Spartacus (film) eclipse him. Gracchus, having seen Rome fall into tyranny, commits suicide. Before doing so, he bribes his friend Batiatus to rescue Spartacus's family from Crassus and carry them away to freedom. On the way out of Rome, the group passes under Spartacus's cross. Varinia is able to comfort him in his dying moments by showing him his little son, who will grow up free and knowing who his father was. The development of "Spartacus" was partly instigated by Kirk Douglas's failure to win the title role in William Wyler's "Ben-Hur". Douglas had worked with Wyler before on "Detective Story", and
Spartacus become a Roman soldier, that had deserted and became enslaved, and afterward, from consideration of his strength, a gladiator". The authors refer to the Thracian tribe of the Maedi, which occupied the area on the southwestern fringes of Thrace, along its border with the Roman province of Macedonia - present day south-western Bulgaria. Plutarch also writes that Spartacus' wife, a prophetess of the Maedi tribe, was enslaved with him. The name Spartacus is otherwise manifested in the Black Sea region. Kings of the Thracian dynasty of the Cimmerian Bosporus and Pontus are known to have borne it, and a Thracian