"A wonderfully rich and endlessly thought-provoking brew...reminiscent of the writing of W.G. Sebald...Beautifully written, musing and far-sighted...it's astounding success."-Literary Review<BR><BR>"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, bot for the Ancients and for us...compelling."-The Times (UK)<BR><BR>"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<BR><BR>"An astonishing tale of men fighting against the odds for reasons they themselves hardly understand, and by using a mix of personal travel narrative and historical re-enactment, Stothard brings it to life triumphantly."-CondT Nast Traveler<BR><BR>In the final century of the first Roman Republic an army of slaves brought a peculiar terror to the people of Italy. Its leaders were gladiators. Its purpose was incomprehensible. Its success was something no one before had ever known.<BR><BR>The Spartacus Road is the route along which this rebel army outfought the world's finest military forces between 73 and 71BC, bringing both fears and hopes that have never wholly left the modern mind. It is a road that stretches through 2,000 miles of Italian countryside and out into 2,000 years of world history.<BR><BR>In this inspiring and original memoir, the former editor of The Times, Peter Stothard, takes us on an extraordinary journey. The result is a book like none other û 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.<BR><BR>As he travels along the Spartacus Road û through the ruins of Capua to Vesuvius and the lost Greek cities of the Italian south û Stothard's prose illuminates conflicting memories of times ancient and modern, the simultaneously foreign and familiar and one of the greatest stories of all ages. Sweepingly erudite and strikingly personal, On the Spartacus Road is non-fiction writing of the highest order.