by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n Beefcake Beheading<\/strong><\/p>\n I have been catching up on the episodes of the new Starz series on Spartacus, the Thracian slave who terrified Rome between 73 to 71 B.C., through a mass servile uprising originating in Capua.<\/p>\n At least most of the names of the known characters are right. You can check the main sources of the revolt in Plutarch\u2019s \u201cCrassus\u201d (the richest and most hated man of the late republic), and the second-century AD Greek historian Appian (a little-read, but fascinating text), and bits here and there in Varro and other compilers.<\/p>\n Both Appian and Plutarch (writing variously between ca. 170-200 years after the incident) seem to draw on the same lost and perhaps first-hand source (their accounts, written a few decades apart, are quite similar), either one of Sallust\u2019s lost books or a later compendium account from one Livy\u2019s lost chapters.<\/p>\n Most recently, Barry Strauss has a fine recent general account of Spartacus\u2019s aims; he also wrote a chapter on Spartacus for\u00a0Makers of Ancient Strategy<\/em>, which I edited and comes out today from Princeton University Press. For a comprehensive collection of the primary sources, see Brent Shaw\u2019s\u00a0Spartacus and the Slave Wars<\/em>, or the essays in Martin Winkler\u2019s edited\u00a0Spartacus: Film and History<\/em>.<\/p>\n So what to make of the series? From the episodes I watched, I\u2019m underwhelmed. True, the production is lavishly financed and professionally produced. The actors are in large part good, and do the British-accented ancient world better than in most films.<\/p>\n The series seems an effort to emulate in part\u00a0Rome<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 the far better scripted British-televised two-year series that ended in 2007 \u2014 in part\u00a0300<\/em>\u00a0(slo-mo fighting scenes, computer simulations, blood splashed on the screen, buff, beefed up torsos) \u2014 in part\u00a0Gladiator<\/em>\u00a0(suffering and ordeal, before ultimate moral triumph and death), and (unfortunately) in part the American-style, evening soap \u2014 something like the old\u00a0Dallas<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0Falcon Crest<\/em>. And all this is supposedly energized by graphic sex (frontal female and male nudity, homosexuality, gratuitous orgies [I was shocked, as it were, to see a nude Lucy Lawless, whose mostly wholesome old\u00a0Xena series my then teen daughters, and millions like them, once used to watch], and grotesque violence [lopped limbs, beheadings, etc.])<\/p>\n What baffles me is that the series is spending an entire year on mostly what we don\u2019t know (the life of Spartacus before the revolt) and nothing on what we do (the revolt itself).<\/p>\n So next season, will the complex battles and campaigns of the slaves\u2019 desperate struggle dominate the series (especially in light of the recent illness of Spartacus actor Andrew Whitfield), as we see one of the most fascinating incidents in Roman republican history at long last unfold? All historical fictions need to invent story-lines and personal relationships, given the dearth of historical information. But whereas Stanley Kubrick\u2019s 1960\u00a0Spartacus<\/em>\u00a0included personal dramas not in the ancient record, such personal interactions were subordinate to, and enhanced, the known narrative about both the nature of the revolt and the Roman reaction to it.<\/p>\n In the Starz production, however, we never quite see what the point of all these trysts, orgies, and beheadings are leading to, other than a generic reminder that slaves had it bad \u2014 and so under that cover we can see a lot of 21st-century group and homosexual sex that usually doesn\u2019t make it onto the screen. If the point is to teach us how awful the owners were, to prove to us they deserved what they will soon get \u2014 when they are strung up and spliced and diced as the revolt starts \u2014 all that could have been done in one episode (ditto the violence of the arena).<\/p>\n That\u2019s the difference between a soap opera and a great novel or film \u2014 the ability to turn the everyday minutiae of our pedestrian lives into a larger statement about the human condition. I didn\u2019t see much transcendent thought in this version of Spartacus.<\/p>\n So there is good acting, good scenery, some success in capturing the grubby flavor of Roman life in the provinces \u2014 and yet mostly all such efforts are wasted on a soap opera script of who is sleeping with whom, the usual triple-cross betrayals, and surprise plot twists. Take away the next-step nudity (I suppose the male nudity is supposed to be in some way significant), head lopping, and ancient sets and costumes and we are left with\u00a0Sex in the City<\/em>psychodrama, rather than speculations of what drove Spartacus (a great favorite later with both right and left totalitarian socialists) and 70,000 others to take on the best legions of Rome.<\/p>\n Hell in\u00a0The Pacific<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n The Steven Spielberg-Tom Hanks mega-million-dollar production of\u00a0The Pacific<\/em>\u00a0follows the mood and style of\u00a0Band of Brothers<\/em>. And for the most part that is good (although it is hard for American 20-something suburban actors to master the gestures and cadences of a generation that came out of the Depression).<\/p>\n So far in two episodes \u2014 mostly on Guadalcanal (following the narrative of the Robert Leckie memoir) \u2014 the producers have captured well the mystery of that first major land offensive campaign. After all, it is still almost inexplicable how, just nine months after Pearl Harbor, fresh and mostly combat inexperienced American ground forces (largely the 1st Marine Division and later other Marine and Army divisions) slugged it out with, and annihilated, far more veteran Japanese battalions, when the second generation of superior American planes was not yet on line, logistics favored the Japanese, and the imperial fleet, even after Midway, still outnumbered the Americans in the eastern Pacific.<\/p>\n We often associate military superiority with Alexander\u2019s Companion Cavalry, Caesar\u2019s 10th Legion, the Knights of Malta, Napoleon\u2019s Old Guard, Sherman\u2019s Army of the West, or the creepy SS division of the Wehrmacht. But surely the record of the 1st Marine Division in the Pacific is nearly unrivaled \u2014 the Old Breed that was still talked about in reverential tones by later Marines on their way to Okinawa.<\/p>\n I noted in a prior posting the unfortunate remarks of Tom Hanks. Yet, so far in the series, the script seems even-handed, and we are not lectured, contra Hanks, that the animosity of American soldiers fighting to survive one more day supposedly reflected a national policy of preexisting racist hatred.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll look mostly forward to the E.B. Sledge segments, the brilliant WWII memoirist, especially on Okinawa \u2014 perhaps the nastiest, more horrific battle in American history, or at least comparable to Antietam or the Bulge \u2014 whose 65th anniversary falls on April 1.<\/p>\n The Last of the Romans<\/strong><\/p>\n What might offer a really tragic topic for a fascinating series \u2014 with a host of brilliant and merciless enemies like Khusrow the Persian, the Vandal Gelimer, Vittigis and Totila the Goths, and Zabergan the Hun?<\/p>\n Why not the saga of the Byzantine general Belisarius? His 30 year career (529-559) saw the Last of the Romans (a native Latin speaker from Thrace) fighting to save the beleaguered eastern empire in Mesopotamia against the Persians, only to return home to rescue his emperor Justinian from the Nika riots in the Hippodrome. Then he left for North Africa and in months destroyed the century-long Vandal Empire whose ravages so underline the last thoughts of Augustine. After that he sailed for Sicily, and for a time reclaimed the idea of Roman Italy from the Po to southern Sicily \u2014 only to go eastward again to meet the Persians, and then back again to a now collapsing Italy, and then, of course, back to Constantinople to internal exile, trials, and humiliation, only in forced retirement to save the city from a raid of Huns that earned him another rebuke \u2014 all during a time that saw deteriorating Byzantine power, chaos in the defunct Western Empire, a raging bubonic plague that killed 300,000 in Constantinople, the dome of Santa Sophia collapsed and for a time in ruins, and an emperor Justinian and his often lethal wife Theodora who alternately rewarded, recalled, punished, ruined, incarcerated, and reprieved the old general, whose conniving older wife Antonia, a court intimate of Theodora, at times tried to protect her spouse, at times seemed as much against as for him.<\/p>\n Had Belisarius not been recalled so frequently by his serially suspicious emperor, and even more often shorted of supplies, he might well have pulled off Justinian\u2019s grand dream of reuniting most of the West into a reconstituted Roman Empire (mad, but not entirely mad, given the inherent weakness of the rule of the Vandals, Goths, Visigoths, and Franks). And for all the charges of insubordination and treachery, in the end the old Byzantine general was more loyal to his emperor than any in his immediate circle, and fair-handed to local populations in an age of violence and banditry.<\/p>\n If Mel Gibson is looking for a script, it offers far more potential than even did William Wallace.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s that \u2014 I think all of us needed a break from the healthcare mess and the growing storm clouds of debt on the horizon.<\/p>\n Subscript.<\/em>\u00a0Some have remarked about my February 2009 \u201cThe Impending Obama Meltdown,\u201d written weeks after the President was inaugurated and at the height of his popularity. I\u2019m afraid I retract nothing,\u00a0nada<\/em>. The passage of healthcare proves little yet, other than its enactment required the most blatant practices of political bribery and legislative manipulation in memory. That ends-justify-the-means win is going to come back to haunt the Democrats for generations when they are in the minority and seek its traditional, but now discredited, sanctuaries.<\/p>\n So far, Obama & Co. have suffered the most rapid decline in polling history of any first-year administration, from around 68% to below 50% in a mere year, and is looking at a large correction, perhaps of historical proportions, in the 2010 referenda. That seems to me enough of a meltdown \u2014 well aside from $2 trillion added in additional debt, near 10% unemployment, a neutralist foreign policy, and the most polarized divide in contemporary society since the era of Richard Nixon, mostly brought on by Obama\u2019s campaign pledges of centrist governance followed by a hard left domestic agenda.<\/p>\n \u00a92010 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Beefcake Beheading I have been catching up on the episodes of the new Starz series on Spartacus, the Thracian slave who terrified Rome between 73 to 71 B.C., through a mass servile uprising originating in Capua.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[590],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-s1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11395,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-circus-of-resistance\/","url_meta":{"origin":1737,"position":0},"title":"The Circus of Resistance","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 12, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review The resistance to Donald Trump was warring on all fronts last week. Democratic senators vied with pop-up protestors in the U.S. Senate gallery to disrupt and, if possible, to derail the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.)\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Elizabeth Warren"","block_context":{"text":"Elizabeth Warren","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/elizabeth-warren\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3838,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/signs-of-the-times\/","url_meta":{"origin":1737,"position":1},"title":"Signs of the Times","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 13, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Trimalchio\u2019s Bowl Sometime during the reign of the emperor Nero, the novelist and imperial confidant Petronius wrote a novel about life among the Roman\u00a0nouveau richein the Bay of Naples. The surviving centerpiece of the now mostly lost novel is an extended banquet scene at\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Popular Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Popular Culture","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/popular-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":609,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-demons-of-the-modern-rampage-killer\/","url_meta":{"origin":1737,"position":2},"title":"The Demons of the Modern Rampage Killer","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 27, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media As of now we know little about what conditions drove, or proved useful to, the Aurora suspect\u00a0to murder and maim\u00a0[1]. But given the worldwide incidences of so-called \u201crampage killings,\u201d the culprit was not the particular gun laws of Colorado. His dark counterparts exist in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Popular Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Popular Culture","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/popular-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7772,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/small-latin-and-less-greek\/","url_meta":{"origin":1737,"position":3},"title":"SMALL LATIN, AND LESS GREEK","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 15, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Thornton reviews the book\u00a0Confronting the Classics: Traditions, Adventures, and Innovations, by Mary Beard. New York: Liverwright, 2013, 320 pp., $28.95 hardbound.\u00a0 by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ NAS\u00a0 This piece\u00a0originally appeared\u00a0in\u00a0the Fall 2014 issue of\u00a0Academic Questions\u00a0(Volume 27, Number 3). Once the heart of liberal education, the study of Greek and Latin\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Opinion"","block_context":{"text":"Opinion","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/Beautiful_greek_woman_statue2-332x500.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":722,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-super-bowl-farmers\/","url_meta":{"origin":1737,"position":4},"title":"The Super Bowl Farmers","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 17, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Chrysler\u2019s Super Bowl Ram Truck commercial praising the American farmer was an unexpected big hit and is still being replayed around the country on talk radio.\u00a0Rich Lowry[1] and\u00a0Peggy Noonan[2] both contrasted the authenticity of that commercial fantasy with the falsity of the real event.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "America's Future"","block_context":{"text":"America's Future","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/americas-future\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5806,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/confessions-of-a-counter-revolutionary\/","url_meta":{"origin":1737,"position":5},"title":"Confessions of a Counter-Revolutionary","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 16, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media \u201cCounter-revolutionary\u201d is an apt term for these days: President Obama has promised to make a fundamental transformation, a veritable revolution in American society and culture. 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