Kirk Douglas as Spartacus in 1960

Everyone remembers the cry of “I am Spartacus!” taken up by the followers of the gladiator who led an uprising of slaves against the tyrannical might of Ancient Rome in the film epic. Sad to relate, there is no historical evidence that anyone ever said this line. By the time the revolt had been put down, Spartacus was probably dead. Due to the alarming number of corpses that littered the battlefield after his army was defeated, his body was never recovered. But his name and the tales surrounding it live on. That the story of Spartacus should be such a galvanising myth is not ­surprising; such Marxist revolutionaries as Che Guevara have cited him as the symbol of the free man’s struggle to overthrow oppressive regimes.

Anthony Flanagan plays Spartucas in BBC2's version

And thus the myth that Spartacus was somehow the first recorded revolutionary driven by an ideological creed that all men should be free, regardless of status, has continued to grow. Yet, while in no way diminishing his achievements, the facts appear to be rather different. A new BBC film attempts to tell the true story of Spartacus the man and the movement he inspired. With a wealth of special effects for the bloody battles and a cast of unknowns in the major roles, the drama is tightly drawn and delivers the reality of the period without any distracting big names to get in the way.

Stanley Kubrick’s film was stuffed with stars, from Kirk Douglas as the noble, dimple-chinned gladiator to Laurence Olivier as Crassus and Jean Simmons, Peter Ustinov and Charles Laughton all playing major roles. It is a great movie, to be sure, but it strays a long way from the truth. The BBC film benefits enormously from the contribution of Professor Mary Beard, professor of classics at Newnham Coll­ege, Cambridge, who acted as historical consultant.

Her research into the period and wide knowledge of contemporary accounts by such Roman writers as Plutarch, Appian and Florus proved invaluable in redressing the balance. While she warns that there are many differing accounts of the slaves’ rebellion, and that facts about Spartacus are sketchy at best, she is best placed to sort out the factual wheat from the chaff of legend.

“There is evidence that he had been an auxiliary soldier in the Roman army,” she says. “One writer says he deserted the auxiliaries but no one says he actually was put into slavery because of his desertion. That is possible… but it is also possible that, as a deserter, he fell into destitution and was enslaved. We have no idea what rank he had but it is assumed that that is where he learned his fighting skills and also possibly a bit more than that, such as skills of leadership and a sense of Roman tactics.” Certain elements of the story remain constant. Spartacus definitely existed and evidently was a slave and a gladiator. He engineered an escape with about 70 other gladiators from a school by using weapons and tools from the school’s kitchen. He then decamped to the slopes of Mount Vesuvius. While there, he was joined by an increasing number of slaves who somehow heard about the revolt and were inspired to join him.

The Roman Republic at the time (73BC) was in a fairly parlous state. Following the defeat of Carthage, its only serious rival power, it had expanded throughout the Mediter­r­anean, creating a social imbalance as absentee landlords bought up farms and replaced farmers with slaves. When reformers Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus were killed in riots backed by the Senate, two opposition