Spartacus Slave Revolt
About seventy gladiators escaped from a training school at Capua in 73 BC with kitchen knives, and within two years they commanded an army of some 70,000 that beat consular legions. Spartacus was a Thracian, probably a former auxiliary in the Roman army who had deserted, been captured and sold to a school that trained men to kill each other for an audience. The escapers took refuge on Vesuvius, were besieged by a militia force under a praetor who blocked the only path, and got down the cliff on ropes plaited from wild vines to attack the camp from behind. That victory brought recruits. Rural slaves on the great estates of Campania and Lucania — where slavery was industrial in scale, gangs working in chains — joined in numbers, and so did free labourers. Rome sent both consuls of 72 BC and lost. The revolt's problem was strategic rather than tactical. The sources say Spartacus intended to cross the Alps and disperse northward, and that his army refused, preferring to plunder Italy. Later he tried to cross to Sicily and was cheated by Cilician pirates who took payment and did not come. Crassus took the command, restored discipline by decimating a unit that had run, and penned the rebels into the toe of Italy behind a wall and ditch across the peninsula. The final battle in 71 BC was fought somewhere in Lucania. Spartacus's body was never identified. Six thousand prisoners were crucified along the Appian Way between Capua and Rome, one every forty metres.
- Category: Military
