Spartacus [Hardcover]

Howard Fast (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1951

"Self-Published by the Author, Box 171., Planetarium Station, New York City 24, December 1951."

Product Details

• Hardcover: 363 pages
• Publisher: The Author (1951)
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0006ASXOO
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,186,073 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you liked the movie, prepare for something different.., December 7, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Spartacus (North Castle Books) (Paperback)

Even though I probably would have bought this book anyway (I enjoy historical fiction and Roman history), the main reason I bought this book was because I loved the movie. But I was unprepared for what was ultimately a finely crafted novel.For the most part, it takes place after the revolt: as a few of Rome's most important politicians (including Crassus and Cicero), discuss, and consider, the significance of the revolt. Also, through flashbacks, it covers part of Spartacus' life--the horrible conditions in the african mines, life as a gladiator, the revolt, and death.Basically, this book tells a better story, and tells it better, than the movie which claims to be based on it.

45 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Probably Fast's best book. And a great book., May 8, 1999

By 

Steven Zoraster (Austin, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Spartacus (North Castle Books) (Paperback)

Howard Fast's novelization of the slave revolt in Italy between 73-71 BC is both a work of left wing advocacy and a tremendously well done novel. I read it first when I was 14. Now, a long time later, once a year or so I re-read the copy I still have - for the enjoyment, for the character development, for the history, and for the political agenda. You could read it for any one or any combination of those features, and still get something out of this book.

For those who don't know, Howard Fast was a member of the Communist Party of the United States from the 1930s on up to the early 1950s, a committed, though thinking member. And one who was willing to go to jail ~1951 rather than testify about others in the CPUSA. (For more about this aspect of his life, buy his biography, Being Red.) So, Spartacus is a novel with an agenda. For "Rome," read western capitalism run wild. For "slaves" read the lower class, peasants, serfs or workers. And for Spartacus himself, read anyone you want to as a modern day revolutionary who is forced by history, and his own humanity, to attempt changing the world. Is this a problem? Absolutely not! When I read this book at 14, I knew that when I read something along the lines of "Rome is the whole world," that that could be taken as the Classical Mediterranean world, or as the whole capitalist world of the 20th century. If, like me, you don't worry too much about the evils of modern capitalism, you can read the book as pure historical fiction. And, like me, if you want to, you can catch Fast's criticism of capitalism without diminishing your enjoyment of the novel.

How good is Spartacus as historical fiction? I am not a classical historian, but I read a lot, including those Roman detective novels, and all five of McCullough's Roman series starting with The First Man in Rome. I would guess that Fast is doing as good a job as McCullough. Does Fast account for every last Roman legion, including the date it was raised, where it was stationed, and the historically correct name of its legate in a certain year, etc? No, but given the relatively small amount of information available about Spartacus, Fast manages to make a historically valid interpretation.

What Fast really does well is characters: Spartacus himself, introduced as a slave, and then as a gladiator, working his way towards open revolt, a human being who others might follow in a desperate bid for freedom. Crassus, the rich Roman general - rich enough to pay for his own army - who ultimately defeats Spartacus, but himself has doubts about how his own Roman morality compares with what he can understand of the goals and ethics of the Spartacus and his slave army. And Gracchus, the Roman senator who does appear to fully understand the morality superiority of Spartacus, but at the same time is so much a Roman that he must help destroy Spartacus. Throw in Cicero, and a number of other characters who may or may not be historical, including Spartacus' slave wife, and you have a wonderful cast.

Probably everyone knows that the revolt of Spartacus is finally put down, so that there are almost no survivors among the good guys in Spartacus. And yet, through one lone survivor, and through the actions of two Romans who have been changed by the events described in the novel, there is a positive twist at the end, which gives the reader hope for a better world, not just in 70 BC, but also in 2000AD.

Did I mention that Howard Fast writes well? As an example, here is one memorable exchange between Spartacus and the other escaped gladiators and some slaves who have joined them. A passage that still makes me feel good each time I think about it. Spartacus is encouraging the gladiators and the slaves to stay together and resist as an army and as a people, rather than scattering into the countryside, where they will be hunted down one-by-one:

A gladiator: "Then Rome will go to war against us."

Spartacus: "Then we will go to war against Rome!"

P.S. The movie is terrible. Although, I gather that it took a lot of courage on the part of Stanley Kubrick, Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis to make it in 1960, which wasn't very long after Fast had been sent to jail for failing to testify.

28 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A "novel" bit of propaganda, April 18, 2006

By 

M. G Watson "Miles Watson" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Spartacus (North Castle Books) (Paperback)

"Spartacus" gives the lie to the scientific law that two bodies cannot occupy the same space: it exists simultaneously as an epic piece of historical fiction and as powerful (if less-than-subtle) bit of Leftist propaganda. The fact that most people know the story of Spartacus from the Kirk Douglas movie is a shame, because while the movie remains a classic, the book does the story far more justice.

Everyone knows the basic story of Spartacus, the anonymous third-generation slave sold to a gladiator school to fight for the amusement of decadent Romans, and how he ended up leading a gigantic slave rebellion that nearly destroyed the Republic. What Fast explores in the novel is how and why this rebellion came about, and what effect it had on the psychology of the Romans, whose culture even during the years of the Republic was enormously dependent on slavery. Most importantly, Fast explores the moral climate of Rome by following around the "victors" of the Servile War as they reminisce about Spartacus and how he was defeated. It is in this backward-looking manner that "Spartacus" unfolds.

Fast draws his characters, most of whom are real-life figures, with wonderful clarity: Crassus, the general who crushed Spartacus' rebellion, is shown as "the bronze hawk of the Republic" -- ruthless, sensual, grasping, yet ultimately hollow; Cicero, the historian-philsopher, as a scheming opportunist of the worst sort; Gracchus as a basically decent man turned cynical and decayed by the evils of his society. The lesser Roman characters are much worse: empty-headed, venal, vain, cruel, parastic, sexually depraved, almost unspeakably vicious and treacherous, all holding onto illicit fortunes wrung from the sweat and labor of slaves, and all desperate to increase their wealth, power and position relative to each other. Nor are the common folk of the cities and towns spared: Fast depicts them in passing as a lazy, bloodthirsty, amoral mob who live for cheap wine and the grain dole and the games, who "strangle their children at birth" and whore themselves on the streets for pennies.

In contrast, Fast holds the slaves as being rendered pure and noble by virtue of their suffering. Spartacus is depicted as almost Jesus-like in his simplistic divinity; Varinia (his lover) as a pillar of wifely and motherly virtue; David (the Jewish gladiator) as a hate-filled soul brough to love and redemption through his apprenticeship at Spartacus' side. Once freed, the slaves live in perfect socialistic harmony, sharing their property, keeping no more than they need, living as equals and brothers, and -- inflamed by their passion for freedom -- fighting like lions against the numercially superior and better-equipped Roman legions.

If all of this seems rather heavy-handed to you, it is. Fast's Rome is metaphoric. The Romans are modern-day capatalists, the slaves the modern-day working class; and in attacking capitalism and imperialism he is suggesting, as most Marxists did, that the triumph of socialism/communism is a "historical necessity"....not because it is stronger (the slaves are defeated), but because it is righteous (the slaves will rise again). It hardly comes a surprise that this book was required reading for many Soviet schoolchildren.

What saves "Spartacus" from bogging down into a tiresome polemic is Fast's skillful prose and his ability to re-create the atmosphere of ancient Rome. The exhausted slaves, the hawking street vendors, the awesomely disciplined legionary camps, the blood-splattered gladiatorial arenas, the cramped and sweating tenements, the lavishly-set dinner tables of the slaveholders....all of it is brought to life vivdly by Fast's poisoned pen. Unlike most political zealots, he was able to avoid descending into cant and Orwellian duckspeak even when making the most thinly-transparent references to modern society. If he is often blatant and obvious, he at least is obvious in an entertaining way.

Historically "Spartacus" is pretty solid except where the real story interfered with Fast's own ideology or just with the narrative in general. Pompey's role in Spartacus' defeat goes unmentioned (probably for the best), and the fact that the slaves had a chance to flee Italy through the Alps but elected to stay and loot Roman cities -- thus giving Crassus the chance to destroy them -- is conviently forgotten by Fast, who insists somewhat amusingly that the slaves are above such greed and do not want any more than they need. Fast also plays fast and loose with some of the uglier details of the rebellion -- most notably he makes the slaves less vindictive and bloodthirsty than they really were. None of this really matters, however, or makes the story less inspiring. In a revolt of slaves against slave-masters, picking a side is not really difficult.

I found it very ironic that Viktor Belenko, the Soviet fighter pilot who defected in his MiG 25 to Japan in 1979, named reading "Spartacus" as one of the reasons why he FLED communism to come to a capatalist society. Obviously Fast's politics, dazzled as they were by an alluring but false ideology, were simplistic and wrong: poverty doesn't make a man saintly any more than wealth makes him evil, and capitalism -- while crass, disgusting and amoral -- has slaughtered far fewer people than socialism (whether Nazi or communist) ever did. His basic message, however, was correct: freedom is freedom, no matter what you call it, and it is very much worth fighting for.