STARZ Spartacus offers a rousing contribution to our understanding of how specific threads of classical reception are constantly being rewoven to engage with contemporary issues, ideas, and concerns. As the publicity materials for the new series gamely promised, STARZ Spartacus would deliver a heady yet relevant mixture of politics, sex, and violence: “Ancient Rome is a place where the stakes couldn't be higher. The Republic's most elite citizens are thirsty for power, and they think nothing of using the gruesome entertainment of the gladiators’ arena to get what they want. Their ambition, treachery, and corruption are intimately tied to blood and death – and the fate of a gladiator.” The clear proposition was that Spartacus would cross the boundaries of time and culture from the ancient to the modern world in order to contend with issues of social status, power, and gender: “Rome burns with romance and adventure as today's actors bring epic times to life.”

The first season of the series, Spartacus: Blood and Sand (2010), unfurls in thirteen episodes, as it tells of the capture and enslavement of Spartacus in Thrace and his subsequent training as a gladiator at the provincial ludus of Quintus Lentulus Batiatus on the outskirts of Capua. Next comes Spartacus: Gods of the Arena (2011), a six-episode miniseries prequel to the first season, which fills in the back-story about the rise of the ruthless lanista Batiatus in the ultra-competitive local Campanian gladiator business. Over the course of nineteen powerful and unforgettable episodes, these two initial seasons of Spartacus focus on both the domestic physical setting and the shifting psychological contours of the House of Batiatus, as the household grows ever richer, more decadent, and more corrupt, and ultimately collapses. This chapter offers an exploration of the naked ambition and relentless social striving of Batiatus and his devoted wife, Lucretia, in the first two seasons of the series, and how the narrative premise of their intensely determined desire for upward mobility is woven into this particular incarnation of the Spartacus reception strand.

SPARTACUS AND CLASS

With its persistent emphasis on the rebel slaves and gladiators who rise up in resistance against the elite commanders of the invincible Roman military, the Spartacus reception tradition has often drawn extraordinary attention to the lives and experiences of the lower classes living in late Republican Rome.