Fighting spirit

The metaphors that come to us when we are sick, trapped in the no-man’s land bet- ween consciousness and oblivion, are often the most vivid of which our minds are capable.

The metaphors that come to us when we are sick, trapped in the no-man’s land bet- ween consciousness and oblivion, are often the most vivid of which our minds are capable. No wonder, then, once we are recovered, that the memory of them may prove impossible to banish. It is the measure of those that came to Peter Stothard when he was receiving treatement for what at the time appeared terminal cancer that they should have inspired this haunting, erudite and beautifully written book. Plenty of people, in the wake of a brush with death, have committed themselves to leading life to the full: by climbing Everest, perhaps, or sailing around the world. Has anyone other than Stothard, however, ever thought to go in search of Spartacus?

When history’s most famous gladiator escaped from his barracks in Capua, he and his companions took refuge on the heights of Mount Vesuvius, from where they then clambered down the rocks to ambush and wipe out a Roman army: the first of many startling victories. Stothard, amid the agonies of his sickbed, experienced his cancer as though it were just such a battle:

an assault of iron on the upholstery of my stomach, ribs grasped like ladders, alien objects left behind, broken glass, blunt knives, wave upon wave of pain, slow like an hour then blurred like a second, warfare in its unique and maddest way.


Language such as this brilliantly conveys the excruciating character of what Stothard endured; but it also begs an obvious question. Why did his subconscious go groping after a gladiator?

Written as a travelogue that criss- crosses Italy, On the Spartacus Road is as much an attempt to suggest an answer to this as it is a quest after Spartacus himself.