Lentulus Batiatus
Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus Batiatus (or, possibly, Vatia) was the Roman owner of a gladiatorial school in Capua (near Mount Vesuvius), in southern Italy. It was from this school that in 73 BCE, the Thracian slave, Spartacus, and about 70 to 78 followers, escaped. The break-out led to the slave rebellion known as the Third Servile War (73 – 71 BCE).
Identity and origins
Shackleton Bailey noted that the name ('Batiatus'), as recorded by the ancient historians, could be a corrupted form of the cognomen 'Vatia'. Cornelius Lentulus Vatia would then have been either a Servilius Vatia by birth adopted into the Cornelii Lentuli or else a Cornelius Lentulus by birth adopted into the Servilii Vatiae.
Portrayal in film
Batiatus was played by Peter Ustinov in Stanley Kubrick's 1960 film, Spartacus, for which Ustinov won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Ian McNeice played Batiatus in the 2004 television adaptation Spartacus.
John Hannah played Batiatus in the 2010 Starz television series Spartacus: Blood and Sand and the 2011 Spartacus: Gods of the Arena.
Lentulus
Lentulus, the name of a Roman patrician family of the Cornelian gens, derived from lentes (lentils), which its oldest members were fond of cultivating (according to Pliny, Nat. Hist. xviii. 3, 10). The word Lentulitas ("Lentulism"; cf. Appietas) is coined by Cicero (Ad Fam. iii. 7, 5 ) to express the attributes of a pronounced aristocrat. The three first of the name were L. Cornelius Lentulus (consul 327 BC), Servius Cornelius Lentulus (consul 303) and L. Cornelius Lentulus Caudinus (consul 275). Their connection with the later Lentuli (especially those of the Ciceronian period) is very obscure and difficult to establish. The following members of the family deserve mention.
See also Publius Lentulus, fictitious governor of Jerusalem, supposedly the author of an epistle describing Jesus.
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