Spartacus – Biography of Spartacus

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Spartacus (born in Thrace – it is believed that in the town of Sandanski, in present-day Bulgaria – in 113 BC and died in Lucania in 71 BC) was a gladiator who led a slave war against the Romans. He sacked most of the Italian peninsula before being defeated and killed in a fierce battle.

No one knows how Spartacus became a gladiator. It is said that he fought with or against the Romans. Eventually, he ended up at the Gnaeus Lentulus Batiatus gladiator school in Capua. From there, in 73 BC, some 70 gladiators escaped and fled to Mount Vesuvius, where they were joined by slaves and farm workers. Spartacus, with the help of two Gauls, Crixus and Oenomaus, led them by transforming a heterogeneous group into a first-class fighting force.

The Roman response to the uprising was initially slow and inadequate. Spartacus he challenged the local tax collectors led by a propretor and a praetor, in three sharp confrontations. The slaves then left Campania and raided all of southern Italy, establishing eventual winter quarters at Thurii and Metapontum in Lucania. There his forces grew to 70,000 men.

In 72, the Senate assigned consuls and four legions to the war against the slaves. After a minor engagement on Mount Garganos in which Crixus was killed, Spartacus defeated the two consuls in different battles in central Italy. He then tried to lead the slaves north, to freedom beyond the Alps. But after defeating the governor of Cisalpine Gaul at Mutina (Modena), they chose to return to Italy to loot and enrich themselves.

Spartacus He not only threatened Rome but again defeated both consuls in a major battle at Picenum. The Romans no longer dared to face him in the field. Then, Spartacus he returned to the south and reestablished his headquarters in Turi.

In the fall of 72 the Senate transferred command against the slaves to Marcus Licinius Crassus. He recruited six additional legions and took a protective position in south-central Italy. After an initial defeat Crassus won a victory over a contingent of slaves. That winter he built in the extreme south-west of the Italian peninsula, from sea to sea, a wall and a trench of about 65 km, to contain Spartacus, whose attempts to escape to Sicily with his army failed.

In the early spring of 71, Spartacus broke Crasso’s lines, but suffered two defeats in Lucania. He then retired again to Bruttium (Calabria), where he defeated two of Crassus’s lieutenants who followed him. Animated, the men of Spartacus they persuaded him to risk a great battle with Crassus. In her Spartacus and 60,000 of his men fell. The body of Spartacus it was never found. The traitors of the massacre were captured in Etruria by Pompey, and sent to Spain to help end the war. In a last act of cruelty Crassus crucified 6,000 prisoners at Capivara along the Via Appia from Capua to Rome.

Even if Spartacus has been justly praised as a fearless leader, the slave war was not a revolt of the lower classes against the bourgeoisie of Rome. Spartacus He received almost no support from the Italian population, who remained loyal to Rome. However, it has been idolized by revolutionaries since the 18th century. From 1916 to 1919, the German Socialists called themselves “Spartacists” when they tried to foment a proletarian revolution after the First World War. Spartacus’ stiff resistance against the Romans has been a popular subject among poets and novelists, for example, Arthur Koestler in The Gladiators (1939) and Howard Fast in Spartacus (1951).