Forced to flee Rome, Julius Caesar is serving on board a war galley in the dangerous waters of the Mediterranean and rapidly gaining a fearsome reputation But no sooner has he had a memorable victory than his ship is captured by pirates and he is held to ransom Abandoned on the north African coast after hard months of captivity, he begins to gather a group of recruits that he will eventually forge into a unit powerful enough to gain vengeance on his captors and to suppress a new uprising in Greece Returning to Rome as a hero - and as an increasingly dangerous problem for his enemies - Caesar is reunited with his boyhood companion Brutus But soon the friends are called upon to fight as they have never fought before, when a new crisis threatens to overwhelm the city - in the form of a rebellious gladiator named Spartacus