Comments by "Evan" (@MrEvanfriend) on "Spartacus: The Slave Who Made Rome Tremble" video.

Gladiatorial fights were rarely to the death - less than 10% resulted in a fighter being killed. Gladiators were valuable property, and the sponsor of the games had to pay their owners if they were killed.
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@Gadget-Walkmen There's a difference between overlooking some minor facts for narrative purposes in a movie and making things up that aren't true in nonfiction media.
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No. Basically, Starz got almost everything drastically wrong as an excuse for giving you free porn.
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oh no Rome, while not always 100% accurate, was at least authentic. Spartacus was neither accurate nor authentic. It was essentially fantasy that used a couple of names from history.
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@IronMaiden1164 It gets a few extremely broad strokes mostly right. Spartacus was a gladiator who was probably from Thrace (though it's also possible that he was the type of gladiator known as a thraex, or Thracian), who rebelled against Rome. They get a couple other names right, but get almost everything about the characters wrong (Crixus means "curly". They couldn't have put a damn wig on the actor if they liked him that much, or hired a guy with curly hair?). In the meantime, the show gives a ridiculously inaccurate portrayal of Roman society on almost every single level, makes up a lot of implausible nonsense that causes Spartacus to revolt, etc. It's bad. Really bad. Add to that the atrocious acting and the dialog that appears to have been written by people who have never had a conversation, and you have a show that seems to exist largely as a vehicle for softcore pornography and graphic violence. Not that I mind either of those things, but I wish they wouldn't butcher history as a way of delivering them.
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@MrRedsjack That's an entirely different thing. Throwing condemned prisoners in to be killed by gladiators was entirely different from a fight between two gladiators. Those were rarely fatal, because nobody wanted to pay for dead gladiators.
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@alexisjuillard4816 I was about to respond to that "how do we know" comment, then I read your response and figured another one would be superfluous. Excellent response to a stupid question.
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@Smawllz What you said there is "I was happy being ignorant. Don't explain things to me".
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@alexisjuillard4816 I did. I was in Okinawa, Japan, and in Fallujah, Iraq.
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@alexisjuillard4816 I didn't say he was stupid, but the question certainly was.
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@alexisjuillard4816 I dislike the "there are no stupid questions" standard. I get that it's an attempt not to be judgmental, but sometimes questions are stupid and must be called out for it. When I was in the Marines, long and excruciatingly boring and repetitive "safety briefs" where they mostly told us not to drink and drive and to use condoms were always given before they let us go on weekends. And there was always some idiot who would extend the tedium by asking some mind-numbingly stupid question to clarify them. In college, I had to excuse myself from class on more than one occasion to go out in the hall and laugh at the stupid questions people asked. Even in law school, I've heard some remarkably dumb questions that had zero relevance to the point of law being discussed. I've even asked a few stupid questions myself, and usually been shamed for it (and deservedly so).
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Caesar was rumored to be epileptic.
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@PrettyPieHead Crixus' hair is just a symptom of the clear lack of research that they did, and I didn't mention Oenomaus at all because I couldn't think of how to spell his name (that E after the initial O is what I was missing). I don't mind Oenomaus being reimagined as African as much as I mind Crixus not having curly hair, because it isn't obvious by his name that he isn't African. For historical fiction covering an event that lacks a lot of detail in primary sources, I don't mind some creative license being taken. But with that ridiculous show, there was zero authenticity at all. We may not know all that many details about Spartacus or the Third Servile War, but we do know a lot about Roman society in the first century BC, and the show basically threw all of that out in favor of silly fantasy. And yes, the dialogue was incredibly bad and unnatural sounding ("thank you" and "I'm sorry" are far more natural sounding phrases than "gratitude" and "apologies"), and yes, a lot of the acting was over the top and ridiculous. But the main thing is that they made no effort whatsoever to attempt authenticity. You wouldn't have had a bunch of people of senatorial rank hanging out with a lanista - because lanista was not an even remotely respectable career, it was like being a pimp, a procuror of human flesh. Contrast with HBO's show Rome, which was far better in every way. There you saw natural sounding dialogue (even if the attempts at Latin were all atrocious), realistic relationships between people of different social classes, and an authentic if not entirely accurate look at what life in ancient Rome looked like. Spartacus may as well have been set in Middle Earth or Westeros for all of the authenticity that it offered.
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@bluelion203 Are you serious? They basically threw out everything we know about Roman society and social structures. Half of it was having a lanista hanging around and hobnobbing with the highest levels of society. This is utterly ridiculous, as a lanista was NOT considered a respectable trade - it was considered about the same as a pimp. And the speech patterns were not "Romanish", they were just remarkably bad writing
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@bluelion203 Batiatus was a pimp, he wasn't trying to work his way up the social ladder, he would've known better (and wouldn't have gone into the line of work he did if thay was his goal).
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@bluelion203 And trying to import speaking conventions from other languages into English just sounds unnatural. Either have the dialogue in Latin with subtitles or have them speak English in a way that doesn't sound jarring
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There's serious question as to whether he actually existed. The stories about him exist only in the Sagas, which aren't exactly history, and they have a lot of contradictory tales about him. A few of the men known as his sons are certainly historical, but it's highly unlikely they had any relation with each other.
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@1009maple He probably wasn't real, though it's possible that he's an amalgamation of a couple different people. That a bunch of guys who formed an army existed is by no means evidence of anything. They likely weren't related to each other. And the idea that Ragnar Lodbrok was a king is news to me, so far as I know the Sagas never even made that claim.
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@1009maple Known to be historical figures, yes. Not known to be brothers. Almost certainly not brothers.
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@1009maple Multiple petty kings of petty kingdoms that all shared a common culture. Think of it like multiple petty Greek kings who all believe that Achilles actually was involved in the actual siege of Troy. He's a legendary figure who may have some basis in a couple of historical people, but highly unlikely to have been a single extant person.
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That show is absurdly inaccurate as to virtually every aspect of Roman society and the events of the Third Servile War. Like, they get everything wrong from the likelihood of death in gladiatorial combat to the politics to the actors - Crixus means something like "curly". They could have at least shaved the guy's head and made it a joke name if they didn't want to give him a wig. If you like titties and graphic CGI violence, sure, that show is fine. If you like history, not so much.
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@1009maple The show isn't great even for entertainment purposes. The dialog is awful. They never say "thank you" or "sorry", they always say "gratitude" and "apologies", which I find grating. If you're going to take characters who would have mostly been speaking Latin and make them speak English, I have no problem with that, but at least have them speak English naturally. It just sounds weird otherwise.
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@1009maple Of course I like titties. And Onoemaus was Gallic, not African. They got that wrong, which wouldn't be particularly important unless they were trying to create ethnic tensions between the various slaves from different areas - which they did (in reality, I know nothing about what ethnic strife existed or did not exist in Roman slave society, and I doubt that anyone has written anything about it, though it would be interesting). And speaking of that, they made the Carthaginians black, because reasons. That's incorrect as well. It's one thing to reimagine a Gaul as an African when his ethnicity isn't important, but another entirely to misrepresent an entire nationality. They call the character Barca too, like Hannibal and all them. We have plenty of extant statues of Hannibal, we know more or less what he looked like, and it was decidedly not like a dreadlocked black guy - so someone who is presumably a relation of his also shouldn't be. Also, the "openness of sexuality in that culture" was one of the biggest misrepresentations. The Romans valued chastity in women, and looked down on homosexualism - it was often used as an accusation against political rivals (see Julius Caesar, and the story about Nero "marrying" a slave boy that he thought looked like his dead lover). It's this kind of misrepresentation that makes for atrocious history, because people who don't know better believe it. The show's creators clearly did very little research, if any at all, and certainly didn't hire any historical advisors - or at least didn't take their advice if they did.
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@1009maple Prostitution was legal and slaves were property, yes. That doesn't translate to the Roman elites having massive orgies, or homosexualism being considered entirely normal, or any of the other things that the show portrays. The Romans absolutely valued chastity, especially in women. This isn't even debatable, the libertine Roman society is entirely imaginary, based largely on dubious accusations made against political enemies and exaggerated by subsequent prudish societies, especially the Victorians. The actual evidence shows things like Messalina being executed by Claudius for her promiscuity, and Elagabalus being assassinated by his own grandmother for his homosexualism.
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@1009maple Almost all of that is misleading, if not outright false. Homosexualism was certainly discouraged and considered humiliating - look at the numerous scandalous accusations of it by political rivals. You're misinterpreting scandal (true or not) as common practice. When you hear about Caesar supposedly having relations with some king of somewhere (I don't remember where), you're talking about a slanderous accusation by a political rival, not an unremarkable occurance. You even had an emperor, Elagabalus, whose homosexualism was so scandalous that he was assassinated by his own grandmother. Women were absolutely expected to remain faithful to their husbands, as they have been in every society ever - without that, you'd have questions about paternity, which people obviously want to avoid. Again, you're taking extraordinary cases that have been written about and acting like they're ordinary. Look at Augustus, and his constant discussion of Roman values, and his dislike of people not living up to them. Erotically charged objects don't mean anything. Even the Victorians liked nude paintings and sculptures. You did have gods like Priapus who are always depicted with massive erections, but that does nothing to prove the silly myths about everyone constantly fucking each other. The Romans weren't shy about nudity, but that doesn't translate to being highly promiscuous, especially not to the levels portrayed by Hollywood.
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@1009maple Achilles is described in the Iliad as blond. He probably didn't exist at all, but if he did, he was decidedly not black. He would have been Greek. There were no black people to speak of in ancient Greece - possibly a few slaves, maybe a foreign merchant or two, but certainly no more than that.
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@SpoonLegend Why, does knowing the difference between history and fantasy that pretends to be history make one seem drunk? Or the fact that I wasn't seduced by titties and stylized violence into a show that was incredibly poorly written and acted, with dialog that clearly came from people who have never had an actual conversation?
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@mrhumble2937 They all acted terribly. They sounded like they were reading a script, nobody could possibly every talk like that. And the writing was absolutely atrocious at every level. It isn't just that it was utterly inaccurate about virtually everything, it was cringeworthy to watch because of the bad acting and worse writing.
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It's actually terrible. I like titties and fight scenes as much as anyone, but the dialog was written by someone who hasn't ever had a conversation, and the history is atrocious. They have pretty much every aspect of Roman society absolutely wrong on every level.
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@TihetrisWeathersby Not just "not entirely accurate". Not just "taking a few creative liberties". Completely ridiculous and unbelievable. Add that to the atrocious writing and bad acting, and you're left with titties and violence. Now, I like titties and I like violence, but why do you have to butcher history to show them?
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That's ridiculous pedantry, using neologisms for various sword types, most of which are stupid, and applying them to history. While it's true that the specific type of sword used by a murmillo is called a gladius hispaniensis, it is a broad bladed sword. What you pedantically call a "broadsword" was called a claidh mor in Scottish Gaelic, or "claymore" in English. The word "claymore" evolved over time to mean something else, and "broadsword" was adopted post hoc to mean what was originally called a claymore. Broadsword is a term used by people who aren't pedants to refer to a usually double-edged sword with a reasonably broad blade. Everyone knows exactly what it means, and it's a good term for that - far better than the ridiculous term "arming sword" used by pedants, which is an absolutely useless phrase that basically means "weapon weapon". So yeah, shut up.
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@kristofferp5030 A gladius is a distinct sword type for certain, but your pedantry is still obnoxious.
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What's that supposed to mean? Roman historians recorded the history of much of the world when nobody else was doing so. Or if you mean the history of Rome in general, that's extremely important because of the outside influence it had on areas the Romans never even heard of - between legal codes, Christianity, etc etc, Rome has had an astounding influence on world history.
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@Claytone-Records What? I'm not following.
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That show is retarded. It's bad history, bad acting, bad diolog, and silly CGI gore with just enough nudity to draw people in.
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Today's price of gold per ounce isn't a good measure of the worth of gold (or anything else) historically. It's very hard to translate historical money into a modern value - generally, the best way to do it is by looking at the prices of common items and the salaries for jobs that still exist - how much did a loaf of bread cost kind of thing, how much was a soldier payed.
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