historical accuracy - How historically accurate is the TV series Spartacus?

I've recently started watching the Spartacus (just finished Blood and Sand and Gods of the Arena, currently watching Vengeance) and the events described seemed rather exaggerated.

While it doesn't bother me one bit and I enjoy the series because it is what it is, it conflicts a little with what I had already known about the romans.

For starters, even if the gladiators were slaved, I lived under the impression that the most famous ones, the champions, were treated much better, something that doesn't seem to be the case with Spartacus and Crixus.

The amount of sex seems also too much. The roman orgies are very famous, but the characters in the series have no shame towards the slaves and indulge themselves in all sort of strange practices.

And last but not least, it seemed fairly easy to kill someone and get away with it back then, as Batiatus demonstrated not just once.

Of course, considering the nature of the show, things are bound to be inflated, to make the series more entertaining and it's definitely working but still... just how much of the show is true and how much is fiction? I would to point out that my question it's not about the historical figure Spartacus and his story, but the roman society and his habits as it was presented in the show.

Answer

I think the Spartans were way more brutal than it was depicted in the show. Because, the majority of the things depicted are true - the characters personalities and all of the battles and stuff, as I can believe, but it's not historically accurate as far as i know.

Because it is focused on the lives of merchants and slaves, and low level magistrates and praetors in a gladiator school in Capua, rather than the lives of consuls as you get with most depictions of Roman life.

• The arena combat is highly unrealistic and stylized for the sake of
  entertainment rather than as an accurate depiction of the way
  gladiators truly fought.




• The most historically inaccurate area is probably the language and
  dialogue. The slaves were taken from all over the Roman empire and
  would have had little to no education in most cases. They would
  have no common language and what little communication they were
  capable of wouldn't have contained the verbose level of word usage
  the show is so fond of.

In other words the show clearly tries to maintain a level of historical accuracy while not losing sight of the fact that it's entertainment and not a documentary.