you can never lose the game (Greeks and Israelis reviving their states despite being defeated) until you are totally annihilated as a people.
Only tangentially related, but
Spartacus (1960) was on TV last night and I watched it in its entirety for the first time in modern memory.
- The connection to your post is that Spartacus/Kirk Douglas in the film is portrayed as being Thracian. Reading about Thrace on Wikipedia, the territory & its people just sort of disappear around the turn of the millennia around the birth of Jesus Christ. There doesn't seem to be any actual genocide, just complete assimilation eventually after years of Hellenic & Roman rule. Their language finally disappears around the 6th century. They have vague ties to modern Bulgarians but no direct archeological lineage.
- I didn't realize Spartacus the IRL Thracian was an actual historical/mythological character. I'd also never heard of the Servile Wars in the 1st century AD where slave revolts formed armies against Roman legions themselves.
- The narrative stories between
Spartacus (1960l & Russell Crowe's Gladiator are remarkably similar, even though the aughts remake isn't as faithful to IRL Spartacus hagiography. Both Kirk Douglas & Crowe are slaves early on, go to fight school, train, fall in love, have a fellow black slave gladiator colleague, fight in front of Roman senators, lead revolts, face off against these same corrupt Roman aristocrats later on, etc.
- The 1960s version mostly looks like it's shot in the deserts of North Africa even though its events are mostly set in the IRL town of Capua, which is just north of Rome. In Crowe's version, the initial gladiator training school is set in the desert backwater outreaches of the realm before moving the setting to Rome & The Colosseum itself.
- Both versions have a main Gladiator School owner main character who later interacts with the elites of Rome. The 1960s version is played by Peter Ustinov.
- If the 1960s version was made today, it would be accused of being woke. The movie starts off with Douglas being born a slave & being a disobedient adult slave miner in the open air mining hills of Libya. The scenes of the hundreds of slave miners are exclusively white. Then Douglas is purchased by a Gladiator School owner and brought to the peninsular mainland to Capua to train as a gladiator slave. His main rival in Gladiator School is a tall black slave who gives him sass when Douglas tries to befriend him. The tall black physical specimen seems to be the only POC gladiator slave in camp. Douglas ends up having to face off against the tall black trident gladiator in his first ever gladiator match before Roman dignitaries. The black trident slave wins and is about to kill Douglas down on the ground with a trident to the throat before bloodlust cries from the crowd. The black trident gladiator instead ignores the cries, throws his trident at the Roman elites like Katniss Everdeen and dies trying to climb up into their elevated box trying to reach them.
- Later, having his life spared, Spartacus initiates a slave riot in Capua by drowning the Gladiator head trainer in a vat of boiling stew. Dozens of gladiators fight & kill the Roman guards. Many flee the compound. Spartacus eventually returns to Capua after the dust settles, to find the remaining slaves as spectators in the gladiator arena forcing old Roman nobles to fight each other with knives for their entertainment. Douglas steps in stopping the spectacle, talking down the vengeful slaves into allowing the old Romans to live because he never wants to be part of a one-on-one Gladiator deathmatch again because the black trident dead gladiator would've wanted it that way after sparing Douglas' life and sacrificing his own.
- TL; DR - Even the 1960s version of Spartacus shoehorns in a noble negro character into a story of exclusively white Romans & gladiator slaves. Where the martyr inspiration for the entire Third Servile War slave revolt is a nog with a heart of gold who spares Douglas' life after he loses.
- In the aughts Crowe version, Maximus also meets a black slave character who applies medicine to his shoulder wound upon first becoming a slave after escaping execution from Roman traitors. And later fights alongside him on his path to fight Commodus in Rome. But it's actually amazing that the black character in the aughts version is less woke/less important to the story in many ways than the 1960s one.
