For many today Spartacus is Kirk Douglas. The influence of Kubrick's film has been enormous, but Spartacus was famous before 1960. For hundreds of years he has been a byword for resistance, revolution and the fight for freedom. He has given his name to a revolutionary party in Germany and a political group in the USA; he is the subject of several novels and films, and even a ballet. Though only a slave, he is as famous as Julius Caesar. Not much information, and much of it negative, survives about him from the ancient world, yet his reputation has survived this character assassination and...