By Durham’s account-and in this there’s no significant departure from what Plutarch said 19 centuries ago-Spartacus is a steely-willed but generous fellow with a secret weapon: namely, a wife with the gift of prophecy, a subject of some learned discussion as Spartacus and associates gather round the fire for strategy talks: “It seems revolts need mystics,” says the Sicilian Philon, while his ascetic leader sits far enough away from the fire to enjoy the bracing cold and think good thoughts about killing Romans with a short sword. He’s Spartacus, all right, and as Durham’s novel opens, in full-tilt medias res, he’s down in the gladiators’ pen plotting the first move in what will become a widespread slave revolt. His longish hair and even his eyebrows shimmer like gold in the lamplight.” Yep. If everyone of a certain age carries in their heads the ideal of a ripped Kirk Douglas as the proletarian hero of the first century B.C.E., fantasy maven Durham ( The Sacred Band, 2011, etc.) turns in a portrait perhaps more suited to, say, Brad Pitt or Channing Tatum: “A hulk of a man, muscled as only gladiators ever are, taller than a Roman, than a Greek. “I’m Spartacus.” “No, I’m Spartacus.” No such shenanigans in this rousing historical novel, where there’s no mistaking who the Thracian slave hero is.
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