Spartacusmas

Well Christmas has come and gone (after a mere eleven months of build up) and now I am sitting waving goodbye to the new years celebrations as well.  Christmas was enjoyable,  I'm not even going to pretend it has any religious significance for me but it provides a useful cultural peg to hang a visit to my family on.  I suppose, on balance, I am glad that the Romans crucified somebody politically significant although celebrating his birthday isn't as grim as handing out chocolate eggs on the occasion of his gruesome death.

The crucifixion angle got me thinking though; I can't help wondering if circumstances were a little different whether we might be celebrating the birthday of Spartacus instead.  Think about it for a moment; Spartacus hacked off the Romans (literally in many cases), he fought for freedom and he was a champion of the downtrodden because, after all, you don't get much more downtrodden than slaves.  He certainly made an impression on the Romans (literally in many...oh I've already done that joke), after all not even the Romans would crucify seventy thousand people for no reason at all, probably.

I think the big mistake Spartacus made was not tossing a few money changers out of the odd temple.  He had the opportunity (after all, the Romans had some very odd temples) and this would have given the religious edge he needed to guarantee his immortality.  I mean immortality in a figurative sense, he was always going to wind up on a cross on the Via Appia.  Unfortunately Spartacus was too busy slaughtering Roman soldiers to pay proper attention to his posthumous image.

A lot of water has flowed under (and in some cases over) a lot of bridges since Spartacus was roaming Italy impersonating Kirk Douglas so its probably too late to book him a slot in our public holiday calendar at this late stage.  This is all to the good really if only due to the fact that it is very difficult to say Spartacusmas without spitting.  Let's face it Spartacus sounds like a dinosaur and it seems a little rude to celebrate the birthday of something that's extinct.  After all, we don't celebrate the birthday of smallpox.