Badass - Spartacus

Spartacus

Aside from having a pretty fucking badass name, Spartacus was also pretty fucking badass person. He led a gladiator/slave rebellion that ended up embarassing Rome's armies time and again, and scared Rome's plebs and Senators shitless. His was not the only slave rebellion in Rome's history, but it was undoubtedly the most successful. Spartacus may not have led the rebellion by himself though; all we know about him comes from Roman historians, not the actual slaves in his army. The Romans probably had a skewed view of how an army should be run, so they may have just assumed Spartacus was the only one in charge. Most sources say he had an inner circle, and they may have all decided on things together.

Not much is known about Spartacus before his rebellion. Sources agree unanimously on two things: he was once a soldier in the Roman military, and he was from Thrace (modern day Bulgaria and Turkey). He probably deserted the army, perhaps in the middle of a battle. The Roman military was a very tight group, and when someone deserted, they showed no mercy. Spartacus was found, and sold into slavery. Slaves who were former soldiers were almost always shipped off on a one way trip to the arena. Keep in mind the Colosseum wasn't even built yet, that's about 150 years down the line. There were hundreds of smaller, much less epic arenas scattered all around the Roman Republic, and it's estimated that millions of people died in them.


In 73 BC, Spartacus and about seventy other gladiators were training, when they suddenly decided they weren't going to put up with Rome's shit, and organized an escape. They stole kitchen knives and a wagon full of weapons, and got the fuck out of there. They travelled the countryside freeing slaves, recruiting followers, pillaging, plundering, and being all round total badasses. Spartacus's chief aides were all from Gaul and Germania (modern day France and Germany, respectively). HE HAD GOD DAMN BARBARIANS ADVISING HIM.

A young Julius Caesar was Military Tribune on the Plebian Council during this time, but it's not clear what role, if any, he played in quelling the uprising.

The Senate sent a young praetor named Claudius Glaber with 3,000 men to put the slaves down. Glaber besieged the rebels on Mount Vesuvius, and blocked the only path up or down. He was content with starving them until they surrendered. But Spartacus and his army didn't want to do that. They went and made some rope out of vines, and climbed down the cliffs. Of a fucking volcano. Sure, it wasn't erupting at the time, but seriously - a volcano.

Glaber wasn't expecting any trouble from a bunch of stupid slaves, so he staked up his camp with barely any fortifications. The slave army swept in from behind and destroyed them.


Word of Spartacus's triumph spread far and wide, and slaves all across Italy orchestrated escapes to join his army. Spartacus's forces allegedly grew to over 120,000. But most of them were just a bunch of rabble with no military training at all. So Spartacus decided to set up a hidden camp on Vesuvius, and he started training them. If I was given the choice of being morphed into a killing machine at any location on the planet, I'm pretty sure I'd pick a secret gladiator base on top of a volcano.

Their intent is not known. Plutarch says they wanted to escape into Gaul away from Rome forever, but Appian and Florus said their ultimate goal was to capture the city of Rome itself. A few accounts say there was a split among the slaves; Spartacus wanted to escape over the Alps, but another leader, Crixus, wanted to stay in Italy and plunder, though there is no direct evidence to support this split.

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They set out north in spring of the next year, all the way up near Gaul. Some theories suggest that 10,000 or so non-fighting followers (elderly, women, children and the like) crossed the Alps and returned to their homelands, but again, there's no direct evidence to support this. Then they decided to turn around and whoop the asses of two more legions led by Marcus Crassus. By the end of the year, the slave army set up camp all the way down near the Strait of Messina. Spartacus tried to make a deal with some Cilician pirates to sail them into Sicily, but it fell through.

The Senate knew the army was now cornered against the sea, so they recalled three of their best generals to meet and decimate them (one of whom was Pompey Magnus, who would stand up against Julius Caesar in the civil war twenty years later). The slave army was weakened by its many battles, but they managed to break through Crassus's lines and make a break for north. However, they realized that Pompey and Varro were trying to entrap them, so they stopped and launched their full strength towards Crassus at the river Silarus, where they were annihilated.

According to Plutarch,

"Then pushing his way towards Crassus himself through many flying weapons and wounded men, [Spartacus] did not indeed reach him, but slew two centurions who fell upon him together. Finally, after his companions had taken to flight, he stood alone, surrounded by a multitude of foes, and was still defending himself when he was cut down."

6,600 of Spartacus's followers were crucified and set up along the Appian Way, one of the longest and most travelled roads in Italy. Crassus never gave the order for the bodies to be taken down, so for years after the battle took place, travelers had to walk for miles past thousands of crucified slave skeletons.

Appian Way

5,000 managed to escape and tried to flee north, but Pompey subsequently caught up and wiped them out. Pompey claimed all the credit for quelling the rebellion, even though he was under Crassus the entire time and obeyed his orders. Crassus would be forgotten, but Pompey's popularity would soar, and he would be propelled into power.

About a year ago, I made an impulse buy and got Spartacus on DVD. Aside from the awesome battle scene at the end, it was pretty fucking terrible, and I will never watch that trash ever again. In the movie, Spartacus survived the battle, and when the Romans tried to crucify him, every slave claimed to be Spartacus so they couldn't know who he was. And that's why the Romans crucified the entire army!

They also invented a love interest for Spartacus, and romanticized his motives to make it seem like he was fighting to free people across the Roman countryside, when in reality, he just didn't want to be a fucking slave. The funniest part was when a Roman guard referred to a black gladiator as a “negro,” even though that word didn't exist in their language, and they just used "African." This was made in 1960.