaply.) One of the most heart-wrenching scenes of this takes place when the young Numerius (shown above), under license from Batiatus on occasion of his receiving the toga virilis to be an editor of a gladiatorial contest between Spartacus and his friend Varro that was intended to be only an exhibition match, orders Spartacus to kill his best friend Varro. When Spartacus hesitates, and endangers the lives of all the gladiators by doing so, Varro drives the sword into himself and tells Spartacus he would have done the same had their positions been reversed, whereupon Spartacus finishes the deed. (There is more to this plot-wise, but I won’t go into further details…) I think this is vaguely based on the final combat between Spartacus and Antoninus (Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis) in the original Spartacus film (culminating in the dying Antoninus saying “I love you, Spartacus…”), and it does indeed have a very keen impact on the plot which follows, and on the viewer, in my opinion. All of the various factors leading to the revenge and the sentiment of “kill them all” that ends the first season of the series is certainly heightened by this particular incident.

One of the principal characters in both series is Barca, “the Beast of Carthage,” a very successful gladiator who is also consistently portrayed as being (at least on screen) predominantly homoerotic in his inclinations, and is in fact the only character in the entire series portrayed as such, apart from his two lovers. (Which is interesting considering the recent post I made on the (stupid) theory that Rome was “infected” with homosexuality because of Carthage!) His lover in Spartacus: Blood and Sand is a young African slave who assists around the ludus (gladiatorial school) named Pietros; in Spartacus: Gods of the Arena (which takes place before the first series), his lover is Auctus, another gladiator, who is of some sort of unspecified European descent. (More on Auctus in a moment.) Barca meets his end because of a series of intrigues that involve the accusation that he was not loyal in his following of certain directions; and his lover Pietros after his death, desolate because he was told that he was freed and instead of also freeing Pietros he simply left on his own, starts being abused and raped by another gladiator. When Pietros finally commits suicide because of this ongoing abuse, Spartacus ends up killing the one who was raping him by knocking him off the cliff adjacent to where they practice. While it is, on the one hand, “nice” to have some gay characters represented, at the same time, it sucks that they all end up getting killed (particularly since both Barca and Pietros are portrayed as “non-white,” and thus “the black guy gets killed” rule seems to prevail here as well).

Shown here, left to right, are three of the characters in Spartacus: Gods of the Arena, namely Gannicus, the “Celtic” champion gladiator of that series; Auctus, the lover of Barca; and Crixus, the Gaul who is purchased at the beginning of this series and is a champion in Spartacus: Blood and Sand before Spartacus arrives, and is one of his constant rivals. The new recruit Crixus shows great promise, and is a rival of Gannicus throughout the second series as well. There is something extremely problematic about considering Crixus a “Gaul” and Gannicus a “Celt,” as if these things were different or separate from the Greek or Roman viewpoints at the time–yet another historical fail. However, Gannicus is presented almost as if he is Irish, with a penchant for drink and other indulgences; he does seem in some senses similar to Cú Chulainn (though a bit older), including in one fight in which he defeats his opponent while blindfolded himself. Though both Crixus and Auctus are owned by the lanista Batiatus, they are pitted against each other in a fight to the death, and Auctus is killed in defeat, which of course devastates Barca, who has just been victorious in the previous bout. However, the character of Crixus becomes incredibly elevated in my opinion at this point, when he later comes to Barca, says that Auctus is the first man he’s ever killed, and that he will be honored by him thereafter no matter what. This is very much, whether the writers intended it or not, an example of the Celtic warrior ethos exhibited by Cú Chulainn and many other figures in Irish, Welsh, and other Celtic literatures.

The second series serves, in a last-moments-flashback in the eyes of Batiatus, to replay some earlier periods in his life that end up giving a great deal of back-story to various characters and relationships exhibited in the first series. The net result, for me at least, was a much greater respect for many of the slave and non-Roman characters (including Barca, Crixus, and Oenomaus, the Doctore of the ludus when Spartacus joins it), and an increased disgust for the Roman characters, including Batiatus and his treacherous wife Lucretia. The character shown above is Salonius, another lanista who is a constant rival of Batiatus in the first series, and who ends up being sentenced to execution ad gladium in the arena by Spartacus. As they face off, Spartacus compliments the older man for being “not without skill,” but of course he ends up being brought to his knees; but, Salonius does die laughing because Spartacus reveals to him that he intends to kill Batiatus eventually. We see in the second series that Salonius and Batiatus used to be friends, and if anything the rather unusual and toady-esque Salonius is Batiatus’ inferior. (It is never explained why Salonius has the hair and piercings he does…is it to convey that he’s a Roman with eccentric Greek or more exotic Oriental tastes? Who knows…) He tries to be a loyal friend in every way, though he suggests at various points that Batiatus’ wife might be better off with him, or could choose him as an alternative under certain circumstances. At last, Batiatus makes some throwaway remarks about Salonius to the effect that he’s somewhat worthless, and that no woman would ever have him (possibly because of his looks or his aesthetic tastes?), and the look on Salonius’ face is one that is very familiar to me–he can’t believe what he is hearing and how he is being judged. At that moment, his loyalties turn, and by the end of the final episode of the second series, he is in a position superior to Batiatus, achieved through his own machinations and taking advantage of a situation that Batiatus created. I found him to be incredibly more sympathetic at that point–though perhaps not entirely excusable in some of his behavior–at least as someone who has been wronged and humiliated by someone who was supposed to be his friend, and who is disrespected very directly (and as a result underestimated) because of his looks. This is a position quite well known to me, as I have been there on a number of occasions. (I hope I’m nowhere near as evil and conniving as Salonius ends up being…however, I hope to die laughing as joyously as he did, though for different reasons!)

One more note about the show that I thought was an interesting, but somewhat failed, attempt in terms of making it realistic and accurate to ancient Rome, which I particularly noticed in the second series a few episodes in–whether they had different writers at that point, or I simply didn’t pay attention to it previously, I am not certain. Latin lacks both definite and indefinite articles (though it does have demonstrative pronouns, e.g. “this, these, that, those,” etc.), so that it could potentially, if translated literally and without such articles, sound very general and non-specific. The dialogue in parts of the Spartacus series, particularly when it is in a higher register amongst certain characters, is almost entirely without definite and indefinite articles, and it serves very well to create that effect of making it all sound “a bit different,” the way that anything translated really ought to! They also never use the words “thank you,” but instead “gratitude for” or “gratitude to you” whenever this expression of thanks is stated, which is also an intriguing choice. Unfortunately, I found that more often than should have been the case, Batiatus says “fuck” and “cock”–to the point that I think the man must have been weaned on “cock” for the number of times that he mentions it–”cock in ass,” “Jupiter’s cock,” “the cock on this one,” and so forth. While it does convey that Batiatus is a rather coarse and unsophisticated individual, nonetheless this could have been done in a way that would make it sound less like a Tarantino film, I think. The creativity evinced by the other linguistic choices in the dialogue was so appropriate, it is hard to see this as anything but a lapse due to laziness–perhaps not unlike the lapse in the sexual and religious messages and portrayals in the series otherwise.

So, what is my verdict–is the new Spartacus series a success or a failure, worth watching or worth ignoring? It depends on one’s tastes. If you are ever feeling, as a good Greek, Egyptian, Celt, German, or any other sort of modern pagan that you want to “Burn Rome!”, I’d suggest it as a nice cathartic means, particularly if the first season is watched in order. If you’re looking for a decent historical portrayal of Spartacus, you’d probably be better off reading the actual histories involved (especially since we have no idea where they’ll be going next with all of this…the story is far from complete with two seasons). If you want to see scantily-clad sweaty and dirty men attacking each other, bathing and shaving, and occasionally having sex (though mostly with female slaves), one could do much worse. As light and unproblematic entertainment, however, I wouldn’t suggest it, and not because of any of the historical, sexual, or religious inaccuracies…If you actually have a human conscience and compassion, you’ll have to ask yourself many questions about the spectacle of sexual and violent objectification upon which the entire edifice of Roman gladiatorial combat, and indeed the entire series, is based upon, and if you’re not ready and willing to do that, I’d really recommend watching Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea instead…it had a themesong by Menudo (when Ricky Martin was in it) back in the day, as well as a place called Arcadia and an underground sun called Terra (Latin for “earth”)!