Spartacus gets in the game by telling a Gaul he smells like a woman and we seem to be setting up a future rivalry here. One of them insists Spartacus smells of shit, so he must have been to a really bad bathhouse. The gladiators do some naked male bonding - I have a vague notion that at some point Alan Bates and Oliver Reed should turn up and wrestle. John Hannah gets his shirt off, which is nice, and they discuss their financial problems while wearing transparent clothing and surrounded by similarly dressed slaves and while a female slave 'entertains' Xena (which seems a bit odd - why not just have sex with each other? Which they proceed to do). Xena Warrior Princess' name in this is 'Lucretia', which doesn't seem to bode well. We open with some dream sex in which Spartacus' wife's cleavage is waved around at the camera until the dream turns nasty, she gets done in and Spartacus wakes up and is given a haircut and taken to the baths for a clean-up.
The title of this episode is probably best translated as 'oath of gladiators' and isn't overtly religious in this context, though in the ancient world any oath was an oath before the gods and carried a religious obligation with it.
