Serving on board a war galley in the Mediterranean, Julius Caesar's ship is captured by pirates and he is held to ransom. Abandoned on the North African coast after months of captivity, he gathers a group of recruits that he will eventually forge into a unit powerful enough to gain vengeance on his captors and suppress a new uprising in Greece. Returning to Rome as a hero, Caesar is reunited with his boyhood companion Brutus. But soon the friends are called upon to fight when a new crisis threatens to overwhelm the city - in the form of a rebellious gladiator named Spartacus.