"A walk that blends past with present" - The Philadelphia Inquirer on SPARTACUS ROAD

In between coverage of the Phillies (glowing) and the Eagles (tepid), the Philadelphia Inquirer's books section ran a terrific review of Peter Stothard's ON THE SPARTACUS ROAD this weekend. Penned by Frank Wilson, the paper's former book review editor, the review really captures what we feel to be the spirit of this book. Click here to read the review in its entirety, or scroll down for a few excellent excerpts.

Peter Stothard's account of his journey along that road makes for an extraordinary book...

It is indeed "a classicist's notebook," and it is this, more than anything, that makes it so extraordinary. Time, for Stothard, is less a linear continuum than a palimpsest.

...

By the time one has finished Spartacus Road, one has learned just about all there is to know about the slave leader, his victories, and his final defeat - his body was never found. One also has learned about a good deal else besides, from Frontinus the aqueduct maker to the poet Statius and his epic Thebaid to the word latifundia, "first used in the time of Pliny for giant sparsely populated tracts."

But what one learns of most of all is a sensibility, all too rare these days, that enables someone like Peter Stothard to sense how, at least in certain locales, the distant past interpenetrates the present and immeasurably enriches it.

"Returning to old books," Stothard says in his prologue, "is like returning to old friends." Anyone who becomes acquainted with this book is bound to find himself making one return visit after another.

Happy Monday to you all, and safe travels back this week from Frankfurt from any of you who were lucky enough to be there!

Peter Stothard, author of SPARTACUS ROAD, on NPR'S All Things Considered

Listen to Peter Stothard, author of Spartacus Road, on NPR's Weekend All Things Considered.

"In 73 B.C., the slave Spartacus escaped from the gladiator school where he was trained and went on to lead an army of former slaves from town to town, crushing the Roman leaders and stirring fear along the way. Author Peter Stothard followed the path that Spartacus took in Italy and writes about it in his new book, Spartacus Road: A Journey Through Ancient Italy. Host Guy Raz talks to Peter Stothard about his journey."

GUY RAZ, host:

As regular listeners will know, we usually talk about books and music towards the end of the program, and the book we're about to feature shouldn't exist. Its author, Peter Stothard, was supposed to die of terminal cancer 10 years ago.

Stothard is a well-known editor in London. He now heads up the Times Literary Supplement. But after he miraculously survived, he wanted nothing more than to forget about his struggle with cancer. But he couldn't.

And while traveling in Italy, he began to compare his own battle with cancer to a war that took place over 2,000 years ago, a slave uprising that shook the Roman Empire to its core.

Peter Stothard's new book is called "Spartacus Road," and it mixes his personal battle with the battle led by the slave Spartacus.

Mr. PETER STOTHARD (Author, "Spartacus Road: A Journey Through Ancient Italy"): I started writing it like a historical diary, but what I was actually writing on the "Spartacus Road" was my story of Spartacus, which I knew very well, but it was seen through this extraordinary filter of pain and chemical from about a decade before. And that's the unusual nature of this book, and that's the strangeness that many people have seen and appreciated in it.

RAZ: In 73 B.C., Spartacus and a small band of warriors take on a much larger contingent of Roman forces at Mount Vesuvius against impossible odds. You took that battle and relived it in your mind when you were being treated for cancer, almost as if that battle was happening inside of you.

Mr. STOTHARD: Yes. Somehow, that story, which is a powerful, emotional, evocative story in itself, it was almost as though I was seeing it in a kind of distorted bubble screen around me. It was very strange. And I can see why I wanted to forget about all that as soon as I went back to my proper job. But obviously, I couldn't forget about it, and when I was on Mount Vesuvius, it came roaring back.

RAZ: I just want to read a bit from that. You can almost picture those Roman soldiers and those slaves with their swords and shields. You write, inside of you, there was an assault of iron on the upholstery of my stomach, ribs grasped like ladders, alien objects left behind, broken glass, blunt knives, wave upon wave of pain.

And you can see that wave upon wave of soldiers attacking, and it's such an evocative image.

Mr. STOTHARD: Yes. In this particular case, I was writing about Roman history and telling the story of Spartacus in this way that I had really never expected to do.

Overlook Preview: Peter Stothard's SPARTACUS ROAD

New in bookstores this month is Spartacus Road: A Journey through Ancient Italy by Peter Stothard. Stothard, editor of The Times Literary Supplement, re-traces the remarkable journey taken by Spartacus and his army of rebels in the final century of the first Roman Republic. The result is a book like none other -- at once a journalist's notebook, a classicist's celebration, a survivor's record of a near fatal cancer and the history of a unique and brutal war. Sothard illuminates conflicting memories of times ancient and modern, and tells one of the greatest stories of all ages. Sweepingly erudite and strikingly personal, Spartacus Road is non-fiction writing of the highest order.

The Spartacus Road is the route along which the rebel slave Spartacus and his army repeatedly outfought the Roman legions between 73 and 71 B.C., bringing both fears and hopes that have never wholly left the modern mind. While most of the historical evidence of the life and career of Spartacus is missing, his struggle has proven inspirational to many modern literary and political writers, making Spartacus a folk hero among cultures both ancient and modern. As he travels along the Spartacus road centuries later, Stothard brings us back to an ancient world which confronted many of the same issues we face today - the perils of religious belief, the comfort of organized religion, the virtues of public life. With great clarity and insight, Stothard breathes new life into the story of Spartacus and the greatest slave war in antiquity. He tells it, definitively, for our time.


Early Praise for Spartacus Road:

“Peter Stothard’s account of his journey in the footsteps of Spartacus’s army is not just a travel book, but also a memoir of surviving cancer. An intriguing book that is impossible to categorize... Stothard's real passion is for the process of thinking about Spartacus, both for the Ancients and for us...compelling.” - Times (UK)

“'Haunting, erudite and beautifully written...a fusion of memoir, history and travelogue that is unlike any other book ever written about Spartacus and all the more precious for being quite so unexpected” – The Spectator

“A wonderfully rich and endlessly thought-provoking brew...reminiscent of the writing of W.G. Sebald...Beautifully written, musing and far-sighted...it's an astounding success.” --Literary Review