Representing slaves

1. A hard, tough job A back-breaking job A streneous, exhausting, tiresometask Drudgery A toilsometask Daily chores Go and fetch water Hew stones out of the quarries Go on errands Prepare banquets Be flogged Be whipped Representing slaves

2. Voix active / voix passive, une question d’éclairage Observez la différence entre les extraits suivants: Whentheywereused to work on construction sites, slaves were made to toilfromdawn to dusk and andwereseldomgiven pauses. Theyweregrantedonly a meagre ration of food and had few opportunities to improvetheirdiets. The health of a middle-aged slave isassumed to beverypoor, withmost of thembeingworked to death. Many slave-ownersresorted to cheap bond labor-force for the construction of their villas. Theyexploited the workers and care little about working conditions assuming a meagerfood ration wasenough for theirlow-class peoples. Theyhired slaves of all ages and sometimeshad to copewith accidents or casualties on the construction site. Their type of management left no room for empathy.

3. Traduisez les phrases suivantes Les 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.

4. Bas relief featuring a master whosehair are beingcombed by three slaves.

5. Orientalistdepictions Jean-LéonGérômepainted 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. 

6. Compare thesetwoworks (on the leftGerôme’s Slave Market; on the right a White Slave by Jean-Jules Antoine Lecomte de Nouy)

7. Edward Burne Jones, The Wheel of Fortune, 1863 Are male slaves representedhere in the sameway as female slaves in the previousworks?

8. Match the beginings of the sentences with a suitableending

9. 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.  RuggeroGiovannini, Olac The Gladiator

10. 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.

11. 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 Foyatierpresented 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 TroisGlorieuses (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?

13. Tenses : put the verb in brackets in the propertense 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.

14. Spartacus

15. Watch the openingscenes 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

16. A Roman Epic In 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