Representing slavesA hard, tough jobA back-breaking jobA streneous, exhausting, tiresome taskDrudgeryA toilsome taskDaily chores

Go and fetch water Hew stones out of the quarriesGo on errandsPrepare banquets

Be floggedBe whipped

Voix active / voix passive, une question d’éclairage

Observez la différence entre les extraits suivants:When they were used to work on construction sites, slaves were made to

toil from dawn to dusk and and were seldom given pauses. They were granted only a meagre ration of food and had few opportunities to improve their diets. The health of a middle-aged slave is assumed to be very poor, with most of them being worked to death.

Many slave-owners resorted to cheap bond labor-force for the construction of their villas. They exploited the workers and care little about working conditions assuming a meager food ration was enough for their low-class peoples. They hired slaves of all ages and sometimes had to cope with accidents or casualties on the construction site. Their type of management left no room for empathy.

Traduisez les phrases suivantesLes prisonniers de guerre pouvaient être utilisés soit

comme esclaves soit comme gladiateurs.On suppose que l’espérance de vie d’un esclave travaillant

dehors était bien plus faible que celle des domestiques.Certains esclaves méritants et dociles se voyaient confiés

le contrôle des nouveaux ouvriers.On ordonnait parfois aux esclaves de porter des charges si

lourdes qu’ils se cassaient le dos.Il est aujourd’hui attesté que certains esclaves se

rebellaient violemment.

Bas relief featuring a master whose hair

are being combed by three slaves.

Orientalist depictionsJean-Léon Gérôme

painted six slave-market scenes set in either ancient Rome or 19th-century Istanbul. The subject provided him with an opportunity to depict facial expressions and to undertake figurative studies of sensual beauty.

Compare these two works (on the left Gerôme’s Slave Market; on the right a White Slave by Jean-Jules

Antoine Lecomte de Nouy)

Edward Burne Jones, The Wheel of Fortune, 1863

Are male slaves represented here in the same way as female slaves in the previous works?

Match the beginings of the sentences with a suitable ending

The slaves were people who were frequently captured in battle and sent

but the slaves themselves understandably revolted against oppression.

Abandoned children could also be brought to both the economy and even the social fabric of the society.

A slave could only get their freedom if they were given

back to Rome to be sold.

Even after Rome has passed it days of greatness,

after a good slave as an equally good replacement might be hard to acquire – or expensive.

A good master looked it is thought that 25% of all people in Rome were slaves.

Slavery in the ancient world and in Rome was vital

it by their owner or if they bought their freedom.

Not only did slavery help push the Roman lower classes into organized mobs

up as slaves.

Gladiators

Gladiators were all male slaved fearsome warriors. They were all professional fighters. They were condemned criminals, prisoners of war, and some were even Christians. The successful gladiators would receive a great acclaim. They were all forced to become swordsman. They would fight each other in an arena that was called a coliseum.

Ruggero Giovannini, Olac The Gladiator

Denis Foyatier, Spartacus, 1830

Spartacus escaped in 73 BC and took refuge on nearby Mount Vesuvius, where large numbers of other escaped slaves joined him. Their insurrection came to be known as the Third Servile War, or the Gladiators’ War.

Foyatier made the model at the Villa Medicis in Rome, where he was a guest from 1822 to 1825. He exhibited it at the 1827 Salon, and the marble used was commissioned by the royal administration.

Spartacus is represented here having just broken his chains. Arms folded, with an expression of grim determination, he seems to be plotting his revenge. In 1830, due to political opportunism, the sculpture came to symbolize the July Revolution. The story

Foyatier presented the plaster model for his statue of Spartacus at the Paris Salon of 1827. This sculpture won instant acclaim. It was considered by some to herald the revival of

neoclassical statuary. It indeed corresponded to academic canons: Spartacus is naked, as were antique heroes, and his imposing stature is consistent with the grand style that established a correlation between the dimensions of a work and the impression it created. This sculpture was no doubt inspired by the work of Canova, especially his Damoxenes (Vatican Museum, Rome): it has the same pose and tense, muscular concentration. On the other hand, the character's expressivity - the air of contained rage communicated by his attitude - was sometimes associated with Romantic sensitivity.

The success of this work was also due to its subject. Spartacus was rarely represented in sculpture, and the statue was perceived as a symbol of opposition to the regime of Charles X. But by the time the sculpture was finished, the Trois Glorieuses (the July Revolution of 1830) had overthrown the regime of Charles X. Foyatier took this opportunity to make Spartacus a Republican icon, by dating the work 29 July 1830 (the last day of the Revolution). http://www.louvre.fr/llv/oeuvres/detail_notice.jsp?

Tenses : put the verb in brackets in the proper tense and voice.

Little is known of the early years of Spartacus. He ………………………. (think) to have been born in Thrace (modern day Balkan region) and it …………………………… (suggest) he …………………. (be) in the Roman army.

He ………………………. (sell) into slavery and trained at the gladiatorial school in Capua, north of Naples.

Leading his army of runaway slaves, which ……………………………… (estimate) to have reached 100,000 men, Spartacus ………………………. (defeat) a series of Roman attacks using tactics which ……………………………………….. (call + now) guerrilla warfare.

The slaves managed to break through the fortifications that Crassus …………………………. (build) to trap them, but were pursued to Lucania where the rebel army was destroyed.

Spartacus ……………………………. (think) to have been killed in the battle. Spartacus's struggle …………………………… (be) inspirational to revolutionaries,

politicians and writers since the 19th century.

Spartacus

Watch the opening scenes and « Spartacus Behind the Myth »:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVceYnt-_3A

• http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xgs30h_spartacus-behind-the-myth-part-1-5_shortfilms

A Roman EpicIn 1960 Kirk Douglas produced and played the title role in Spartacus, «...still regarded as the most

intelligent of all the epics.» Adapted from the homonymous novel by Howard Fast, the film makes a very pointed leftist political statement. In telling the story of the gladiator who led a massive servile revolt in 73-71 B.C. that for a time seemed to threaten the Roman state itself, Spartacus draws a sharp distinction between the decadent aristocrats, epitomized by Laurence Olivier as Crasssus, and the «people» represented by the plain- spoken forthrightness of Kirk Douglas as Spartacus who «speaks in an unaffected, energetic American manner while...Olivier intones his oration in glorious English diction.» This was one of the few occasions in Hollywood Roman epics in which the difference between American and British diction was used to effectively contrast social divisions. With the screenplay written by the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo and the direction by Stanley Kubrick, the film comes across as a populist epic in which Spartacus is a natural leader whose political and social ideas are in direct opposition to the decadent and corrupt Roman ruling classes. The slave camp is portrayed as an egalitarian, proto-communist society in which the able-bodied willingly support the weaker ones. Kirk Douglas said about the film: «I'm very proud of Spartacus. It's difficult to make a big epic picture in which the characters stand out, and I think the actors dominated the film.» But epic it still was-the final battle in which Spartacus's slave army is defeated was filmed in Spain where 8,000 soldiers from Generalissimo Franco's army portrayed Roman legionaires and slave rebels. The greatest historical inaccuracy in the film is the fate of Spartacus who is shown crucified, Christ-like, whereas he actually died in the final battle and his

body was never recovered. Excerpt from The Image of Ancient Rome in the Cinema , CARL J. MORA