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Spartacus: Master of War
The book is a fictional account of Spartacus's life. It begins with his early childhood growing up with his tribe, the Maedi, leading the typical life of a young Thracian boy. It is at one of the village's annual autumnal festivals, held to celebrate the end of the wine harvest and to pay homage to the god Dionysus, that he meets Sura, in training to be a seer of Dionysus, and they soon fall in love.
Everything changes when a troop of Romans enter the village one day on a recruiting expedition and Spartacus is picked out. Eventually he and the other recruits are taken to the Thracian capital of Heraclea Perinthus and Spartacus is assigned to the cavalry barracks where he starts his training as a cavalryman under the watchful eye of his German decurion, Caesorix. Once his training is complete, the Legio IV Macedonia travels through the Eastern Balkans to the lands of the Bessi who are engaging in cross-border raids in Macedon. Later the legion is also involved in an action against Burebista, the King of the Dacians.
Time passes and Spartacus is sent on a mission to the town of Arcadiopolis where events lead to him becoming an army deserter. This is a turning point in his life and he is now a traitor to Rome, and as such they will spare no effort to hunt him down....
Ivan Kinsman's second novel set predominantly in Thrace, Macedon and Italy, Master of War is a novel that intimately describes the life of a Thracian gladiator who ended up becoming the leader of a slave army that was able to defeat a Roman army over half a dozen times. No other book gives such a detailed account of the years before he was sold at a Rome slave auction to a man named Vatia, the owner of a gladiatorial school in Capua, as well as the trials and tribulations he and his army experienced as they criss-crossed the Italian peninsula until his final death in April 71 BC.
Everything changes when a troop of Romans enter the village one day on a recruiting expedition and Spartacus is picked out. Eventually he and the other recruits are taken to the Thracian capital of Heraclea Perinthus and Spartacus is assigned to the cavalry barracks where he starts his training as a cavalryman under the watchful eye of his German decurion, Caesorix. Once his training is complete, the Legio IV Macedonia travels through the Eastern Balkans to the lands of the Bessi who are engaging in cross-border raids in Macedon. Later the legion is also involved in an action against Burebista, the King of the Dacians.
Time passes and Spartacus is sent on a mission to the town of Arcadiopolis where events lead to him becoming an army deserter. This is a turning point in his life and he is now a traitor to Rome, and as such they will spare no effort to hunt him down....
Ivan Kinsman's second novel set predominantly in Thrace, Macedon and Italy, Master of War is a novel that intimately describes the life of a Thracian gladiator who ended up becoming the leader of a slave army that was able to defeat a Roman army over half a dozen times. No other book gives such a detailed account of the years before he was sold at a Rome slave auction to a man named Vatia, the owner of a gladiatorial school in Capua, as well as the trials and tribulations he and his army experienced as they criss-crossed the Italian peninsula until his final death in April 71 BC.
259 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2025
About the author
Ivan Kinsman
5 books4 followersIvan Kinsman attended Eton College and gained a Master’s degree in English Language and Literature from St Andrews University and an MBA from the University of Edinburgh.
He has worked as a wine salesman, conference producer in Telecommunications and IT, website designer for a fund management company and, after moving to Poland in 2002, worked as an English teacher, university lecturer and a freelance proofreader and translator.
He currently lives with his Polish wife and two children in Newmarket, Suffolk in the East of England. They also have a second home, a family smallholding in the Swietokrzyskie voivodeship in south-eastern Poland, which they like to visit as often as they can.
He has worked as a wine salesman, conference producer in Telecommunications and IT, website designer for a fund management company and, after moving to Poland in 2002, worked as an English teacher, university lecturer and a freelance proofreader and translator.
He currently lives with his Polish wife and two children in Newmarket, Suffolk in the East of England. They also have a second home, a family smallholding in the Swietokrzyskie voivodeship in south-eastern Poland, which they like to visit as often as they can.
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