Spartacus: The True History of Rome's Greatest Hero and the Third Servile War

In the modern Louvre of Paris, you can find, amidst a collection of other French sculptures, a 2.12 meter-tall marble statue of Spartacus, naked, broken chains hanging from his wrists, his eyes showing both a pensive serenity and a cold aggression. The piece was sculpted by Denis Foyatier in 1830, as an addition to l’allee des grands homes (the Avenue of Great Men) in the Jardin des Tuileries. It was moved to the Louvre in 1877. You may have heard the name Spartacus before, as he has long been a symbol of the fight against repression. In a nutshell, he was a soldier turned gladiator turned runaway slave that fought Rome as leader of a massive slave army. But who really was he? What kind of life did he live? What do we know of his origins? Those are some questions that will be answered in this book.