HUI216
Italian Civilization
Andrea Fedi
HUI216 (Spring 2008)
1
9.1 Spartacus is a movie based on a 1951
novel by Howard Fast
• What Fast had to say in a 2000 interview
• I was imprisoned for contempt of Congress for
refusing to "name names" to the House UnAmerican Affairs Committee
• This set me to thinking a great deal about prison,
and when I was released, I began a very intense
study of ancient slavery and imprisonment,
particularly with a set of books (rare books today)
called "The Ancient Lowly" [Cyrenus Osborne Ward,
1888, 2 vols.]
• In these books, extensive information on the
Spartacus revolt was available
HUI216
2
9.1 The plot of the movie Spartacus (based on notes
by John Barodin): Spartacus, the gladiatorial school
• Spartacus tells the story of a slave revolt led by the
title character
• Spartacus is a slave in a Thracian camp where he
is bought by Batiatus, who runs a gladiatorial
school
• At the school, the men are taught how to fight but do not
fight to the death, as this would be bad for morale
• For good behavior, the gladiators are permitted the
company of women
• Spartacus is assigned a Britton, named Varinia, whom
he treats with respect
• As a result, a relationship forms between the two, as
they soon fall in love
HUI216
3
9.1 The plot of Spartacus: senator Crassus
• When Roman senator Crassus visits the school
with his wife and another couple, the two
women demand to see the gladiators fight to
the death
• Although Spartacus is defeated in the fight, his
opponent refuses to kill him and instead hurls a
spear in Crassus's direction
• The slave is immediately killed for his behavior
• While at the school, Crassus buys Varinia from
Batiatus, and, when Spartacus finds out, he is
outraged and starts an uprising by the
gladiators who eventually overrun the school
HUI216
4
9.1 The plot of Spartacus: the revolt
• With Spartacus as their leader, the escaped
gladiators travel through southern Italy
freeing other slaves who join their ranks
• His plan is to leave Italy and return home
with the help of pirate ships
• It is while traveling through Italy that
Spartacus reunites with Varinia, who also
escaped
• The two marry and Varinia is soon pregnant
with Spartacus' baby
HUI216
5
9.1 The plot of Spartacus: Glabrus, Crassus
• The Roman senate dispatches a small
Roman force, led by Crassus's protege
Glabrus, to deal with Spartacus
• However, Spartacus gets word of this,
attacks the Romans while they are sleeping
and destroys the Roman force
• Glabrus is freed to return to the senate,
where he is forced to admit his
incompetence in handling his forces
• As a result, he is banished from Rome by
Crassus, his former political ally
HUI216
6
9.1 The plot of Spartacus: Crassus
• Crassus, seeking to increase his political
power by destroying Spartacus, convinces
the senate to deploy a much larger army to
deal with the slave army
• However, this one is also destroyed, this time
with more than 19,000 casualties
• The senate, humiliated by the Roman army's
inability to defeat slaves, deploys yet another
army, this time led by Crassus himself
• This army leaves from Rome, while another two
armies are coming up from the south behind
Spartacus
HUI216
7
9.1 The plot of Spartacus: defeat
• Seeing that he is trapped, Spartacus wills his
troops north and into battle against the army led by
Crassus
• Spartacus and his army are defeated, and he is captured
along with Varinia and their newborn son
• Crassus, determined to find Spartacus, threatens
the captured gladiators by saying that if Spartacus
does not reveal himself, the prisoners will be
executed
• As Spartacus is about to reveal his identity, hundreds of
other slaves come forward yelling, "I am Spartacus!“
HUI216
8
9.1 The plot of Spartacus: crucifixion
• With Spartacus' identity still hidden, Crassus
orders that 6,000 captured slaves be
crucified on the road to Rome
• On his way back to Rome, Crassus
recognizes Spartacus from the fight at the
gladiatorial school and spares him so that he
can entertain Crassus by fighting to the
death in Rome
• Spartacus wins the fight but is the last slave
to be crucified and is nailed up to a cross
just outside the gates to Rome
HUI216
9
9.1 The plot of Spartacus: the ending
• In the end, thanks to Crassus's political
adversary Gracchus and to a remorseful
Batiatus, Varinia achieves her freedom
• While leaving Rome for Gaul, she sees
Spartacus nailed up on a cross just outside
the gates of the city
• She brings her newborn son to the dying
gladiator, the first time Spartacus sees his son
• She pleads with him to die and end his suffering,
which he does as she rides off a free woman
HUI216
10
9.2 Hollywood's Rome: Spartacus (1960; dir.
Stanley Kubrick)
• A peculiar feature of big historical movies produced
in Hollywood and dedicated to crucial events in the
history of Rome is how little they look connected to
Italy, how much they seem to emphasize the
disconnect between Roman history and Italian
history
• In the case of Spartacus, for example, the only
direct reference to Italy in the entire movie seems
to be the map of the Italian peninsula shown on the
background during the scenes shot in Spartacus'
tent, while his army of slaves is waiting for the
Pirates to put together enough ships to take them
out of Italy
HUI216
11
9.2 Spartacus and Italian geography
• With the exception of Rome, the few names of
Italian cities that are quoted in the movie (Brindisi,
for example) are quoted with their Latin form
• a justifiable decision, which favors historical accuracy
(although, one wonders why it is not applied to Rome
itself), yet interestingly very different from the choice of a
significant Italian counterpart such as Scipione l'Africano
• Even the places, the steep mountains and the
open plains practically bare of any vegetation, add
to the movie a generic impression of imperial
grandeur, a sense of greatness commonly
associated with the modern representation of an
empire (including Star Wars)
HUI216
12
9.2 Spartacus and the Roman empire
• The movie was shot in Spain, with the participation
of soldiers from the Spanish army, at that time
under the supreme command of fascist dictator
Francisco Franco
• Scenes shot in a natural setting alternate with
others shot inside the residences of Roman
senators in the city of Rome, characterized by
generic interiors, where the idea of Roman
civilization is conveyed mostly by an abundance of
marble and, once again, by the size of every hall
and room
HUI216
13
9.2 Spartacus and Roman society
• No relevant scene is shot in the streets of
Rome
• The Roman empire here is not fully
represented in its tridimensional historical
reality: it is transformed into an abstract
political entity
• even the widespread use of the term empire,
instead of the technically more accurate term
republic, reinforces that idea
• the Latin term imperium meant domination, or the
power of the government over a land
HUI216
14
9.2 Hollywood's Rome: Romans in Spartacus
• All the Romans that we see on the screen are
either members of the government (senators
and soldiers), or are connected to it by a
relationship of power and authority
• For ex., Peter Ustinov's character, Batiatus,
provides slaves and gladiators for the entertainment
of the wealthy and powerful among the Romans, yet
lives in constant fear and is subject to the
prevarication of those who represent the state
• Everybody else in the movie is a servant or a slave
• Average Romans from the middle class are
nowhere to be found
HUI216
15
9.2 The Roman senators in Spartacus
• The senators that we see on the screen are
clearly Machiavellian, constantly trying to
outsmart each other with no care whatsoever
for the idea of serving the state and the
common interests of Roman society
• The actors who play the part of the senators
(Lawrence Olivier is Crassus, Charles Laughton is
Gracchus) with all probability would not have been
cast to act as Italians in a movie on modern-day
Italy. They were chosen to play the part of Roman
Senator simply because they were British, and with
their proper British accent aptly evoked the might of
the most recent empire in history, the British Empire
HUI216
16
9.2 Hollywood's Rome: sex in Spartacus
• To contribute to the generic idea of empire there
are also hints to the "sexual decadence" of the
Romans, going after female as well as male slaves
• In a famous scene which was cut from the movie when it
was released originally, Lawrence Olivier is bathing
assisted by his personal slave Antoninus (Tony Curtis),
and enters into a dialogue about "snails and oysters"
which is based on double entendres of a sexual nature
• That scene has been restored in a recently released
DVD edition, and since the studios had lost the
original audio tracks, Tony Curtis was called in to give
voice to his character for the second time, while
Anthony Hopkins replaced the voice of the deceased
Lawrence Olivier
HUI216
17
9.2 Hollywood's Rome: from greatness to
decadence
• Connected to the theme of the "perversion of
morals" presumed to be common in imperial
societies is also the behavior displayed by
the two women who accompany Crassus to
see the gladiators in Capua
• They are constantly jiggling while they insist
on having the men fight to the death for their
entertainment, and without too many clothes
on, allegedly to save them from the
unbearable heat
HUI216
18
9.2 Hollywood's Rome: the theme of greatness
• "Greatness" is one of the keywords of the
movie, which is repeated in many a dialogue
• From the point of view of the mighty
Romans, the question is: can there be
greatness in a state that has adopted
slavery?
• From the point of view of the movie's hero,
Spartacus, the question is: can one achieve
success or greatness, having been born a
slave?
HUI216
19
9.2 Hollywood's Rome: the disconnect
between Roman civilization and Italian history
• It is worth considering how the movie was
presented in the original trailers, now
included with bonus material inside the DVD
• One says: "In the year 70 B.C. Rome,
colossus of the world, faced its greatest
challenge"
• In another Senator Crassus (Lawrence
Olivier) is presented to the audience as "the
symbol of Rome's power and might"
HUI216
20
9.2 Emblematic value of the representation of
Roman civilization
• The pitch describing the story in 25 words or
less, as required, is the same in all trailers:
"the powerful story of the gladiator rebel who
sprang from slavery to challenge the
awesome might of imperial Rome"
• The opening titles of the movie show a
series of Greco-Roman statues, mostly
heads, and the last one before the opening
scene falls to pieces suggesting the idea of
decadence, of a civilization nearing its tragic
end
HUI216
21
9.2 The framing of Spartacus: the first scene
• While the camera moves from a Roman
soldier on top of a wooden tower-post to a
line of slaves carrying rocks over the
mountains of the Roman province of
Thracia, we hear these words solemnly
spoken
• "In the last century before the birth of the new
faith called Christianity, which was destined to
overthrow the pagan tyranny of Rome and bring
about a new society, the Roman republic stood
at the very center of the civilized world"
HUI216
22
9.2 The first scene of Spartacus
• "'Of all things fairest,' sang the poet, 'first among
cities and home of the gods is golden Rome.'
Yet, even at the Zenith of her pride and power,
the republic lay fatally stricken with a disease
called human slavery"
• The coming of Christ and the spreading of
Christian religion may certainly be one of the
cultural factors that made the difference
between the Roman world and Italy or the
modern world
• The overall moralistic approach is evident
HUI216
23
9.2 Hollywood's Rome: ethnicity in Spartacus
• In Spartacus there is a Spanish gladiator, there is
an English slave (decades before the Romans
actually landed soldiers on the shores of England!),
and the protagonist is a Thrace
• Only Italy is missing from the picture, with the
exception of the fact that Spartacus's friend
Antoninus once, when interrogated, says that he is
a Sicilian
• It is easy to notice that he is physically smaller and
less muscular than most other characters, and in
the story his special talents are singing and the
recitation of poems!
HUI216
24
9.3 The plot of the movie Gladiator (based on notes
by John Barodin): the soldier vs. the son of the
Emperor
• "Gladiator" details the fall of the great
Roman general Maximus, who after learning
that he will be succeeding Marcus Aurelius
as emperor of the Roman Empire, is
deceived by Aurelius's son Commodus
• Although Maximus wants nothing to do with
assuming the throne, he takes the offer
made by Aurelius into consideration only
because he can right the wrongs of the
current Empire
HUI216
25
9.3 The plot of the movie Gladiator: Maximus the
soldier vs. Commodus the son of the Emperor
• Commodus, outraged by the fact that his
father would give the throne to someone
other than him, deceives Maximus and
sends him to be executed
• However, Maximus escapes and returns
home to find his wife and son dead
• Distraught by this, Maximus flees and is
eventually captured and sold into slavery, to
become a gladiator
HUI216
26
9.3 The plot of Gladiator: Maximus the
gladiator
• Fighting not for the crowd's satisfaction but for survival,
Maximus and the other gladiators bond together and
soon become a crowd favorite
• Maximus' band of gladiators eventually fight at the
Colosseum where Emperor Commodus is a spectator
• Commodus, impressed by the passion and skill with
which Maximus fights, makes his way to the Colosseum
floor after the battle, to meet the impressive gladiator
• Commodus demands Maximus helmet be removed to
show his face, and Maximus's identity is revealed
• Commodus, thinking his rival was murdered long ago, is
outraged to see Maximus alive and immediately schemes
to have him eliminated
HUI216
27
9.3 The plot of Gladiator: the final fight
• However, the task is more difficult than it seems, as
Maximus has quickly become popular and thousands
of people flock to the Colosseum to see him fight
• Commodus, jealous of the popularity Maximus has
attained, arranges for a battle between himself and
Maximus, hoping to win over the crowd
• However, Commodus knows he is no match for the
gladiator in the arena: he wounds Maximus before the
battle and conceals the wound under his armor
• The two Romans battle until Maximus, near death,
defeats Commodus and fatally stabs him, not long
before he too succumbs to death
HUI216
28
9.4 Hollywood's Rome: Gladiator (2000; dir.
Ridley Scott)
• What was said about Spartacus, can be repeated for
Gladiator
• Even in this movie the idea of the Empire translates into the
generic political ambitions of a few individuals
• No relevant mention of the systems that govern the administration of
a large state
• On screen are the political maneuvers of scheming senators and
Machiavellian members of the imperial family
• Sexual deviance is also brought forth to reinforce the idea
of the decadence of the Roman empire
• Commodus and his sister Lucilla have an incestuous relationship,
which is consummated at the end of the movie
• Commodus is portrayed as a sadist in a very crude, almost
grotesque way (see how Joaquin Phoenix jumps around and sticks
his tongue out at the sight of blood during the gladiatorial games in
the Colosseum, or how he looksHUI216
at his sister's son Lucius)
29
9.4 Hollywood's Rome: Gladiator (2000; dir.
Ridley Scott)
• What was said about Spartacus, can be
repeated for Gladiator
• Even in this movie the idea of the Empire
translates into the representation of the
political ambitions of a few characters
• No relevant mention of the agencies that govern
the administration of a large state, or the social
systems behind it
• On screen are the political maneuvers of a few
scheming senators and the Machiavellian
members of the imperial family
HUI216
30
9.4 Hollywood's Rome: Gladiator and the
greatness of Rome
• Central to the thematic development of this movie is
the "idea," the "vision" of the idealistic "greatness of
Rome," better characterized by the Shakespearean
motto "there was once a dream that was Rome"
• The idealist Maximus attempts to "give power back to
the people of Rome and end the corruption that has
crippled it" (in the words of the Emperor Marcus
Aurelius told to the film's good guy, Maximus)
• Rome has little to do with Italian civilization, it seems,
and simply serves as the pretext for a universal
parable, the fight of a good man to insure democracy,
equality, justice for all, and also to protect his family
• "Is Rome worth one good man's life?" says Lucilla at
the end of the movie, right before Juba, the Numidian
gladiator and friend of Maximus leaves Rome to go
home
HUI216
31
9.4 Hollywood's Rome: Gladiator and Italy
• Maximus has left his family in Spain, almost three
years before the story begins, and the only noticeable
reference to Italy in the movie comes out when we see
his wife and child hoping to see him among the Roman
soldiers that come to kill them (the evil praetorians,
properly sporting all-black uniforms)
• In the scene, the kid says: "Mamma, i soldati!" (=mommy, the
soldiers), and then calls out "Papà!" (=daddy)
• At another point in the movie, a street hawker in Rome shouts
"Vino! Vino!" (= Wine! Wine!)
• In the end even this cinematic fiction ends up being
mostly a moral tale about those staples of the
American way of life that are individualism and selfdevelopment, how one individual can make a
difference in his/her life and in the lives of many
others...
HUI216
32
9.4 Hollywood's Rome: Gladiator and
ambition, progress
• All this becomes more clear when we consider
lines such as the following
• "the general who became a slave, the slave who
became a gladiator, the gladiator who defied an
Emperor..."
• "today I saw a slave become more powerful than the
Emperor of Rome" (these words are pronounced by
Lucilla, Commodus's sister, after Maximus fights in the
Colosseum for the first time)
• Maximus replies back to her that the only power he
has is "the power to amuse a mob," but Lucilla insists
that "Rome is the mob" (which looks like an auto-ironic
allusion to the power of the entertainment industry: to
be able to entertain the masses is a form of power)
HUI216
33
9.5 The historical novel Pompeii (2003), by
Robert Harris: first quote after the title page
• "American superiority in all matters of
science, economics, industry, politics,
business, medicine, engineering, social life,
social justice, and of course, the military was
total and indisputable. Even Europeans
suffering the pangs of wounded chauvinism
looked on with awe at the brilliant example
the United States had set for the world as
the third millennium began" (Tom Wolfe,
Hooking up)
HUI216
34
9.5 Pompeii (2003), by Robert Harris: second
quote after the title page
• "In the whole world, wherever the vault of
heaven turns, there is no land so well
adorned with all that wins Nature's crown as
Italy, the ruler and second mother of the
world, with her men and women, her
generals and soldiers, her slaves, her preeminence in arts and crafts, her wealth of
brilliant talents…" (Pliny, Natural history)
HUI216
35
9.5 A map of Campania with the aqueduct known as
Aqua Augusta (from Robert Harris, Pompeii)
HUI216
36
9.5 The main characters in the novel
• Attilius: aquarius (fourth-generation aqueduct
engineer), sent from Rome to replace Exomnius;
he is a widower supporting his mother and sister
• Exomnius: engineer of the local aqueduct since the
time before the earthquake, a Sicilian from Catania
• Ampliatus: freedman, crafty businessman, pater
familias to Corelia, his rebel daughter
• Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger, his nephew
• Romans inside walls, caves and underground,
caught as they are about to become ghosts from
the past
HUI216
37
9.5 The plot and the organization of the events:
The first day (Aug. 22, 79 CE)
• Looking for water, before dawn
• Fear and suspicion
• Romans vs. locals: competence, work ethics and dedication
to the service of the community vs. laziness, religious
superstition (related to the general theme of civilization)
• Style and punishment (our hero to the rescue)
• The individual and society, public and private life, the bella
figura (see the work of Gloria Nardini)
• Searching for greater meaning or immediate satisfaction
(Epicureans vs. Stoics): "he had been taught to lead his life
according to the Stoic school: to waste of time on nonsense,
to do one's job without whining, to be the same in all
circumstances -- intense pain, bereavement, illness -- and to
keep one’s lifestyle simple" (20)
HUI216
38
9.5 The first day (Aug. 22, 79 CE)
• The pool of wonders and its present
problems
• Technology and society
• The meeting with Pliny, the educated
admiral
• Strategic planning and heroic accomplishments
• A Hollywood-style well-timed "operation"
• On board the ship Minerva, en route to
Pompeii
• Then and now: description of the shores
HUI216
39
9.5 The second day (Aug. 23, 79 CE)
• The city of Pompeii
• Multiculturalism and capitalism
• Roman decadence and sexual mores
• The baths: technology and architecture,
civilization
• Corruption (then and now)
• Parcelization of power and civic duties
• Self-interest, amoral familism (farmers and
citizens stealing public water)
HUI216
40
9.5 The second day (Aug. 23, 79 CE)
• The dinner and its sources: Petronius
(Satyricon), Tacitus
• Epicureanism
• Decadence
• Emptiness (Nero's moray)
• Exomnius's room in the brothel
• Work ethics, technology and society ("all to carry
water to such brutes as these")
• Corelia
• Proto-feminism and Victorian love
HUI216
41
9.5 The second day (Aug. 23, 79 CE)
• Pliny's measures (ancient vs. modern science)
• The Empire (power, intrigue, conspiracies)
• Riots for the water (the ignorant brutes and the
sophisticated intellectual)
• Then and now: abusing nature
• The intellectual in awe of technology
• The operation continues out of Pompeii
• Followers and leaders, the mind and the muscles
• Puritan work ethics: satisfaction for a work well done
("he would try to fix the Augusta overnight. To confront
the impossible: that was the Roman way!")
• Our heroine to the rescue (with incriminating evidence)
HUI216
42
9.5 The third day (Aug. 24, 79 CE)
• Technology: cement underwater
• Love and fate (stoicism)
• "One was shackled to it from birth as to a moving
wagon. The designation of the journey could not be
altered, only the manner in which one approached it
-- whether one chose to walk erect or to be dragged
complaining through the dust" (183)
• Pliny's discovery in the pool of wonders
• Water back in Pompeii
• The never-tired Attilius climbs the Vesuvius
HUI216
43
9.5 Third and fourth day (Aug. 24-25, 79 CE):
the eruption
• The destruction of Rectina's library (an entire culture and
civilization vanishing under our very eyes)
• "Pliny took it from the slave and inhaled it, catching in its
musty aroma of the whiff of the old republic: of men of the
stamp of Cato and Sergius; of a city fighting to become an
empire; of the dust of the Campus Martius; of trial by iron
and fire" (243)
• "Who knows? Perhaps, two centuries from now, men will be
drinking the vintage from this year of ours, and wondering
what we were like. Our skill, our courage" (243)
• "Popidius's eyes were blank holes in the musk of his face.
He looked like one of the ancestral effigies on the wall of his
house" (248)
HUI216
44
9.5 Historical elements and themes associated
with them
• Aqua Augusta
• technology = civilization?
• The Roman fleet
•
•
•
•
military power
the empire triumphant over nature
citizenship and multiculturalism
cooperation and accomplishments
• Pliny and his books
• human intelligence and the continuous progress
of science
HUI216
45
9.5 Historical elements and themes associated
with them
• The eruption
• nature, death and decline
• The freedman
• the evils of capitalism
• social mobility in Roman society
• The relationship between Rome and
the local administrations
• State politics vs. local and individual
interests
HUI216
46
9.5 Celebrating the might of the aqueduct:
Aqua Augusta
• Oh, but she was a mighty piece of work, the Augusta -- one
of the greatest feats of engineering ever accomplished
• Somewhere far out there, on the opposite side of the bay,
high in the pine forested mountains of the Apenninus, the
aqueduct captured the springs of Serinus and bore the
water westward -- channeled it along sinuous underground
passages, carried it over ravines on top of tiered arcades,
forced it across valleys through massive siphons -- all the
way down to the plains of Campania, then around the far
side of Mount Vesuvius, then south to the coast at
Neapolis, and finally along the spine of the Misenum
peninsula to the dusty naval town, a distance of some sixty
miles, with a mean drop along her entire length of just two
inches every one hundred yards
HUI216
47
9.5 The Aqua Augusta: leadership and
technology
• She was the longest aqueduct in the world,
longer even than the great aqueducts of
Rome and far more complex, for whereas
her sisters in the north fed one city only, the
Augusta's serpentine conduit -- the matrix,
as they called it: the motherline -- suckled no
fewer than nine towns around the bay of
Neapolis: Pompeii first, at the end of a long
spur, then Nola, Acerrae, Atella, Neapolis,
Puteoli, Cumae, Baiae, and finally Misenum
(7)
HUI216
48
9.5: The Aqua Augusta: technology and
civilization
• the engineer could stand here, listening and
lost in thought, for hours
• The percussion of the Augusta sounded in
his ears not as a dull and continuous roar
but as the notes of a gigantic water organ:
the music of civilization
• in those moments, he felt himself to be not in
a reservoir at all, but in a temple dedicated
to the only God worth believing in (18)
HUI216
49