Death is an elastic concept in all forms of fiction, but TV and film have mightily tested the limits to which our belief can be stretched. Even by those standards, the resurrection of the namesake heel of “Spartacus: House of Ashur” is quite the feat.

Our last glimpse of Nick E. Tarabay’s Ashur, a traitorous gladiator turned Roman toady, was of his beheading in the finale of 2012’s “Spartacus: Vengeance.” His executioner, Naevia (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), leaves no room to question his demise, hacking at Ashur’s neck three times before his melon rolls free from his torso.

A lot has happened in the intervening years, though. American culture has realigned dramatically enough for a significant percentage of the population to rally behind a sleepy, tacky would-be dictator. The illusion that

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