MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

For a sword-and-sandal narrative, Starz’ Spartacus: Blood and Sand (and the other seasons of the series) is grounded in a pervasive sense of both realism and hyper-realism. The fantastical elements presented within the series are largely reflective of modern technological representations of ancient combat, designed not to evoke the fantastical but the gritty if slick reality of platform narratives and hyper-reality. Indeed, the series’ own proclaimed adherence to and relationship with “history” reflects its own insistence of a narrative style that is grounded in realism—or, perhaps, naturalism—if not reality. Spartacus’ efforts, and the way they are portrayed on screen, are superhuman, but never supernatural. Indeed, the fantastic is routinely debunked in the series; the gods and their mythic sensibility are largely present only in such epitaphs as “By Jupiter’s cock!,” but little more. The exception to this, however, are the prophetic dreams that Spartacus’ wife Sura has in the opening episode of the entire series. These dreams prove not only prescient and accurate but also frame the entire narrative. Though brief, the inclusion of these “prophetic fragments” problematizes the series’ relationship to its own twin definitions of history and reality. In this essay I will look at the intersection of prophecy and history in the series, arguing that prophecy here marks Spartacus and his people as both natural and primitive, further complicating the heavily class-demarcated relationship already present in the series.