
| Once free, the escaped gladiators chose Spartacus and two Gallic slaves — Crixus and Oenomaus — as their leaders. Though Roman authors assume that the slaves were a homogeneous group with Spartacus as their leader, this may be the Romans projecting their own hierarchical view of military leadership on the spontaneous organization of the slaves, reducing other slave leaders to subordinate positions in their accounts. The positions of Crixus and Oenomaus — and later, Castus — cannot be clearly determined from the sources. |
| Originally, Howard Fast was hired to adapt his own novel as a screenplay, but he experienced difficulty working in the screenplay format and was replaced by the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, who worked under the pseudonym "Sam Jackson". Eventually, Kirk Douglas insisted that Trumbo be given screen credit for his authorship, which helped ultimately to break the no faults or quirks. |