Steven DeKnight

WHEN the Victorians were feeling gloomy about their prospects they used to compare themselves to the ancient Romans. They read Gibbon, Plutarch and Tacitus and looked for parallels: a society burdened by empire, corrupted by wealth, deficient in manly virtue. Lately we have been doing much the same, only instead of consulting the Latin texts we turn to screen epics like “Gladiator,” the HBO series “Rome,” and the 2007 Zack Snyder film “300,” which, strictly speaking, was about Spartans, not Romans, but let’s not be fussy. The cable channel Starz, as part of an effort to expand its slate of original programming, is extending this classical tradition with “Spartacus: Blood and Sand,” a 13-part series that starts Friday, and has already taken the unusual step of commissioning a second season before the first one even runs.

Overtaxed, militarily overextended and with an increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots, the Romans, we learn, were a lot like us, but for entertainment purposes they had some signal advantages: They were more violent, they wore skimpier clothes and they had orgies. “Spartacus: Blood and Sand,” a retelling of the history of the famous slave and his rebellion, does not neglect any of these traits. It features abundant nudity, both male and female. (“In the early days we had a lot of conversations about how many penises we could show in a single episode,” Rob Tapert, one of the producers, recalled recently.) There is a great deal of simulated sex, of both the gay and straight variety. And the subtitle is not false advertising: the characters do not merely bleed; they spray great fountains and gouts, arterial geysers, that splash up on the inside of your TV screen or else hang in midair like red Rorschach blots. Mr. Tapert and his co-producer, Sam Raimi (better known as the director of the “Spider-Man” films), got their start with the “Evil Dead” horror-movie franchise, and the new show at times suggests their early experiments with high-pressure circulatory systems. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” Mr. Tapert admitted.

Much of the violence in “Spartacus” is stylized, even balletic. Many of the people working on the show were big fans of “300,” and, especially in the early episodes, “Spartacus” frequently borrows from that movie’s graphic-novel look, its gray and coppery color scheme and slo-mo action sequences. The show’s creators were also fans of “Rome,” and they say they learned two important lessons from that series. One was not to spend a fortune on building sets. (“Spartacus” relies instead on green-screen technology and C.G.I.) And the other was that their story line needed, like that of “Rome” to be character driven.

The early episodes include a number of well-drawn personalities, many of them plucked (or embellished) right from Plutarch, our main source for what little we know about Spartacus, a man, the text says, “not only of high spirit and valiant, but in understanding and in gentleness superior to his condition.” (Plutarch does not mention abs or lats, which Andy Whitfield, an Australian actor who plays the character, has in abundance, but they probably go without saying.)

In some ways the series is more historically faithful than either the 1960 Stanley Kubrick picture or its source, Howard Fast’s 1951 novel, which was in part an allegory denouncing McCarthyism. The series gives Spartacus a back story, which the Kubrick version does not, and gets a lot of mileage from Plutarch’s brief account of the ludus, or gladiator gym, where Spartacus was imprisoned. Run by a financially strapped promoter named Batiatus, the place resembles an outpost of Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling empire, and is a reminder of yet another way we resemble the ancient Romans: our appetite for violent spectacle and “reality” entertainment.

According to everyone involved, selling Starz on a 13-hour series set in antiquity was not a gladiatorial struggle. Bill Hamm, the executive vice president in charge of original production and development, explained that the channel had already been looking for an R-rated action show — something that didn’t yet exist on premium cable — to join its other original programming like “Crash.” “Looking at the Spartacus story, you find that the real history was more tawdry and sexy than you ever knew,” he said, “and I thought we might as well enhance that.” Mr. Tapert recalled that he, Mr. Raimi and the third member of their team, Joshua Donen, had been talking to NBC about an action series, and when those discussions didn’t go anywhere, were invited to meet with Starz.

“Josh is — highbrow is the wrong word,” Mr. Tapert said. “But he’s very literate. Sam is quite populist, and I’m more lowbrow.” As for who first thought of ancient Rome, he said, laughing, “I wish I could give Sam credit, but none is due,” and added that he had been thinking about a Rome project for years.

But it was Mr. Donen, everyone agrees, who first uttered the word “Spartacus,” and that, together with the notion that the project be modeled on the style and technology of “300” was enough for Starz to greenlight it. In an e-mail message Stephen Shelanski, the executive vice president in charge of programming, said success in the premium-cable business increasingly depends on distinctive original programming, as HBO and Showtime have demonstrated. “We see a value in having a balance of compelling original series to complement our strong movie lineup,” he wrote.

The head writer of the show is Steven S. DeKnight, who also worked on “Smallville” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” He was finishing up some episodes of the sci-fi series “Dollhouse” when Starz called him, and he said he signed on partly because of Mr. Raimi’s involvement. “I’m a huge fan, going back to ‘Evil Dead,’ ” he said. “I remember trying to break up with my girlfriend at the drive-in when that movie was playing, and I kept looking back at the screen.”

He also had a lot of affection for the original “Spartacus.” “Do you remember when movies had overtures at the beginning?” he asked. “I kept thinking ‘I can’t believe they’re thinking of remaking a Kubrick film.’ ”

Mr. DeKnight went on to say that he had included a homage to the famous “I’m Spartacus!” moment, when all the movie slaves claim to be the Kirk Douglas character, and had tried not to overlook the film’s epic feeling. “It was a great time for men especially — a period when men were men,” he said, referring to the Spartacus era and the end of the Roman republic. “And definitely there’s that voyeuristic element. Everyone loves a good potboiler, and we don’t shy away from any of it as long as it comes from the character and the story.”

Starz almost never censored him, he added, and even encouraged him to include an explicit orgy in Episode 6, though the higher-ups drew the line at a scene involving a ladle. They also objected to having Spartacus rip out the throat of a gladiatorial opponent with his teeth. “They said that was O.K. for another one of the gladiators,” he said. “They just didn’t want the hero doing it.”

About the show’s explicitness, he said: “We wanted to push the envelope. We’re fine with graphic sexuality, graphic violence as long as it comes from a place in the story. And I think the violence has an operatic element. We wanted to make it beautiful in a way.”

And within reason, he said, he also wants the show to be accurate. He even hired a couple of Ph.D. candidates in classics to pelt him with memos and e-mail messages about details like whether or not Capua had a governor and the wine-drinking habits of Thracians. “We bend history, of course,” he said. “But we try never to break it.”