It is, of course, possible that the painting has nothing to do with the famous Spartacus, and that it refers to some other gladiator who just happened to have the same name that is certainly what some skeptics argue. The men must be the equites, or “horsemen,” who sometimes appeared in those bloody Roman spectacles, alongside the more familiar, heavily armed characters who fought on foot. So this is probably meant to depict mounted gladiatorial combat. But the trumpeters on either side of this pair of fighters match those often found next to gladiators in ancient paintings. The other reads clearly, in Oscan, “Spartaks,” which in Latin would be “Spartacus”-a name best known to us from the slave and gladiator who in the late 70s BC led a rebellion that, it is said, very nearly managed to defeat the power of Rome itself.Īt first sight, the scene painted on the wall looks like a military battle. The name of one is scarcely legible, but probably says “Felix the Pompeian” (or “Lucky from Pompeii”). They are named in captions above their heads, written in Oscan-one of the early languages of South Italy that was eventually wiped out by the Latin of the Romans. In the entrance hall of a fairly ordinary house in ancient Pompeii, buried beneath layers of later paint, are the faint traces of an intriguing sketch of two men fighting on horseback. The rider on the left is thought to be labeled ‘Felix the Pompeian’ (or ‘Lucky from Pompeii’) and the other is ‘Spartaks’ (reading right to left), or ‘Spartacus’ in Latin

‘Spartacus Fresco,’ detail, from Pompeii, early first century BC. Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, Rome

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