- Herald: I bring a message from your master, Marcus Licinius Crassus, Commander of Italy. By command of His Most Merciful Excellency, your lives are to be spared. Slaves you were and slaves you remain. But the terrible penalty of crucifixion has been set aside on the single condition that you identify the body or the living person of the slave called Spartacus.
- Antoninus: [stands up] I'm Spartacus!
- [everyone around Antoninus and Spartacus stands up and shouts "I'm Spartacus!"]
- Tigranes Levantus: If you looked into a magic crystal, you saw your army destroyed and yourself dead. If you saw that in the future, as I'm sure you're seeing it now, would you continue to fight?
- Spartacus: Yes.
- Tigranes Levantus: Knowing that you must lose?
- Spartacus: Knowing we can. All men lose when they die and all men die. But a slave and a free man lose different things.
- Tigranes Levantus: They both lose life.
- Spartacus: When a free man dies, he loses the pleasure of life. A slave loses his pain. Death is the only freedom a slave knows. That's why he's not afraid of it. That's why we'll win.
- Gracchus: You and I have a tendency towards corpulence. Corpulence makes a man reasonable, pleasant and phlegmatic. Have you noticed the nastiest of tyrants are invariably thin?
- Crassus: Do you eat oysters?
- Antoninus: When I have them, master.
- Crassus: Do you eat snails?
- Antoninus: No, master.
- Crassus: Do you consider the eating of oysters to be moral and the eating of snails to be immoral?
- Antoninus: No, master.
- Crassus: Of course not. It is all a matter of taste, isn't it?
- Antoninus: Yes, master.
- Crassus: And taste is not the same as appetite, and therefore not a question of morals.
- Antoninus: It could be argued so, master.
- Crassus: My robe, Antoninus. My taste includes both snails and oysters.
- Julius Caesar: I thought you had reservations about the gods.
- Gracchus: Privately I believe in none of them - neither do you. Publicly, I believe in them all.
- Crassus: One of the disadvantages of being a Patrician is that occasionally you are obliged to act like one.
- Ramon: We have visitors. Tremendous visitors! Two simply enormous Roman lords on the hill.
- Batiatus: How easily impressed you are, Ramon. Just 'cause they're Romans, I suppose they're enormous. Tell them to wait for me when they arrive.
- Ramon: Master, you don't understand!
- Batiatus: How enormous do these Roman lords get?
- Ramon: One of them is Marcus Licinius Crassus.
- Batiatus: What? Wait a minute. Crassus here? Varinia, my red toga with the acorns. And some chairs in the atrium. Second-best wine. No, the best, but small goblets.
- [Notices a head-bust]
- Batiatus: Gracchus! You know how Crassus loathes him. Take him away.
- Ramon: I can't lift it.
- Batiatus: Use your imagination! Cover him. Tell Marcellus to get the men ready. Crassus has expensive taste. He'll want a show of some sort.
- [to the head-bust]
- Batiatus: Forgive me, Gracchus.
- Gracchus: This Republic of ours is something like a rich widow. Most Romans love her as their mother, but Crassus dreams of marrying the old girl, to put it politely.
- [deleted scene]
- [last words]
- Gracchus: [to his maid Julia] The new master of Rome will be calling on me tomorrow, he wants me to make a speech. Take him to wherever I am and show me to him. And Julia, when I meet you in paradise, describe to me the expression on his face when he saw me dead. Now go away. Go away!
- Spartacus: Maybe there's no peace in this world, for us or for anyone else. I don't know. But I do know that as long as we live, we must stay true to ourselves. I do know that we're brothers. And I know that we're free. We march tonight!
- Batiatus: There I was, better than a millionaire in the morning and a penniless refugee by nightfall with nothing but these rags and my poor flesh to call of my own. All because Crassus decides to break his journey at Capua with a couple of capricious, over-painted nymphs! These two daughters of Venus had to taunt the gladiators, force them to fight to the death and before I knew what had happened, revolution on my hands!
- Gracchus: What revenge have you in mind?
- Batiatus: I sold Crassus this woman, Varinia. May the gods give her wings. There was no contract, but she was clearly his slave as soon as the deal was made. Now she's off with Spartacus killing people in their beds. And Crassus, no mention of money, no!
- Gracchus: You never offered me this woman. Why not?
- Batiatus: Well, she's not remotely your type, Gracchus. She is very thin and...
- Gracchus: Look around you. You'll see women of all sizes. 500 sesterces deposit on Varinia. Since he hasn't paid for her, this gives me first call over Crassus when she's caught and auctioned..
- Batiatus: May the Gods adore you! Why would you buy a woman that you have never even seen?
- Gracchus: To annoy Crassus, of course, and to help you.
- Crassus: [about Antoninus and Spartacus] Let them fight now. Unchain them.
- Julius Caesar: The entire city's been told, they'll fight tomorrow in the temple of your ancestors.
- Crassus: They will fight now, for me! Here! And to the death! And the victor will be crucified!
- Crassus: Are you not aware of Rome's most ancient law? That no General may enter the city at the head of his armed legions?
- Glabrus: Sulla did.
- Crassus: Sulla? To the infamy of his name! To the utter damnation of his line. No, my young friend. One day I shall cleanse this Rome which my fathers bequeathed me. I shall restore all the traditions that made her great. It follows that I can not come to power or defend myself by an act which betrays the most sacred tradition of all. I shall *not* bring my legions within these walls. I shall *not* violate Rome at the moment of possessing her.
- Varinia: What are you thinking about?
- Spartacus: I'm free. And what do I know? I don't even know how to read.
- Varinia: You know things that can't be taught.
- Spartacus: I know nothing. Nothing. And I wanna know. I want to... I wanna know.
- Varinia: Know what?
- Spartacus: Everything! Why a star falls and a bird doesn't, where the sun goes at night, why the moon changes shape. I wanna know where the wind comes from.
- Varinia: The wind begins in a cave: far to the north, a young god sleeps in that cave. He dreams of a girl and he sighs, and the night wind stirs with his breath.
- [laughs]
- Spartacus: I wanna know all about you. Every line, every curve. I wanna know every part of you. Every beat of your heart.
- Helena Glabrus: [after she has selected the best gladiators to fight to the death] Our choosing has bored you?
- Batiatus: No, no. No, most exciting. I tingle.
- Spartacus: [to Crassus, about the slain Antoninus] Here's your victory. He'll come back. He'll come back, and he'll be millions!
- Batiatus: Marcus Licinius Crassus. Most noble radiance, first general of the Republic, father and defender of Rome, honour my house. Bless it with your presence. Wine! Sweetmeats! Can't you see that Their Honours are exhausted? Have the goodness to sit. Is anything wrong, Your Nobility?
- Marcus Licinius Crassus: No.
- Batiatus: Welcome to the Lady Claudia Maria, former wife of Lucius Caius Marius, whose recent execution touched us all so deeply. Honour to the Lady Helena, daughter of the late Septimus Optimus Glabrus, whose fame shall live on forever in the person of his son, your brother, Marcus Publius Glabrus, hero of the Eastern Wars.
- Helena Glabrus: How very much he knows. Allow me to bring you up to date. We're here to celebrate the marriage of my brother to the Lady Claudia.
- Batiatus: A mating of eagles, Your Sanctity! Fan His Magnitude. He sweats.
- Julius Caesar: [about Spartacus] Did you fear him, Crassus?
- Crassus: Not when I fought him, I knew he could be beaten. But now I fear him, even more than I fear you.
- Julius Caesar: Me?
- Crassus: Yes, my dear Caesar, you.
- Marcus Licinius Crassus: Great merciful bloodstained gods! Your pardon. I always address heaven in moments of triumph.
- Crassus: Did you truly believe 500 years of Rome could so easily be delivered to the clutches of a mob? Already the bodies of 6000 crucified slaves line along the Appian Way. Tomorrow the last of their companions will fight to their death in the temple of my fathers as a sacrifice to them. As those slaves have died, so will your rabble... if they falter one instant in loyalty to the new order of affairs. Arrests are in progress. The prisons began to fill. In every city and province, lists of the disloyal have been compiled. Tomorrow, they will learn the cost of their terrible folly... their treason.
- Gracchus: Where does my name appear on the list of the disloyal enemies of the state?
- Crassus: First. Yet, I have no desire of vengeance upon you. Your property shall not be touched. You will retain the rank and title of a Roman Senator. A house... a farmhouse in Picenum has been provided for your exile. You may take your women with you.
- Gracchus: Why am I to be left so conspicuously alive?
- Crassus: Your followers are deluded enough to trust you. I intend that you shall speak to them tomorrow for their own good, their peaceful and profitable future. From time to time thereafter, I may find it useful to bring you back to Rome to continue your duty to her, to calm the envious spirit and the troubled mind. You will persuade them to accept destiny and order and trust the gods!
- Marcus Licinius Crassus: Why have you left us for Gracchus and the mob?
- Julius Caesar: I've left no one, least of all Rome. This much I've learned from Gracchus, Rome is the mob.
- Crassus: No! Rome is an eternal thought in the mind of God.
- Julius Caesar: I had no idea *you'd* grown religious.
- Crassus: That doesn't matter. If there were no gods at all, I'd revere them. If there were no Rome, I'd dream of her as I want you to do.
- Caius: Sir, allow us to pledge you the most glorious victory of your career.
- Marcus Licinius Crassus: I'm not after glory! I'm after Spartacus. And, gentlemen, I mean to have him. However, this campaign is not alone to kill Spartacus. It is to kill the legend of Spartacus.
- Gracchus: Let's add courage to your new found virtues. Would half a million sesterces make you brave?
- Batiatus: Half a million? Mmm-hmm, well, Crassus does seem to dwindle in the mind, but...
- Gracchus: Let's reduce him further. A round million!
- Batiatus: A million. For such a sum I could bribe Jupiter himself!
- Gracchus: With a lesser sum I have.
- Julius Caesar: So now we deal with pirates. We bargain with criminals.
- Gracchus: Now, don't be so stiff-necked about it! Politics is a *practical* profession. If a criminal has what you want, you do business with him.
- Marcus Licinius Crassus: You tread the ridge between truth and insult with the skill of a mountain goat.
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