Spartacus (1960)

Antoninus: I'm Spartacus!
[everyone around Antoninus and Spartacus takes up the shout]

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Varinia: You like him, don't you.
Spartacus: Who wants to fight? An animal can learn to fight. But to say beautiful things, and to make people believe them...

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Julius Caesar: [about Spartacus] Did you fear him, Crassus?
Marcus Licinius Crassus: Not when I fought him, I knew he could be beaten. But now I fear him, even more than I fear you.
Julius Caesar: Me?
Marcus Licinius Crassus: Yes, my dear Caesar, you.

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Although some reviews noted the story's unreliable correlation to history, many of the film's characters were derived from real figures, including Spartacus (d. 71 B.C.), Marcus Licinius Crassus (d. 53 B.C.) and Caius Sempronius Gracchus (d. 121 B.C.). As accurately depicted in the film, Spartacus was a Thracian slave who broke out of a Capuan gladiators' school to lead a revolt that was eventually suppressed by Crassus, who then crucified his captives by the hundreds. Spartacus was killed in battle - not, as stated in the film, captured and then crucified - after which Crassus ruled Rome in a triumvirate with Pompey and Gaius Julius Caesar. Gracchus lived decades earlier, and helped organize a social reform movement that lasted only a few years before its reforms were repealed. He was killed in a series of riots protesting the repeals. General Crassus was reported to have been put to death by the Parthians after losing the battle of Carrhae, by being forced to drink a goblet of molten gold, symbolic of his great wealth.
Hedda Hopper and John Wayne, both leaders in Hollywood's powerful right-wing element, publicly condemned the film as "Marxist propaganda" prior to its release. This was partly because the movie marked the first time screenwriter Dalton Trumbo had been credited under his own name (as opposed to a "Front," or a pseudonym) since he had been blacklisted for his membership in the Communist Party USA a decade earlier.
Contrary to what the book and film portray, the historical Spartacus was born free in Thrace (a region nowadays divided among modern-day Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey) and may have served in the Thracian army or even the Roman army in Macedonia (Rome often impressed soldiers of armies it had defeated into its own army). It is thought that he was either captured in battle or deserted the army and later captured (depends on what side he fought on) and then sold into slavery.
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