Spartacus's Slave Revolt
Timeline: 73 BC
Era: First Century B.C.
Year: 73 – 71 BC
Campaign: The Third Servile War
Conflict: The Servile Wars
Country: Italy
Region: Various
Combatants: Slaves and Gladiators, Roman Empire
Commander(s): (Slaves) Spartacus, Crixus, Gannicus, Oenomaus, Castus; (Rome) Marcus Licinius Crassus, Pompey, Lucius Gellius, Quintus Marcius Rufus, Publius Varinius, Gaius Claudius Glaber, Gaius Cassius Longinus, Gnaeus Manlius, Marcus Lucullus, Biggus Dickus (just kidding on that last one!)
Reason: Revolt against Rome for freedom from slavery
Objective: Get the f
uck out of Italy and captivity; possible attack on Rome
Casualties (approx): 61,000
Objective Achieved? No
Victor: Rome
Legacy: The end of any further slave revolts; made the political career of Crassus and Pompey, led – eventually – to slightly better treatment for slaves
We all know the story of Spartacus, if only from old Biblical movies or even references in Monty Python's
Life of Brian, but what we know about the gladiator slave leader is really only his ending. The fact is that the revolt he led was part of an entire series of wars, three in fact, called above The Servile Wars, for I hope obvious reasons. Although I don't intend to go into the entire series of wars, a quick recap might help.
The First Servile War took place in 135 BC and ran to 132, when Eunus, a Syrian slave who claimed to be a prophet, actually took the island city of Enna in Sicily and held it with a small army of four hundred slaves. Emboldened by this, another slave leader, Cleon, took Tauromenium and then joined up with Eunus, who had proclaimed himself king. The revolt then moved east, pulling in more rebel slave armies, and held out until an army commanded by Publius Rupilius managed to breach the walls of Tauromenium thanks to that reliable standby, traitors and turncoats. Cleon was killed repelling the assault while Eunus died in captivity, awaiting his fate. The deaths of the two slave leaders were of course insufficient retribution for Rome, and Rupilius is said to have crucified about 20,000 rebels.
The Second Servile War began thirty years later, in 104 BC, and was the result of a somewhat hamfisted attempt by Rome to free slaves from countries they were allied with (or were part of the empire) so that those now-freed men could be conscripted into the Roman legions. It backfired though, and when the consul, Publius Licinius Nerva, in obedience to orders freed slaves in Sicily (again with Sicily, huh?) it had two unexpected and unwelcome consequences. First, the slaves from other nations who had not been freed began to wonder why, and unrest fomented. Second, the plantation owners (sure doesn't your heart go out to them?) whined that their slaves were being freed and leaving them without unpaid labour. What: were they supposed to
pay for workers? Outrageous! Living up to his surname, Nerva got nervous and reversed the order, re-enslaving the freed slaves, who got together and said “Oh no you don't son. We're not going back
there!”
And so began the Second Servile War.
This too lasted four years, and its commanders were Salvius (who I'm tempted to misspell but I won't) and Athenion. When Salvius heard that the annoyingly-named praetor Lucius Licinius Lucullus was on the way with 17,000 men and a strongly-worded letter of complaint from the emperor maybe, he not surprisingly wanted to retreat inside his stronghold and hope they'd go away, but his general, Athenion, said “fu
ck that! Let those Roman bastards come! We'll slaughter them all!” These may not have been his actual words, but the upshot is that he convinced his leader to meet the Romans in open battle, which was a serious mistake. You never met the Romans in open battle. The Romans were s
hit hot in open battle, in fact I have it on good authority that they had the Latin phrase
Nosums Caloric Excretus inscribed on their shields, which literally translates to “We're s
hit hot in open battle.” If you wanted to take on the Roman Empire, you did so by subterfuge, siege, using the territory to your advantage, tricking them into narrow defiles and so on. You did not, Braveheart like, wave your arse at them and tell them to come and have a go.
To be fair, the odds were on the slaves' side, outnumbering Lucius's lads by at least two to one, but if there was one thing the Romans had learned about slaves by now it was that they were not born soldiers, and usually the only thing keeping them fighting was belief in their leader. Once Athenion fell, they all said to each other “f
uck this! I'd rather be a live slave than a dead soldier!” and ran headlong. That of course did not save them, and half of Athenion's army was killed before night fell. Athenion was not dead, but his men thought he was, and so did his boss, Salvius, seeing the mad charge and realising that it had all gone tits-up, roared “Wait for me you bastards! I'm your king!”
Well, his actual words are not recorded, as in the panic and heat of full retreat his scribe, who should have been immortalising the king's speeches for posterity, had decided discretion was the greater part of sticking around to have various parts of you hacked off by Roman legionnaires, and was but a rapidly-vanishing dot in the distance. I don't know: scribes these days. One little massacre and they're away on their toes. Or, I guess I should say, on their horse's toes. Anyway Salvius, emulating the action of his soon-to-be-sacked scribe (by which I mean they would seal him up in a sack with several live and not very happy animals and throw it into the river) retreated with them as they were chased back to their stronghold in Triocala.
Here's where it gets, not so much weird but kind of ironic. Lucius arrived at a leisurely pace at Triocola, kicking slave butt as he went, and got out plans for his big siege engines, but on arrival a carrier pigeon (or whatever the f
uck they used for transmitting news in ancient Rome – slave with a message maybe? Imperial telegram? Mobile phone Rome-ing? Sorry) gave him the news that he had been replaced, and he then snapped “Tear it all down lads, we're going home.” Leaving the city desperately un-sieged, he fu
cked off back home and grinned as he considered how the f
uck who was replacing him was going to explain that one! Talk about biting your nose off to spite your own face.
His spiteful tactics worked. In 102 BC, his successor, Gaius Servilius the Augur (what a tool – sorry) had the living s
hit kicked out of him when Athenion, now in command since Salvius had gone to the Great Slave Compound in the Sky, attacked his camp and sent him running. A year later the consul Gaius Marius called his boy Manius Aquillius to him and said “those bastards in Sicily are really getting on my wick. Those two useless fu
cktards couldn't even take a fu
cking small city from a bunch of slaves and gladiators, but I bet you can, can't you, eh? You're my man, ain't ya?”
And Aquillius was. He took a s
hitload of crack troops to the rebel city, and when his troops weren't on crack they were s
hit hot, and as much as slaughtered the slaves once they got to the gates, possibly without having to use the old Roman ploy of pretending to be taking a survey in order to get in. Aquillius is said to have growled “take that you c
unt,” as he killed Athenion himself, and then they took a thousand prisoners back and threw them to the lions. Literally: they were sent to fight in the arena, not against men but against beasts. But spite reared its head again, and in a sort of caricature of the guy who stabbed himself rather than have his skin be used as a canoe in the old joke, they killed each other instead, the last one falling on his own sword, no doubt while the animals looked on in surprise and bewilderment, and wondered if they would be paid anyway for their appearance as per their contract?
And so, with, it seems, uncharacteristically for the empire, a total absence of crucifixions this time, Rome had once again shown the slaves who was boss, and were confident there would not be a repeat of this, um, repeat.
The Third Servile War
But of course we know there was, and it became one of the most famous of them all, and it was the first to threaten the Roman capital, indeed the first to take place on the Italian mainland. The First and Second Servile Wars had not really been considered wars at all by Rome, more revolts and civil disturbances that, though they took time to be put down, were no real threat to the empire. They also took place on the island of Sicily, therefore would have been seen as more provincial uprisings that the people in Rome would frown at but never expect to be dealing with directly themselves.
But even if those first two had been, in the end, unsuccessful (as would this one be, though more effective) they certainly planted the idea in the minds of slaves that a) they could rebel against their masters and b) Rome was not invulnerable. It had taken a total of eight years for the first two outbreaks to be put down. This single, third one would stretch out over almost as long. With the air of disaffection and the idea of freedom in the air, the time was right for a proper rebellion, and this time, they didn't need any pretext to kick it off. Other than wanting out, of course.
In ancient Rome, as you may, and probably do know, the fighting men known as gladiators came from two classes of people: criminals and slaves. Life was tough for gladiators, a large percentage of whom died in training, but for those who made it to the actual games, the chances of survival were slim. Even if they did really well and survived several matches, their increasing fame would only bring more challengers their way, eager to take them down. Being slaves, they were of course not paid for their efforts and reaped no reward from it, so it's not at all surprising that in one of the gladiatorial schools in Capua, just outside Naples, a bunch of them got together and decided on a jailbreak.
Whenever there's a plot there's almost always someone willing to run and tell the authorities against whom that plot is set, and this was no exception, but even betrayed as they were, the gladiators went ahead with their breakout. Well, they had little choice really, as surely only death awaited them if they stepped back? Only seventy of the original two hundred made it out, fighting their way out with kitchen knives and other implements (love the idea of a gladiator holding off a legionnaire with a rolling pin or a whisk!) and though a force was sent after them they easily defeated it. As in other slave revolts, more joined them as they made their way through Capua, and then they literally headed for the hills, making their base on Mount Vesuvius, which would become well known to all inhabitants of Pompeii. Perhaps there was an unspoken hint there?
Rome was not impressed. This was not backwater Sicily, an island few Romans cared about back then, removed from the centre of power. Campania , the region in which the revolt began, was a holiday spot for the well-to-do, maybe an equivalent of the Hamptons or something, a place where rich people (the only kind who counted) came to relax and kick back. The last thing these wealthy folk expected was to be overrun by thousands of “common slaves” thirsty for their blood. One simply does
not have such things happen in
Campania, darling! So the Empire had to do something about it.
The slaves had picked three men from out of their ranks to be their leaders: Crixus, Oneomaus and Spartacus. It was this latter who outfoxed the Romans on Mount Vesuvius, breaking a siege laid by Gaius Claudius Glaber, by fashioning rope ladders out of vines and trees which enabled them to rappel down the side of the mountain and circle around, taking Gaius Claudius by surprise, and winning the day. A second commander sent against them, Publius Varanius, was also defeated, his weapons and equipment appropriated by the rebels. This of course led to their ranks swelling, and at its height the army now commanded more or less by Spartacus, with Oneomaus having fallen at the siege of Vesuvius, numbered about seventy thousand. In addition to slaves, shepherds and herdsmen also flocked to Spartacus's banner.
With no further attempts by the Romans to dislodge them – they surely already smarting from the embarrassment of a rag-tag army of former gladiators and probably what they characterised as scum having beaten their mighty forces – Spartacus and his army remained on Mount Vesuvius through the winter, as 73 BC turned to 72 BC, training and equipping their new recruits, and venturing out to take other towns, adding Nola, Nuceria, Thurii and Metapontum.
Given both that this was seven decades before the birth of Christ, and that the rebellion failed and all its leaders were executed, it's become very difficult to know what exactly the goal of the uprising was, other than getting the fu
ck out of Dodge. There are theories of factions developing within the slave army, with those under Spartacus wishing to hightail it over the Alps to freedom, while the remaining leader, Crixus, seems to have been more focused on revenge and kicking s
hit out of Romans. Nobody can say if this was the case, but as historians do, they argue about this and we'll consider it as a plausible occurrence in a movement which began as a simple escape attempt and whose leaders suddenly find they have an army at their command. The question “what now?” probably occurred to both the army and its two leaders, and each had different responses, maybe.
As for some romantic idea of ending slavery in Rome – mostly put about by Kirk Douglas in the fictionalised version in the movie of the same name? Nah. Those debating historians don't debate about that. As far as those who are far more in the know about this than I am are concerned, neither of the leaders gave a rat's ass for helping their brothers in bondage. They would probably have been crazier than a Christian to have tried it: slavery had existed in the empire for thousands of years, and was not likely to crumble just because less than a hundred thousand slaves said “Guys let's think about this. Is this really fair? Is this really the face Rome wants to present to the world?” Neither Spartacus nor Crixus seem to have been prepared to lay down their lives for other slaves, and I think the general feeling prevalent was “We're free. Fu
ck them. Let's haul ass out of here.”
But while the Romans may have been temporarily thwarted by the slaves, they weren't about to give up. Bad enough the empire being defeated by a foreign army, but an army of fu
cking
slaves? Over their crucified bodies, pal! Crixus fell at the Battle of Mons Garganus, a victim to a force led by Gnaeus Cornelius; the Senate had finally started to take the slave revolt seriously as it piled up victory upon victory and took town after town. Now proper legions were sent against the escapees, and with the death of Crixus, Spartacus was left in sole command of the rebels. However he was so pissed at the death of his friend that he had three hundred Roman captives fight each other in gladiatorial-like games, turning the tables on his hated oppressors as they were forced to fight to the death. He then headed north, to Cisalpine Gaul, where he planned to reprovision his troops.
Shadowed by Lucius Gellius behind him and Lentulus Clodanius ahead, he nevertheless managed to defeat both forces and sent them scuttling for cover. These stunning victories brought even more recruits to the cause of Spartacus, increasing his army to almost 120,000 as it marched directly to the heart of Roman power, Rome itself. Gellius and Clondanius had already legged it back home, and while they awaited the arrival of the slave army reinforced their troops and prepared to meet it on their home turf. Then Lucius Gellius turned to his fellow consul and said “Dude, I have a gnarly idea! Instead of just, you know, waiting for this most heinous army to get to our gates, let's go out and attack them, yeah? We'll be heroes, man!” And Clondanius grinned in agreement. “Sweet,” spake he. “Let's
do this thing, brother!”
They both had occasion to regret this, as once again Spartacus's army, now even bigger and more organised than when they had first met, kicked the living crap out of them again and sent them once more howling for home, no doubt moaning “No way man! He totally beat us
again!” And he had. Nor would they be the last, as several more armies sent out to deal with the mighty slave general met with the same fate. Spartacus, for his part, had second thoughts. He knew his army was big, compared to what it had been when he and his buddies had broken out of gladiatorial school in the ultimate expression of truancy, but he also knew that within Rome was hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of Roman soldiers; it was their base, their headquarters, their supply point and the centre of their power. He would be riding into the lion's den, or, I guess we should say, the eagle's aerie. He wasn't quite ready to do that yet.
So he turned around on possibly the eve of victory, and headed back south, where he prepared for the next confrontation. We'll never know, but it may have been the first time he had misjudged the situation, though he would not get the chance to reflect on that. Rome, released from the pressure of an imminent attack, began to sow the seeds of his destruction. And it all began when Lucius Gellius and Clondanius were dismissed and replaced by this man.