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Spartacus

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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.

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.

"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.

Not including the mandatory classics like Moby Dick that we were required to read in school growing up in the 50's and 60's, I recall that Spartacus was one of the first 'adult' books I voluntarily read. I enjoyed it as a 14-year-old kid, but I'm certain I waded through the book from action scene to action scene. What motivated me to read it again nearly 40 years later, I don't know. Nonetheless, I picked it up a month ago and did it again.

The changes in my perceptions were startingly. Frankly, there are not many action scenes, and it amazed me that I was able to hang in there as a boy reading a man's book. More importantly, this is a book about people and great concepts and controversies that have been a part of mankind since the beginning.

As an adult knowing about Howard Fast's background when he wrote the book, I could read his own struggles in the 50's portrayed through the lives of the 'greatest' generation of its time, the people of the Roman Empire.

This is as stunning a book about freedom as you will ever read. Early on when a crucified gladiator tells onlookers, "I will return, and I will be millions," you can easily see the connection between what happened in this little documented yet important episode in history and what has occurred in the subsequent 2,000 years.

The story of Spartacus is not finished; mankind has miles to go before it sleeps. Still, the tale of rebellious gladiators who unite the slave population of Rome through four tumultuous years is an excellent base from which to consider other chapters in the story through 20 centuries.

An excellent book that will hook you through character and conceptual development.

Howard Fast's 1951 novel was the inspiration for the fantastic Kirk Douglas movie. Compared to the movie, the book is a slow-paced introspective affair. At the outset of the novel, the slave revolt has recently been beaten. A party of rich Romans travels the Via Appia from Rome to Capua. Private travel has just been permitted after 4 years of Servile War. The story is told out-of-order with various peripheral characters recollecting the dead slave leader.

Fast makes much of the poor treatment Romans gave their slaves. Fast goes completely over-the-top when he implies that the Romans engaged in cannibalism, chopping up dead slaves to make sausage for export. This contradicts many classical sources that repeatedly tell of slaves buying or being granted their freedom and becoming important and powerful members of Roman society. After two thousand years who really knows what happened?

The characters of Spactacus and his wife Varinia are poorly drawn. Spartacus is saccharinely depicted as too good to be true. There is an absurd ending wherein Gracchus steals Varinia from Crassus, frees her and then kills himself. This would have been best left out. There is a long chapter dealing with the Jewish slave David that I had to skim through.

The character of the Roman general Crassus is well formed. He is a ruthless man of action much like Olivier played him in the movie. He has no empathy at all for the six thousand defeated slaves he crucifies along the Via Appia. Interestingly, no mention is made of the fact that Crassus met his own grisly fate not long after the events in the novel. He was beheaded after losing a battle against the Parthians.

Fast makes great efforts to fit the Spartacus story into his class struggle/Proletariat versus Capitalist worldview. There is an awkward scene where Crassus takes his young guests to a perfume factory he owns in Capua. Fast writes dialogue that makes the Roman patrician out to be proto-robber baron. In fact, work and especially involvement in business was considered disgraceful among the Roman upper classes. No self-respecting ex-consul would do such a thing.

If the reader can ignore these awkward moments there is a good story interwoven among the dialectical materialism The reader must mentally edit out these tedious digressions much as the War and Peace reader is better off skipping Tolstoy's non-sequiturs about the nature of war. There is, hidden in over 350 pages, a good 250 page historical novel.

Spartacus is a beautiful and romantic novel, with some parts very typical Fastian twistedness and humor, that makes it especially enjoyable. The ending is moving and if I were smaller, I'd probably close the book with tears in my eyes (both ordinary tears and tears of joy) Personally I think this is one of the strongest parts, that makes you, if nothing else, think a lot for days. One thing that might make it hard to enter the Roman world is that it's a bit weird to find Roman characters with American attitudes. But I dont feel good when writing any sort of critic on such a vast work of art, because thats what it really is. Harsh and humane. Poetic and thrilling. Modern and classic. A novel you fall in love with.

SPARTACUS is well crafted. "Fast" is an appropriate name. His writing has that enviable fluidity we call "brio." SPARTACUS is a curious mixture. Although it was written in 1950, its chapter headings and narrative are in the style of a 19th-century biblical novel, viz. BEN HUR. Fast's use of peripheral characters to tell his story and his relegation of Spartacus to the role of an idea rather than a fleshed-out character implies that we know little about Spartacus the man. The result is a novel not so much about Spartacus himself as about his effect on the Roman world. The film by Stanley Kubrick, of course, turns this around, inventing characterizations, including that of Spartacus, to make a story that satisfies the requirements of Hollywood. Neither book nor film is historically accurate, but each is satisfying on its own terms: the book as novel, the film as drama.

What interests -- and puzzles -- me is the opinion of other online reviewers that Fast is "controversial" -- a vestige, it seems to me, of Cold War mentality. If they didn't know that Howard Fast was a communist, would they so readily find in SPARTACUS the author's anti-capitalist agenda? The idea that wealth is built on the surplus value of labor is not a communist notion at all -- it's a formulation of bourgeois economist Adam Smith, and it's Economics 101 to every investor on Wall Street.

Of course Fast IS anti-capitalist (as am I). But I find no such overt message in this book, which has an essentially liberal theme. The opinion of some reviewers that Fast's views on the injustices of slavery and economic inequality are no more than propaganda is a sorry indicator of just how far to the right this country has moved.

Howard Fast needs neither apologists nor detractors. When reviewers say they enjoyed Fast despite what they imply is his communist propaganda, they patronize him (as in "a credit to his race") and distance themselves from any stigma that might attach to approval of his message. As a novelist-proselytizer, his tone is similar to that of other "propagandists" such as Morton Thompson (THE CRY AND THE COVENANT), Frank Norris (THE OCTOPUS), Jack London (THE IRON HEEL), and B. Traven (another communist) (THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE). Their detractors might find these truth-tellers "controversial." I find them -- and Fast, the communist and novelist -- bold, refreshing, and free of the deception -- and self-deception -- of conventional wisdom.

Howard Fast's SPARTACUS is a most interestingly constructed historical novel, developed rather differently from the usual chronological recounting of events, for the chief protagonist is already quite dead (perhaps) before the story even begins, and the reader knows the inevitable outcome before he turns the initial page. As the reader progresses through the book, he develops ever-expanding mental images of Spartacus, his fellow gladiators, his mate Varinia, and the various Romans through whose conversations most of these images are developed.

In his dedication, Fast explains the theme of his book as "a story of brave men and women . . . whose names have never been forgotten [and who inspire us] . . . to take strength for our own troubled future [and] . . . struggle against oppression and wrong. . . ." To develop this theme, Fast finds inspiration in an actual historical event and several historical figures, notably the Third Servile War, the slave army led by Spartacus, and the Roman general Marcus Licinius Crassus. These he fleshes out with several additional personages drawn, so far as I can ascertain, from his own creativity.

The character of Spartacus is undoubtedly idealized and, indeed, Fast makes him into a Christ-like image. His mate Varinia continuously describes him as "pure" and, most telling, his body is never found after the final battle in which the slave army meets its doom. While characters in the novel remark that it was "cut to pieces" so that no corpse could be found, the reader cannot help but make a comparison to the disappearance of the body of Christ from its tomb in Christian lore. Add to these the fact that Spartacus is widely viewed as a savior by the slaves who have rallied to his side, and the comparison becomes inescapable. Inasmuch as the events dramatized in the novel occurred about 71 years before the supposed birth of Christ, I find this comparison a little bit stained, but I find that using the word "pure" to describe an experienced gladiator to be more so. I understand that Fast is intentionally exalting and glorifying resistance to "oppression and wrong," and I find no fault with that, but I feel that he places his hero on a pedestal that may be just a bit too high for realism (as is Spartacus's vision of a Utopian society).

Further examining the believability of the story, one may find some fault with the portrayal of the Roman politician Gracchus, who undergoes a transformation of such magnitude that it strains the reader's credulity. As an influential senator, Gracchus was certainly a factor in the sending of the legions under Crassus against Spartacus's army and, therefore, can be viewed as one of his killers. He wrestles with himself over this role and undergoes a conversion from "evil senator" to "good Samaritan" by having Varinia stolen from Crassus, paying an astronomical sum to have her spirited to freedom, and then taking his own life. To my thinking, this conversion may be the weakest part of the book, being the least likely event to find reality outside the pages of a novel. Such a thing is simply not likely to happen (unless, of course, one interprets it as a miracle of sorts, showing that Spartacus-Christ is able to guide the lives of men even after his mortal death).

Why Fast found it necessary to follow Varinia through her subsequent life as the drudging wife of a serf only to die of a fever as her first son turned 20, I'm not certain except that he seems to be saying that even such a subsistence existence as that is preferable to life as a slave. Not content with one example, the author then takes us briefly through the life of Varinia's son, "living a poor and wretched life on acorns and nuts" but doing so freely and burning Roman villas built on land formerly occupied by serfs and escaped slaves.

These are some of the nits I would pick with SPARTACUS, but the novel has more strong points than otherwise. The extended description of the crucifixion of David the Jew is superb, enabling the reader to comprehend the meaning of agony and the stages that the mind occupies on the long route to a slow but blessed death. Throughout the other chapters, Fast's command of the language is such that the reader is often vicariously transported to the Appian Way, to Rome, or to Capua, visualizes the "tokens of punishment" and smells the rotting, bird-eaten flesh hanging grotesquely along the Roman road. The author's skill in painting such images in the reader's mind is such that the entire book is quite readable, and one is rather saddened when the final page is turned.

The reading of any book is an investment in time taken from the reader's life span. SPARTACUS is one book in which, despite the nits that I've picked here, I did not at all mind making that investment, and I recommend it as an entertaining--and maybe even morally instructive--read.

In one of the ironies of political life I found a copy of this book under review, Spartacus by Howard Fast, in the Young Adult section of the local library. The irony in 2008 is that the author had been among those who early on were blacklisted as Communists, communist sympathizers or dupes during the "night of the long knives" of the McCarthy era in the 1950's. At that time this book would not only have been proscribed from the library shelves but would have been burned in the public square of this particular town. Why? Well, aside from the author's then communist sympathies the serious novelistic presentation of the class struggle between free citizens and chattel slaves in ancient Rome was not a fit subject for young minds, or old. Throw in some sexually candid (for the time) descriptions of Roman mores and more than a hint of the bi-sexual or homosexual natures of some of the Roman characters and the book is clearly beyond the pale. So there you have a snapshot of the politics behind the history of the book. But there is more.

The impetus for getting this book out of the library was, as is usually the case when possible, to compare it to the film version that I have previously reviewed in this space. The purpose, mainly, was to compare how true the story line of the film was to the novel. As mentioned in the film review, a fellow blacklistee of Fast's (one who could not write, as least publicly, under his or her own name during the 1950's due to the political atmosphere) John Howard Lawton wrote the screenplay. He did not do a bad job of getting the main point out for a commerical film- that eternal need for freedom from the oppressive boot heel of the ruling class- in the more restrictive 1950's and early 1960's but the book really is a much better bet if you are looking for a non-academic treatment of the class struggle in ancient Rome (or with appropriate updating now, for that matter).

I have long noted, as others who have studied the question have as well, that oppression oppresses both the oppressed and the oppressor. (Ouch! soory for the awkwardness of this sentence.). The dramatic and psychological tension here between the Roman General Crassus (played by Laurence Olivier in the film) who finally defeats the slave General Spartacus is central to that premise. Along the way we get a serious look at the class structure of pre-Christian Rome, it entertainments and its follies, the dagger-like tensions between slave and master and everyone in between, a close look at the military structure of the Roman legions that made it the most feared army in the then known world and the "guerilla" tactics of the slave armies and more than our fair share about the fate of rebellious slaves who do not win-capital punishment by crucifixion.


As to comparisons between the film and novel in the film Spartacus (in the person of Kirk Douglas) is front and center in person from the first few minutes and the story unfolds from his transfer from a desert mine to the gladiator school at Capua (the schools's owner played by Oscar-winner Peter Ustinov) through the gladiator uprising and the various attempts to break the Roman legions and leave Italy. In the book the story is told in reverse, after the defeat and death of Spartacus, the whole Servile War period is summed up by reflections back on those events by the other characters. Of course the love story between Spartacus and Varania (played by Jean Simmons in the film) is more muted. All in all, if you take the three hours to view the film then you really should read Fast's novel. Then you will know why we proudly honor the name and exploits of Spartacus in left-wing politics even today.

I thought that Spartacus was an excellent book. I would recommend it to anyone interested in learning about Roman times. It is also good for anyone who enjoys reading about Gladiators. I enjoyed reading this book.