Spartaco da Cicerone a Stanley Kubrick: la storia romana al rallentatore

Abstract

This paper gives an overview of the reception of Spartacus, one of the characters of Roman history who was traditionally portrayed as a traitor by classical sources and then was rehabilitated in the eyes of posterity through rewritings in contemporary languages. We will proceed with an attempt to retrace the multilayered philological and cultural processes that have led to the complete shift in the evaluation of the character from Latin authors (also considering the component of racial prejudice due to his barbarian origin) to the famous movie by Stanley Kubrick; we shall also discuss the Marxist reading of the ancient texts in the novel by Howard Fast and Dalton Trumbo’s screenplay.

DOI: 10.4424/lam52016-1