Sarah Holder, who played Ilythia's body slave Thessela throughout Season 1 and 2 until her untimely death at the hands of Glaber was mesmerizing. She never did any nudity but did wear see through tops at some points.

Katrina Law was smoking hot in this.

My favorite girl was one of the slaves who got 'used' by Batiatus when he was in the bath and talking to his wife. I can't remember her name, I googled her after the show finished because I had to see who she was and it seemed like she hasn't done much acting. But she was maybe the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. Lots of eye candy in the show though, but it was story and leading man that had me hooked the most.

@FatDrunkAndStupid said:

Sarah Holder, who played Ilythia's body slave Thessela throughout Season 1 and 2 until her untimely death at the hands of Glaber was mesmerizing. She never did any nudity but did wear see through tops at some points.

Oh yes, she is beautiful as well. I think I need to watch this on Netflix again. Amana, another of Ilithya's body slaves played by Nicola Simpson was hot too.

@microscope said:

My favorite girl was one of the slaves who got 'used' by Batiatus when he was in the bath and talking to his wife. I can't remember her name, I googled her after the show finished because I had to see who she was and it seemed like she hasn't done much acting. But she was maybe the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. Lots of eye candy in the show though, but it was story and leading man that had me hooked the most.

I know the girl you speak of. Batiatus grabbed her by the collar and did her from behind, at his wife's suggestion. Yes she looked good.

Yeah she is my dream girl :P

@microscope said:

My favorite girl was one of the slaves who got 'used' by Batiatus when he was in the bath and talking to his wife. I can't remember her name, I googled her after the show finished because I had to see who she was and it seemed like she hasn't done much acting. But she was maybe the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. Lots of eye candy in the show though, but it was story and leading man that had me hooked the most.

The story of Spartacus intrigued me when I first heard it as a boy. It saddened me that he was finally killed. I wished he had taken his slave army north to another land to live in freedom. Of course Rome would have sent an army north to attack him there as well. He had caused enough trouble, had killed so many Romans, and had upset their system of slavery so much that they would have pursued him anywhere he went.

Still, after the Spartacus rebellion there were changes made to the way slaves were treated and changes to the gladiator 'games'. I think the Romans looked at the cruelty they were inflicting upon these people and realized some things. Some of them may have felt it was inhumane, but at the very least they realized that there was a price to pay for being so cruel. When slaves are treated so brutally, they may feel that revolting and killing their masters, and being crucified as punishment is preferable to continuing to live under such cruel masters and horrible conditions.
Spartacus made them feel his pain, and when it became personal to the Romans, when their cruelty blew back upon them and they had to pay a severe price for it, they decided to treat them more humanely, or at least less cruelly.

Leaders of governments, powerful people in society, are many times somewhat narcissistic. The less moral the society, the more likely their leaders will be narcissists. And such leaders care little for the humane treatment of others; they treat others well only to the extent that those others benefit them. They know how to mimic normal people and learn to act and speak like, to mimic normal people. They may make lofty speeches about caring for the poor for example. But they care nothing for them, only for secretly robbing them and consolidating their own power. They speak as though they support an honest and fair legal system, but they hold themselves above all laws, including moral laws, ethical rules, etc. As the old saying goes, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
So the leaders reveled in their absolute power, and they put sycophants and others who supported this system in positions of power beneath them. And by this system their inhumanity trickled down and permeated the culture. This is how I think Rome was.

Such leaders don't respond to pleas for humane treatment of slaves. They only change their behaviors and policies in response to events which affect their control over the people or upset their system. Spartacus upset their system. He made them feel the barbarity and cruelty inflicted upon him and his fellow slaves. Whether he knew how his actions would ultimately impact the culture or not I could not say. I would guess not, at least initially. I think conditions just became so intolerable that revolting against them seemed the only rational thing to do. I think he was enraged and sought revenge. Who among us would not feel the same?

Well said! I liked how they showed Spartacus early on as an empty shell of a man. He had no will to live, and kept losing fights. Even has he started getting better, he still lost because he had nothing to live for. Then when he was sent to the pits, he knew that he didn't really have any choice, he either learned how to kill anyone he was fighting, or he would die. And he dies, he would never get revenge. That seemed to change him into an amazing fighter, because his killer instinct was in every battle, he was extremely driven.

I also like how he became closer to Batiatus, but then when he was betrayed, he knew he had to be killed and his vengeance should extend to the entire empire. And even Crixus who hated Spartacus early on, eventually learned the same lesson that having someone you love taken away, changes everything.

I am watching the series again, up to season four. Watching Crassus I am struck by how much I love the idea of a slave girl lover. I can see how Crassus prefers her to his wife. I know how bad that sounds. lol

But Kore is very hot and very sweet. She is submissive to him, which I really like. And he is good to her, the only way to treat a woman like that. His wife on the other hand, though a beauty, is bitchy. I don't like bitchy women.

@microscope said:

Well said! I liked how they showed Spartacus early on as an empty shell of a man. He had no will to live, and kept losing fights. Even has he started getting better, he still lost because he had nothing to live for. Then when he was sent to the pits, he knew that he didn't really have any choice, he either learned how to kill anyone he was fighting, or he would die. And he dies, he would never get revenge. That seemed to change him into an amazing fighter, because his killer instinct was in every battle, he was extremely driven.

I also like how he became closer to Batiatus, but then when he was betrayed, he knew he had to be killed and his vengeance should extend to the entire empire. And even Crixus who hated Spartacus early on, eventually learned the same lesson that having someone you love taken away, changes everything.

Yeah, I noticed that too with Crixus. He criticized Spartacus early on for his focus on his wife, and for wanting to be free so he could go to be with her. After Crixus fell in love, and then ruined things by revealing his relationship with Naevia and thereby causing her to be sold and sent away from the ludis, he began to understand how Spartacus felt and even felt some kind of bond with him. "In another life we may have been as brothers" he said, in similar words. But they were at cross purposes at that point. Not until he learned that he had been poisoned in a plot to end his life did he finally decide to help Spartacus. That was the only hope he had of ever seeing Naevia again he finally realized.

On a side note, I noticed how by the fourth season we see many of the former slaves behaving differently to how they had previously. Some of that is understandable. But the difference in Naevia is dramatic, and not good. She has become a hard, cold, vengeful person.

I can fully understand her wanting to learn to defend herself, and I think that is a good thing. But she seemed to want revenge upon anyone who was not a slave, whether they were decent people or not. I wrote a bit about it here

She became evil and twisted, and really at odds with Spartacus at the end. Personally, I would have killed them both. If I was Spartacus I would have killed Crixus before even leaving the house the start. His "we would have been brothers" thing would have been too little and too late for me. Spartacus was a lot more forgiving than I could have been. I can't remember exactly what made me change my mind about Naevia but basically after they rescued her, she was a different person and was broken to the point that she was a bad person. The point when they turned on Spartacus, I would have killed them both. But again, he was more forgiving and they remained allies to the end. Amazing show really, such great characters and stories.

@microscope said:

She became evil and twisted, and really at odds with Spartacus at the end. Personally, I would have killed them both. If I was Spartacus I would have killed Crixus before even leaving the house the start. His "we would have been brothers" thing would have been too little and too late for me. Spartacus was a lot more forgiving than I could have been. I can't remember exactly what made me change my mind about Naevia but basically after they rescued her, she was a different person and was broken to the point that she was a bad person. The point when they turned on Spartacus, I would have killed them both. But again, he was more forgiving and they remained allies to the end. Amazing show really, such great characters and stories.

Spartacus said he was not willing to turn into the very thing they were trying to change, or something like that. And that was clearly what so many of them were doing. We saw the worst of human nature coming out in many of those slaves there in Sinuessa. I realize the writers were trying to set up the splitting or their forces in two and they had to have a reason. It had to be more than a disagreement on whether to attack Rome or get the non fighters to safety. Well, maybe that would have been enough, but the writers chose to make it more than that.

The change in Naevia after being in the mines could not have been greater. She was an ugly, broken, bitter person after that. I thought the change was unrealistic. She was as you said, twisted and evil. At one point, after that lady was discovered hiding the people she thought the blacksmith helped escape, she grudgingly admitted to Gannicus that she was wrong about the blacksmith and was sorry about killing him. But that was too little. There was not a single trace of her former self visible. That is what I found unrealistic.

I think the writers wanted to show her as having changed into a warrior and felt they needed to give her a different personality to help differentiate her warrior self from her former meek self. But it was too drastic of a change, like too different people entirely. They made her 'un-likable'. Even though you could feel sympathetic toward her because of what had been done to her I could not like her after she attacked the blacksmith. Actually I had started to not like her before but at that point I had had it with her.