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 (TV series) because lead actor Andy Whitfield was diagnosed with early-stage non-Hodgkin lymphoma so Starz produced a six-episode prequel mini-series entitled "". When the actor's cancer recurred and he later died on September 11, 2011, Starz had actor Liam McIntyre take on the role of Spartacus in the second season titled "". On June 4, 2012, Starz announced the third and final season, titled "". The story begins with an unnamed Thracian's involvement in a unit of Roman auxiliary in a campaign against the Getae (Thracian tribes that occupied the regions of the Lower Danube, in what today is Bulgaria and Romania,