I thought the first season was awesome.

The_Six_Fingered_Man: The prequel was good as well.

Agreed. It did a good jorb of keeping my anticipation up for another season. It's too bad more writers, actors, and directors don't take the risks in stuff like that.

I enjoyed both. Cant wait for the new stuff. I just afreid with a third season they are going to end up like Oz. Really great story telling suddenly becomes shock for shock sake.

"Kill Them All" is one of my favorite season finales ever. Loved every second of it. Crixus and Doctore finally snapping that they need to tear that place to the ground, (nearly) all the bad guys getting thier comeuppance, and Spartacus finally having some peace for once, it was beautiful.

Gods of the Arena was a fantastic prequel too. Really helped to understand how everything played out prior to Spartacus' arrival. And I love how they kept Gannicus from being "doomed by canon" and he will be back next season.*




*Historical trivia: Gannicus was one of Spartacus' four main generals, so you knew he had to survive.

caddisfly: When a guy like Andy Whitfield dies young of natural causes it makes me want to say fark it, I'll have the bacon triple cheeseburger with a side of doughnuts, a fifth of Scotch and a carton of smokes. Oh and those Haitian hookers are looking good too. May not be here tomorrow.

When Michael C. Hall made a full recovery I kept saying Andy's gonna be just fine. I had a major sad the day that news broke. But I do have full faith in the replacement, and he even recieved Andy's blessing before starting.

Ohh and also:

JUPITER'S COCK!

RivenSilver: I enjoyed seeing Batiatus get peed on.


Don't tell me golden showers are an integral part of the show?

Skwishmitten: The end product wound up being strangely gripping. It might have been the boobs...

The boobs certainly didn't hurt. A lot of the sex scenes were "gripping". LOL But the writing was so well done.... It was like a book I can't put down. Glad to see it revived. But as hinted earlier, there could be more series like that.

Tax Boy: By Jupiter's cock -- if only she had been willing to show them during her Xena years....

She did, if you're a hockey fan :)

I'm a huge geek for Roman history, and HBO's Rome is just about the most perfect historical series ever made. And after watching Rome, I just can't get into Spartacus. The dialogue is too clunky and faux-shakespearan, and the sex and violence feels cheap and exploitative rather than natural and honest (like Rome's was). And the sets just aren't as good.

If Spartacus is now in a third season (something Rome didn't do), I guess they are following the dude's life pretty closely, right? So let me know when they get to the rebellion, the Third Servile War and the Senate getting Crassus to deal with the problem. Then I'll watch -- I want to see who they get to play Crassus. And Pompey.

Lots of good Roman history that goes unrecognized in Hollywood. I would love to see Roman epics on the wars of Sulla/Marius or the Gracchus brothers, or the Punic Wars.

Barry McCackiner: I watched Rome. It was definitely good and it is up there too. But it didn't make near the impression on me that Spartacus did. Spartacus packed it in. It had more twists and turns and more in your face drama then something like Rome.

I think what makes Rome such a powerful series when compared with other Roman epics (and far superior to Spartacus) is its mandate of "authenticity over accuracy".... in that it portrayed, as real as possible, how the average person actually lived back then. Not the kings and aristocrats and wealthy patricians or even the gladiators, but the common plebians. I can't recall any other drama or docu-drama that focused so much on the average citizen and their lives and habits and dealings.

Everything, from the clothes, the markets, the food, the housing, and the day-to-day existence of the hoi polloi, right down to the graffiti on the walls and the bizarre superstitions in the temples, as an accurate portrayal of what Roman living actually meant. This is something history books rarely ever spend much time on -- the living reality of the average citizen.

Rome is not accurate in the overall historical content, but it is authentic in the nitty gritty details. Having watched the series multiple times now, what I like the most are the backgrounds of some of the larger outdoor sets. There's several scenes of Pullo and Vorenus wandering through a market, and in the background in one scene you see a pair of glassblowers pulling molten sand out of a furnace. And they're doing this not the modern way, but the ancient Roman way, with cruder weapons and inaccurate measuring instruments. They're only in the scene for about two seconds as the main characters walk by, but it must have taken all day to set up those two seconds, to get an authentic Roman glass furnace up and running, and having two professionals actually make glass in it by the time the cameras roll. There's another one where they pass a butcher's shop and the butcher is just casually cutting a real pig's head off. None of these look like props. It looks like they went to great lengths to present a real, believable, busy Roman capital, full of merchants and engineers and people just doing their jobs. The level of detail is startling, you can really see the full extent of the purported $2 million/episode budget.

One subplot that I liked was the jew Timon and how he represented the minorities of Rome, how they're treated and how they succeed in a society that they're not really apart of. Rome conquered the entire Mediterranean, so it stands to reason that at its height it would be just as ethnically diverse as any major metropolis today. People going about their lives, plying their trade, making their money. The Timon subplot adds to the realism that this is a bustling, multicultural city full of life from all corners of the Mediterranean. Not too many other shows even think about that, and its an aspect of Rome I find fascinating, and from a history standpoint, it's an oft-glazed over part of the human experience. There are enough movies and plays and docu-dramas out there about royal families and aristocracies. It's refreshing to see a historical tale told through the habits and lives of the hoi polloi for a change. It was a brilliant move to tell this story, arguably one of the most famous periods in history and hence a story everybody already knows, through the eyes of two common, lower class soldiers. It's the details that separate Rome from all other Roman epics.

Including Spartacus.

ExperianScaresCthulhu: Spartacus is *their* story

Didn't know slaves had access to steroids and weight machines, and had advanced knowledge of modern diets and body building regimens.

And I think Rome tells a far better story of its slaves than Spartacus does. In fact, it tells the full story, both the good and the bad -- slaves like Posca and Eirene for instance, who can obtain their freedom and are beloved by the people they serve, on a level one could call as equals or even family. Slavery in Ancient Rome was a far more complicated and sophisticated practice than our modern notions of them, and they were not all forgotten and abused. They could own property and save money, have families, and even obtain political power as court advisers and politicians. They could do most of everything we can do today. The only limitation is that they weren't citizens or free (but back then, being a citizen meant being free, so it's kinda redundant).

ExperianScaresCthulhu: ///in a fight at the base of a volcano, who would win: Spartacus and Crixus/Gannicus/Oenomaus/Varro or Lucius and Titus?

Oh, Spartacus easily, and I'll tell you why:

Gladiators were trained in hand-to-hand fighting -- they were warriors.

Roman legions were trained in group tactics and discipline -- they were soldiers.

The Roman army despised individualism in combat and frequently decimated (yes, that's where the word comes from -- it means removing 1/10th of a contubernium, or 10 soldier unit) legions for disobedience. In fact, in the very first scene Titus Pullo is reprimanded for breaking ranks during a battle and going on a killing spree (which put the whole unit in jeopardy), and then punches Vorenus for attempting to bring him back into formation. He was going to be crucified, until Vorenus found a use for him.

So yeah, on a one-to-one basis Roman legionnaries would not be very effective against a gladiator because that's now how they fought. They have a way-too-large shield (not very mobile), a short sword, and 3-5 pila for skirmishing. They aim to wound, not kill, to reduce the enemy's fighting effectiveness (in those days, most soldiers died of their wounds anyway, so it wasn't necessary for every blow to be a kill shot).

But a cohort of well-trained Roman soldiers under Sulla or Pompey versus a cohort of gladiators would be a quick end for the gladiators.

That Sparticus staged a revolt of slaves and organized them into an efficient army and even defeated a praetorian legion sent to stop them suggests that Sparticus must have had some military training in the past as well. To be fair, however, the Romans did not take the revolt seriously and considered it more of a policing matter than a rebellion. That is, until Crassus stepped it.

(that both Pullo and Vorenus were also both fierce fighters as well notwithstanding, my money is still on the dudes who do it for a living. It would be an epic battle though. THIRTEEN!!)