HISTORY: JOHN DILLONreviews On the Spartacus Road: A Spectacular Journey through Ancient Italyby Peter Slothard, Harper Press, 353pp, £18.99
THIS IS, oddly enough, the second book in the past six months I have had the pleasure of reviewing that involves a journey on foot by a distinguished journalist of classical background through parts of the Roman Empire. Perhaps this is catching on. It is a good idea.
The earlier book was Philip Parker's The Empire Stops Here, a delightful account of the author's tramp around most of the boundaries of the empire, with many associated reflections. The present one is a record of the journey of (Sir) Peter Stothard, formerly editor of the Timesand currently of the TLS, down Italy from Rome to Metaponto, and back up again, all the way to Como, and then down again to Reggio di Calabria, following the route taken in 73-71 BC by the remarkable escaped gladiator Spartacus and his army of freed slaves, in an adventure that struck at the heart of Rome and terrified its rulers, until the rebellion was ruthlessly crushed by the Roman general M Licinius Crassus.
Spartacus’s revolt has long been the stuff of legend – culminating, if that is the word, in the well-known Stanley Kubrick movie of 1960, starring Kirk Douglas as Spartacus, Laurence Olivier as Crassus and, let us not forget, Peter Ustinov as the slave-dealer Lentulus Batiatus. But long before that Spartacus had become an icon for revolutionary thinkers such as Garibaldi and Karl Marx, giving his name to the Spartakusbund, the forerunner of the German Communist Party, and even now to the Trotskyite Spartacist League.
Peter Stothard is no revolutionary ideologue, however – though he is an acute critic of the mores both of ancient Rome and of contemporary society. For him the revolt of Spartacus is an excellent excuse for a ramble through his favourite parts of Italy– including such venues as Como, Tivoli, Sorrento and Pompeii, which Spartacus never got near (though he did camp for a season on Mt Vesuvius). But no matter. He is an inspired rambler – a comparison with such a figure as WG Sebald comes to mind – and it is a great pleasure to accompany him.
The excuse for this somewhat self-indulgent adventure is a nasty brush with cancer endured some years ago, which plainly left him thinking about many things, not least death and its many varieties. He broods a good deal about the many cruelties of Roman society, mostly to do with slavery and gladiatorial shows, bringing to bear in the process a most impressive breadth and depth of classical learning – fruits of a degree in Greats from Oxford.
This is far from being a gloomy book, however. It is predominantly joyous and amusing. Besides delightful descriptions of people and places met along the road, Stothard draws on his knowledge of many Latin authors, from the poet Horace and the historian Sallust, Spartacus’s near contemporaries, through figures such as Appian, Statius and Pliny (and even Frontinus, the noted authority on aqueducts) in the first and second centuries AD, down to the magisterial figure of Q Aurelius Symmachus, at the end of the fourth.
In all cases the notional excuse is some reference to Spartacus, but this is taken very broadly – mostly it is just a case of one thing leading to another. What we are left with is the gleanings of a witty and erudite mind, loosely connected with peregrinations up and down Italy. The journey is “spectacular” simply in the sense that Stothard is acting as a spectator of life, and is sharing with us the spectacles that his journey offers. We can only rejoice that he survived to do this.
John Dillon is Regius Professor of Greek (Emeritus) at Trinity College Dublin
