da: The New York Times
WHEN the Victorians were feeling gloomy about their prospects they used to compare themselves to the ancient Romans. They read Gibbon, Plutarch and Tacitus and looked for parallels: a society burdened by empire, corrupted by wealth, deficient in manly virtue. Lately we have been doing much the same, only instead of consulting the Latin texts we turn to screen epics like “Gladiator,” the HBO series “Rome,” and the 2007 Zack Snyder film “300,” which, strictly speaking, was about Spartans, not Romans, but let’s not be fussy. The cable channel Starz, as part of an effort to expand its slate of original programming, is extending this classical tradition with “Spartacus: Blood and Sand,” a 13-part series that starts Friday, and has already taken the unusual step of commissioning a second season before the first one even runs.Overtaxed, militarily overextended and with an increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots, the Romans, we learn, were a lot like us, but for entertainment purposes they had some signal advantages: They were more violent, they wore skimpier clothes and they had orgies. “Spartacus: Blood and Sand,” a retelling of the history of the famous slave and his rebellion, does not…