Legacy and Historical Significance

Ever wondered why the Romans were defeated in the Tutterburg forest? what secrets lie buried in prehistoric Ireland? or what made Alexander truly great with a subscription to History hit You can explore our ancient past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week covering everything from the ancient world to World War two. Just visit historyhit dot com slash suubbscribe. So how did Rome begin With a throne, a triumph, or a murder between brothers Well, according to legend, the mighty city was founded by the twin sons of Mars, Romulus and Remus abbandoned as infants, suckled by a she wolf and destined for greatness until ambition poisoned their body I'm Tristin Hughes and I cannot wait to get into the explosive story of Romulus and Remus on the ancient live tour in Australia and New Zealand this August I'm going to be joined by the fantastic Jeremy Armstrong. He's a professor of Ancient history and an expert on early Rome. Ketather We'll follow the myth from Divine origins to blood soaked Fing legend teeasing apart what the Romans believe archaeology can actually tell us and How a city built on stories became one of the greatest powers in history. Tickets are on sale now. We're coming to Canberra on the second of August And we're going to be in Auckland on the eighth The tickets they are selling far, so book yours now at fame. com. au. Can't wait to see you there Good morning on this swelteringly hot summerers's day in London. Just a quick message from me before we get going. The ancients first time ever We're going on tour. We're going international. Australia and New Zealand, a series of live shows in Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane, Perth, and Auckland in early August, really exciting. Hope to see you there. We're going to be covering topics where myth meets ancient history, the labors of Hercules or the story of Romulus and Remus. That's to come. So if you aret listening to the show In Australia New Zealand, we'd love to see you at one of these shows. Really do hope to see you there We'll put more information and links to tickets in the description On with the episode It was the underdog who humiliated Rome It was the rebellion that refused to die. In ' seventy three BC, in a world where human beings were bought, branded, and worked to death for profit, one man slipped the chains and set the Roman Republic on fire Spartacus began as a Thracian outsider, living on the Roman frontier. The story goes that he had served as a soldier in the Roman Army. Before, he was enslaved and sold to a gladiator school. He was expected to risk his life for entertainment, nothing more than muscle and blood in the sand inststead. He led a daring breakout that turned a handful of desperate fighters into a roaming army sparking a slave revolt that reversed the length of Italy and perhaps even beyond Today, we follow Spartacus up the slopes of Mount Vesuvius as he outsmarts Roman commanders who dismiss him as a mere bandit. We explore how he shatters consular armies and gathers tens of thousands under his banner And what about the motive? What was driving Spartacus Was he simply trying to get his people out of Italy over the Alps Or was he trying to bring the slave system to its knees Why did he fight on? win after win until the Roman noose finally tightened Welcome to the Ancients. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and this is the story of Spartacus Our guest is the best selling Roman novelist Ben Kane. Ben Always a pleasure, Wlcome back to the show. Thanks Tristen. It's lovely to be here. And to talk about Spartacus, of all figures, you know this former gladiator who turns leader of this massive revolt His namees become imm salise today, one of the most recognized names from the whole of ancient history Correct, but the reason for that, because his name was lost for more than a thousand years is because of modern history Right. So How difficult is it for us today If his story has only recently been rediscovered to sort fact from fiction Incredibly difficult. As you probably know, less than four thousand words survive about Spartacus from ancient texts. Wow. Translate that, that's ten pages of a book got sometimes, I mean, for example, a complete cookbook by Aigius or Livy's histories and so on Plutarch's books, some of them survive in their entirety, but from various texts we have less than four thousand words, which is virtually nothing. So it's not just one text that talks about Spartacus' story in detail Th those four thousand surviving words are also split around various correct. That's. There were We know there were more complete descriptions of them, for example, by Salist, but they didn't survive So they're fragmentary. Sometimes there're only a line in someone's poem or something like that. but So what are these types of sources that we have surviving? So you mentioned poems there We've got poems, we've got text by Sallus, we've got Appian, we've got Livy wrote something about him, but only a few fragments survive. I think there's some Maybe some Aryan and some Plutarch, but it's all very here there and everywhere. and some of it contradicts what other people said, which is the norm for Roman historians. Roman historians and biographer like Plutarch as well. So they're the kind of figures that they have Well, let's start right at the beginning. Do we know much Do we know much about his origins? Who is this figure of Spartacus? Where does he supposedly come from? So we know he was Thracian. Nobody really argues about that and Thrace is essentially modern day Bulgaria This was an area full of many, many different tribes, most of which had been by Rome by the period that we're talking about, but some of which had not. And there is some thought that he may have been from the Medi tribe that's MA E D I, but that comes from a presumption made by a German historian that the word describeing which is Nomicos or I think it's Nomedicos means that he was made out a tribe, but I think most historians think that means he was a nomadic tribesman, which a lot of Thracians were So he may not have been Medi at all. They were from the southwest of Thrace. He may have been Odyserai which was a tribe in the east of Thrace close to the Black Sea because we have an example of a king of that tribe having a very similar name Right? Yes, the Spartacus ye, and the Spartacus Saradacos or something like that. And the Adrresi, you know, for a time, they were the biggest tribe in thrace. Yes they so powerful for it. He may have had, you know, kingly origins, but again, if that was his name at all, if that was his real name because it's not certain that it was, but if that was his real name, he may have been named just because They wanted to, you know, have show that he had similarities to somebody. It doesn't mean he was from that tribe. It's so frustrating but we know that he was Thracian and we know that he was a soldier in the service of the Roman Empire. so he would have been an auxiliary and as a Thracian, it's quite likely he would have been a cavalryman because they were very skilled horse riders And at the time of the rebellion, which was seventy three to seventy one BC, say he was a mature adult man. So he was in his twenties, maybe early thirties So if he'd been in the service of the Roman army, it's quite possible that he was involved in the military campaigns against Mithridates, who was a king in modern day Turkey who led a very long fifteen year war against the Romans, and the Romans were forever fighting them and use Thracans as their auxiliaries among others. Be that's important context to highlight. So The Roman Republic, so not an empire at this time, in the early first century BC By this time, the Carthaginians had been beaten and the Romans are very much establishing a foothold in that eastern Mediterranean area, and one of those key areas being what is modern day Turkey, where Mithiodates lived. Yeah. So to set the stage, Rome was not an empire. It was a republic. Now it was a weakened republic, It wasn't anything like what it had been fighting Hannibal in the third century BC This was only thirty years before Julius Caesar and when there was a civil warar that ended up with the Republic being dying but it was still a functioning democracy of its type. And by this stage, it had largely subjugated a lot of the Mediterranean world. But as you say There were areas of it like in modern day Turkey where Mithroidates was, which know was not completely under Roman control because Although the Romans had a startlingly high success rate in battle between thirty one BC, which is the Battle of Actium to two hundred and thirty five AD, which is when the wheels started falling off two hundred and sixty six year period, they had a success rate in battle of seventy percent which is quite extraordinary if you compare that to any sporting team and ask them to win seventy percent of their matches for three centuries. It's not going to happen. So that was the scene and Spartacus was an auxiliary and he was then, according to one Roman source, I think it was Varo, wrongfully enslaved. So for Romans to admit that something was done that was bad is very rare. So some Roman sources say that he was enslaved, but one of them says he was he was wrongfully enslaved. So I like to go with that one. myself. And it's fun of speculating about his time in the army and how he' served. The Thracians were there pretty famous reputation in ancient times for being these fierce warriors. and as you mentioned, likely cavalrymen with their javelins There's also certain tribes that we were did that big two handed. The Romf. The Romfa kind of bladed weapon as well That's right. There are loads of types of those. I thought they were all curved, but a friend who was on holiday in Bulgaria a couple of years ago showing me all these photographs of straight Romfi. Literally like a spear but with a blade all along the bottom of it. Big bladed weapon. Yeah But it's testament, isn't it that you, Sparkus is a Thracian auxiliary straightw away He's being linked to these people who since the time of Herodotus that the father of history, have been renowned as pretty ferocious people. Indeed, there are lots of quotes about how savage they were and bloodthirsty and they carried you know they severed the heads of their enemies and so on bit like the Gauls who were part of Spartacus' army. They fearsome descriptions of these people. They were definitely a warlike people who didn't take kindly to anybody coming into their territory. So He would have been a natural warrior just from growing up. and then he was a Roman soldier and he would have quite likely learned Roman tactics And then he was made to be a gladiator where he would have continued to fight. and so There were a lot of things standing to him, which helped Nut to form him into the man he became And you mentioned they You like to believe that version where he was wrongfully Yeah made were forced into slavery. Is there another version where he was a deserter. I mean, are there various in the surviving fourth House of Wds we have, are there various stories as to how he went from ailiary to slave. My mem my memory fails me. I think there's mention of him potentially one of the sources that he was a deserter and that he was caught. You got to remember with slavery in the ancient world that You didn't have ID. You didn't have proof of I'm a British citizen, I'm an American citizen. hereere's my passport If you were a non Roman, i. e a non citizen and some Roman soldiers in a combat zone, Q as a slave Nobody was going to stop you being a slave. You could shout and scream all you liked So wrongful slavery. I mean, how can slavery ever be right? But my point is that enslaving people just because they felt like it was potentially quite easy to happen and nobody would undo it unless you could prove that you S shouldn't be a slave and how are you going to do that So slavery after battles, you know, when a Roman army won a battle, it was just You just became a slave. There was no say in it. Oh well, what did I do? Well, you're on the losing side, buddy. so Yeah. so I Who knows? I mean the reason I like to think he was wrongfully enslaved is because I'm a novelist. and I realize now it's because I'm Irish and the Irish were underdogs for so long. We like the person who's had something wronged ono them and then ultimately their story you know, improves, although obviously for Spartac because it went bad at the end. So do we know much about slavery at this time in the Roman Republic where most slaves gained the vanquished in a war, in a battle? Do we know much about the Roman Republic as a slave state at that time. Yeah, we know quite a lot. We know quite a lot. Rome, as I mentioned, was a dying republic. It was in a state of great change. So the days of the citizen army in the Punic Wars when men went off to war and weren't able to come home because prior to the Punic wars, generally legionaries who were citizens who volunteered to fight and went home when the war was over and wars frequently only took place during campaigning season, which was sowing of your crops in the spring to harvest time. and then if you didn't win the war, you more or less agreed to cease facilities with your enemy. You both went home to your farms and harvested your crops and you attacked each other again in the spring But when you're at war for years, you can't do that And this need for a permanent army had led to many tens, if not hundreds of thousands of citizen Romans being away from their farms in Italy for years on end. theirir families undergoing great hardship and indeed starvation and migrating as homeless people to the cities, which in turn led to large areas of Italy becoming depopulated and landowners, noblemen buying up the land and you then had basically the need for workers on those farms who were not citizens because the citizens were the poooreor in the cities This also it's worth mentioning gave rise to It sort of fed the weakening of the Republic because these men who then joined the army were no longer joining the army because they needed to, as a citizen required to by the Republic. They were joining warlords like Julius Caesar and Pompey and following them for years and end and becoming personally loyal to generals, not to the Republic The point is that Slavery had then become almost a need. and together with the unprecedented success of the Republican war in the third and second centuries BC, you did have a massive influx of slaves from war And we actually have the sources someone compiled a list of the numbers of slaves taken in wars by various sources and in the Second century BC, it was over two hundred thousand slaves in a hundred years So that's a lot, that's that's a lot of people and you do get some of those Notorious events at the end of certain campaigns. I think it's Flamininus at the end of a campaign in Greece, which like the scourging of a region called Epirrus and maybe like fifty or one hundred thousand people were sllaved on the way. So taking of Carthage in one hundred forty six, fifty thousand. Julius Caesar, I mean, it's later than Spartacus, but Julius Caesar it's accepted They reckon he took a million slaves in Gaul and killed another million. The number of Gaulish slaves in Rome was so great after Julius Caesar's campaigns in Gaul that they devalued the price of slaves to that of an amphora of wine And at this time, so slaves are being quiet for work purposes on the farms and so on But of course, the story of Spartacus is very much linked to him becoming a gladiator So are we seeing at the beginning of the first century BC sles also being used for entertainment Yes. so during this period, we also had the change The massive change as a permanent thing of gladiator fights being something that happened at the funeral of a famous rich person, like a consul. The first glaviator fight in Rome being recorded in two hundred and sixty four BC a celebration of two men fighting, possibly to the death at his gravesite And this was copied from the Campanions who were a people who lived south of Rome And we have evidence from tomombs from the fourth century BC. so before that of gladiator fights taking place painted on the insides of tomombs By the first century BC, these had become such a spectacle of people flocking to funerals to see the gladiator fights politicians because you remember people like Crassus who defeated Spardigus or Julius Caesar, they were still politicians at this time private armies, but they were still being elected to office. and in order to be elected to office, they would cold gladiator fights and in a series of ever growing spectacles conspicuous consumption, you put on a gladiator fight with however many fighters, so I'm going to put on one with even more fighters. so you're going to do a bigger one. went That's the way it went So of course, then during the time of the Empire, the emperor took control of gladiator fights because they were such a way of making yourself popular He didn't want anybody else to be allowed to do them unless they had his permission or he himself put them on. And where can you get a key source of gladiagers at this time? Well, as with Spartacus, it's enslaved people Yes, so they were generally prisoners of war or slaves or criminals. Very rarely. Well, it depends on your sources. Sometimes, I won't say very rarely. sometimes citizens did become gladiators, mayaybe as a consequence of debt. They would sell themselves into the Gladiator schoolool, but they were definitely a minority of fighters. And you mentioned Campagania. so that's beautiful region south of Rome today. Think of Mount Vesuvius, think of Pompei But this region, it's also like the epicenter of gladiatorial fights of these gladiator schools and that's still the case in the first century BC. Correct. Yeah, The first Gadiator school was in Capua and there wasn't actually a Gadiator school in Rome at that time So there was one in Pompe as well, although that was later. but had a large Gadiator school, which was run by Lanista, who is a Roman citizen called either Batiatis or Vatia, depending on your source and he would have been looked down on by the Roman population because although this was a very popular sport, it was still a low class thing that you want to be associated with. so he would have been the same class as a pimp for example. Right. Okay. O a butcher. But it's this figure Battytus who acquires Spartus. Yes and takes him to his Gadiator school. And we don't know where he was bought or how, I mean some people would say it was in Rome personally I would have think it's easier to come over the sea for Dib Braundisium. I was thinking of to come up the main road towards Rome we don't know. But he arrived in Capua and he was a gladiator. We don't know any real details about his career in the Gladiator arena when I I've written for your listeners and viewers I've written two books about Spardaga, It's great fun and I started it in Thrace and I moved straight into the rebellion. And I got a lot of emails or I did when they were first published anyway about why didn't you have the Spartacus fighting in the arena? And it was partly because The stuff he did in real life was so exciting. I didn't want to get stuck, pllus we don't know what he did. Well, I was going to ask him, I mean do we have any idea what he would have done whilst he was still in the service of Batias? It's thought that what's interesting. So the earliest classes of Gadiators before all the ones you see generally on TV and film in the Republic, there were only three types of gladiators although this was changing and those three types were based on enemies of Rome. So one was the Samnite with the people who had defeated Rome a couple of times before ultimately being defeated themselves from central Italy. One was a Gaul and one was a Thracian. Thracian was actually. Thracation was one of the three classes. Yeah. but we know that Spartacus did not fight as a Thracian. Now this is quite likely, again, we don't know, but it's quite likely to been deliberate choice maybe by Batiatus because he wouldn't have wanted him to get ideas above his station or for people to start maybe I don't know that he'd become too popular because he was a Thracian. So it's thought that he fought as a Mermillo, which is the famousish the guy with the fish crested helmet and the armor and a Gladius sword, which would have been just basasically starting out at that time we know really nothing else about his career Let's also thinking about the name W would he have Given the name Spartacus when he went there, that's linked to Royal Thraceome. Yes. it's possible that it was a stage name given to him. but The sources don't mention that. so it's also possible because as I mentioned that nobleman of the Odyserai whose name was Sparadox, Sparadoocos, I think sorry these names sometimes very hard to pronounce, that it was a name from Thrace, so It may have been his real name. I just love mentioning that because There is in the Crimea of all places for a time a Greco Thracian dynasty, it is believed. it's not completely sure. That is commonly called the Spartacid dynasty as well. It's funny, how you can then explain why The name Spartacid. Yeah is also Spartacus can also be linked to Crimea just as much as Italy we're discussing today. Land a Viking Longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the poisoner' cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and Shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. There are new episodes every week Okay, then Let's get into The escape And the revolt of Spartacus. So what do we know? How does he escape the house of Batiartus So gladiators Well treated they weren't treated as before pacus' rebellion as they were afterwards, but they weren't still trusted completely. so they were kept you know, they were locked into the Gadiator schoolchool at night and so on and About two hundred of them, the sources tell us, decided to break out, which is a lot. So it was a big gladiator school. Now we don't know how why or when someomebody must have spill the beans to Batiatas because only depending on your source, between seventy and eighty of them got out and They weren't able to seize the weapons which had been kept separately in an armory in the Gladiator schoolch and the action started in the kitchen. Again, we don't know why, but you know, presumably because somebody realized maybe when they were eating their meal that they'd been rumbled and they needed to move and right now And so they they smash the way into the kitchen and use the implements that they found there, which were meat cleavers and even p, you know, big pestles for pestles and mortar smash their way out of the Gladiator schoolchool. Again, we don't know how, but about seventy or eighty of them end were very fortunate on the road out of Capua to come across a wagon train with arms for gladiators in a different gladiator school And presumably it only had a few guards. So they overpowered them, probably killed them, took all the weapons and hot footed it away. Now where did they go? Well they went to Mount Vesuvius because at that time, it hadn't erupted as a volcano for hundreds of years. And yet because of the volcanic eruptions that makes for very fertile growing conditions. So again, your viewers and listeners are probably familiar with the very famous image of Pompei with Vesuvius in the background and Bacchus and it's literally green from top to bottom covered in vines. It's covered in vines Yeah. And so it was an incredibly fertile area and but it's also a big mountain G great place to go and hide out at the top So that's where they went and set up camp possibly in the crater. Now nowadays there are two craters backack then there was only one because it hadn't erupted, obviously like it did in seventy nine. So maybe in the crater and presumably basically What are we going to do? And so they started robbing the local estates. You got to remember that there was pretty much no police force in ancient Italy. There wasn't a police force in Rome until the early first century AD. so in a rural area There was even less. There would have been local politicians and there would have been local militias potentially, but there wasn't a police force. You defended your property with your slaves and whatever you had if somebody came to steal. But if an armed group of eighty men came, pretty much no estate would be able to defend themselves. So it was basically like stealing toys from a child or sweets from a child. It sounds like a bandit camp, you know, right at the top of the hill where you wouldn't venture this idea Yeah that's what he was Slaves began to come and join him and it was apparent right from the outset that he refused to accept domestic slaves, soft handed domestic slaves. He only accepted agricultural slaves used to working outdoors. Interestingly, herdsmen, men who looked after sheep and cattle, slav were the only slaves who were allowed to be armed because you remember there would be wolves and bears. so they would have had spears and bows and arrows. So he allowed them to join and also you know, obviously gladiators. So we have no idea how quickly his force swelled, but the Romans were quite slow to react just as they had been in the previous two slave rebellions which takaking place in Sicily between one hundred thirty five and one thirty two BC and one hundred four and one hundred BC. So this is why if someone searches Spartacus today, you might also see the words the Third Servile W. Correct, correct. This was the third and biggest by far slave rebellion and the previous two had rumbled on for years because the Romans They had a very low opinion of slaves. Well, there's only slaves. What do we care? So When they decided to act the Senate being the ruling body of Rome at the time, there were no emperors, remember They sent a they they designated this rebellion as a tumultuous as in the word tumultuous. which is basically just an upset. It wasn't a bellum, it wasn't a war because it was just slaves. This is a little problem. A little problem. So little problem equals we don't need to send real soldiers. this time you know, not in an active massive war like they were against Hannibal, for example, the Republic had four legions each year and they were commanded by two consuls, the most senior magistrates of the Roman Republic. So each consul had two legions. They didn't send them. They sent a praetor who was a justice lower down the ranking to a consul, of which there were either six or eight. They sent a praetor called Caius Claudius Glber And he didn't have any troops because the troops the only sort of troops that were ready to go would have been the Consuls Legions. So he quite possibly recruited veterans and just men from towns or from Rome. It's like a town watchatch kind of thing. Yeah, way on his way south. But what we know is that he had about three thousand men by the time he reached Vesuvius the area of Vesuvius. And let's say Spardacus had a couple of hundred men by this point, maybe more, but probably not very many more. Certainly nothing to compare with three thousand ar well armed, there would have been Roman soldiers even if they were of dubious quality. Now, Vesus is pretty big, so Glabber couldn't surround it completely, but what he did was he blocked the road up to it. There was only one road up to the top and set up camp and presumably had sentries in and maybe watch posts separated around the base of mount. and we don't know But what we do know is that he sat and waited to see what would happen. And one of the things that's pertent to mention at this point is that Generally in ancient times, nobody fought at night. The night was the domain of gods and demons and spirits. and it was really bad luck. Now obviously they didn't have infrared, they didn't have radios. so it was very confusing and easy to get lost all those things So Spartacus attacked the camp at night, but how did he get down there? It's really, really, really cool what he did There were and still are, wild vines growing on the slopes of Mount Suvius today. and they fashioned ropes from them. Now we're not talking about going down a vertical cliff because they're not strong enough to take the weight of a man. But a lot of the slopes coming down of Vesuvius are really steep and potentially covered in scree and gravel type surface and would have been very dangerous and difficult to come down, especially if you're carrying weapons. So they fashioned ropes and came down at night. in an area where the Romans weren't watching and they attacked the Roman camp under the cover of darkness and caused total panic. I mean, I had such fun writing scenes like this because What's likely I mean in a Roman army on the March when it finishes, it digs out a two to three meter six to nine foot deep V shaped ditch and then uses the earth from that to make a two to three meter high wall If it's doing its job properly, but maybe Glab's men haven't done it properly because what a weekend. there're only slaves. So they may not have even had a rampart at all. if they did it wasn't high enough or there weren't enough sentries. anyyway. Total panic and Glabber's men just fled. They just ran off into the night, basically abandoning their camp and all their arms and equipment assumably some of them were killed, but it didn't really matter because suddenly Bpartx's men had the arms and armor potentially of three thousand soldiers And At this time, the slave population of Italy is estimated to been over a million, at least a third of the population. And in that rich fertile area full of farms and estates, high density of slave population, you can bet your boots that the gossip around the well or the gossip in the marketplace of slaves meeting each other on the road with wagons or You know, whenever there was a point for slaves of one estate to talk to others, it would have just gone around the country like wildfire. The story would have been in the form of Pompei, you know, all of those places. That's Ebody The citizens would have been talking about. would have the citizens would have been terrified. but the slaves, importantly would' have said, did you hear what happened? And I mean, literally from that point on the slaves were flocking to his army because Some slaves lived in manacles. But mostly they didn't, or if they did, it was at night, if they were agricultural and in domestic cases they probably were never chained up. So they could just run away. And actually their fetters, even if they did come to in fetters, they then later used them to make weapons. I mean, the weapons part I'd like to ask a bit more about because you mentioned how They early on They fortunately come across that wagon of weapons for a gladiator school. Now, weapons for Gadiators They were like army weapons, but normally slightly different. They're a bit more specialized for the whole spectacle of a gladiator fight. Can you imagine the weapons that they started with when they were fighting this First Makeshift army, three thousand soldiers. were maybe slightly different to the ones that they acquired after bat. They weren't that different. The glladius used by Gadiators was the same as a military one. You're saying it's exactly the same. Yeah. And the spear that the Gaul used We don't know, but it was probably just the same as any other spear. It wouldn't have been apeelum. Now the Thracian gladiator used a sica, which is the curved Thracian blade. that's more what I'm thinking of. Yeah, that' specialized because only a Thracian warrior would have used one of them. So they may have had some of them. but I mean in the nighttime you're wielding one of even if you've if it's sharp and you chop someone with it, it Maybe's more the armor as well, I guess Yeahly Yeah. well, again, the leegionary's Gabor commander would have had the armor, we think, and weapons of a typical Republican legionary, which was maail shirt, simple Montefertino helmet larger shield than you're used to seeing on TV, a Republican skeuton which is bigger top and bottom and curved and one or two throwing javelins and probably a dagger as well. So you know great equipment for if you're trained how to use weapons just because you've never used a particular, you know, if you've used one kind of gun, it's usually quite easy to work out how to use another type of gun. So still wants to ask because it's interesting to think about how they're now G it out Well it brings us on to the, which we'll talk about later his successors in battle. didid he train them in the Roman fashion? becausecause it's quite possible indeed, there's even a suggestion there may have been a Roman to them to do that because at the time There was a general called Sertorius who was in Spain. Y, who was a rebel against the Republic And there is some reference in the texts to potentially, and obviously I used it in my novels, a Roman soldier from Sertorius coming to Italy and joining Spartacus agingent to help train his men because that would help bring down the Republic, which would help Sertorius. I love the story of Sertorius inerms what a story he isain Yeah. So amazing you think that there could be a link But what do we know from the sources about the aftermath of the Vesuvius victory for Spartacus? So More slaves join his forces? Yeah, so it's thought that he broke out of the Ludas or the Gladiator School in the spring of ' seventy three BC and that he was un Vesuviious into the summer of ' seventy three BC when Glabor came to basically get beaten and run away. And then that the army swelled in size massively, potentially beyond ten thousand, potentially up to thirty thousand or even more a really big force. Now obviously most of them would not have been trained soldiers And so despite the size of this army which now came down off Vesuvius and started moving south because they needed food. So tens of thousands of men, whether they're slaves or regionaries, they need an awful lot of food. You're talking hundreds of tons of food every day And so they're like a plague of locusts. so God forbid you were a Roman citizen in Forum Anei, for example, which was a small Roman town south of near Nola and Nusyria, which are two other towns which were probably attacked by Spartacus, which was descended upon by Spartacus' army at that time And basically You just imagine what they did. They did everything horrible that you can imagine killed and rariped and murdered And it's thought that Spartacus didn't want that to happen Interestingly, some of the sources describe him as a man of great not just great strength, but of intellect and someone who was not a savage. Right. Okay you could argue that they did that because it was common just like descriptions of Hannibal Barker When you've got somebody who's basically handed the repepublic its own backside on a plate multiple times over, you can't denigrate him and make him out to be useless and stupid and savage.ble barbarian. So the noble barbarian, because how else could he have beaten us? Yeah. They do with Pyrus and Tanibal They do it with everybody. Yeah, yeah ye. because the Romans, let's face it everybody. The Romans are racist, misogynistic and homophobic for the most part. So if you were non Roman, you know you really were looked down. You've seen as the other the other with a capital O, ye. And so is that very much his strategy whether he liked it or not for the following months following that victory overlibber whilst the forces are growing, they're still all together. But there's the need for food And it is just kind of those local rich Twns and settlements that feel the brunt of the force? Yes. ye They moved down the west coast of Italy right down to the arch of the boot. And so the bit that's between the heel and the toe whichich has got a great big sort of massive bay, if you like.'s the Bay of Terreum. the Bay of Torerentum where Toronto is now, but west of Toronto. Torreonto is over near the heel of the boot. We're talking about places like Thurrii and Metapontum. Wh were towns, which were towns that were attacked by Spartacus and we've got examples in the countryside. I think There is a villa they found near there in which they found a pot of coins and a piece of gold jewelry buried and the carbon dating dates it to about seventy three BC or seventy five BC. So it's possible that it was buried by a panicked landowner who was hearing of this slave army because if you lived in the countryside, I mean you just got out quickly and went to the local town and there's another building that's been found in that area with a burnt stoa, which is like a facade at the front of a building and that may be from that time as well are these fascinating little finds that you you know we all want to link to things because it makes sense. But if the carbon dating works, then it certainly is possible. It immediately makes me think of something like the Fenneic treasure in Colchester Yeah, which is linked to like a Roman family caring it. back That's definite because it's below the ash layer from the destruction of Colchester by Buddigaz army. I show that image in talks I do and I say This is from such a date in sixty eightD. We don't know exactly when in sixty eighty, but it's so rare to have an exact date The best one for that is the loaf of bread from the oven in p.. And that was baking when Vesuvius went boom. Yeah on that day. So I sometimes have a best before date with an arrow in the slide when I'm showing it to people. And most people don't get it The makeup of this army when they're in southern Ialy. Is it very much Spartus the charismatic leader? He is the commander in chief and the sol general? Do we know much else about the command structure? We do. We know that his force initially was made up of Cels, i. e. Gauls, although there were couts from in Thrace as well, but probablyro primarily from Gaul and Germans, very warlike people. Now probably some Thracians as well. We do have a few names. We have the name Inamaus and we have the name Crixus, Crixus. Both of whom were Gauls And look, these would have been alpha males, all of them. There would have been no, o, Spartacus, you're the boss. It would have been, well, you've got the ideas, but maybe I've got some ideas. and it would not have been happy camp. They wouldn't have been doing what he told them. and that was evident fairly soon after the rebellion began. but They certainly went along with what he was doing for the moment as they moved down into the south and obviously that far south, the winters are milder. So they spent the winter of seventy three into seventy two BC in the Bay of Toronto and then started moving north again in spring of seventy two BC And by this point the Romans were taking a bit more seriously and they sent another praetor by the name of Verinius with several senior officers and a force of we don't know how many, but certainly potentially Some thousands of men. Okay, You know, not bigger than Glabourers. Yeah.'s bigger than Glabourers. Yeah. N legion, not under a consul still, but stronger in force and things started to happen to them pretty much straight away The sources are so scant when you're writing novels as I do When you get handed a scene that's so amazing and funny that you couldn't make it up, it's like winning the lottery. And so what happened to one of Verinius' officers, who was a man called Cassinius, was literally laugh out loud He was in command of two thousand men, so that obviously Verinus' army was not marching together. and they were marching south to find Spartagus and hot day He found a local villa which had a swimming pool, as some big Roman villas did And he had presumably said to the owner, lookook, I'm very hot and bothered. Do you mind? And the officer was probably delighted to have some Roman soldiers in the vicinity? protecting his house. Of course, so he was in this swimming pool. having a nice time and Spartacus's men literally appeared in the grounds of the villa in the swimming pool Wh he was in the swimming pool and he literally jumped on his horse. Now in my book, I had him jump on his horse naked. It was that bad. Whether he had his clothes on or not, we don't know, but he fled for his life pursued by Spartus his men and was attacked in his camp. sururvived, but thousands of his men were killed a massive defeat for the Romans And then this began to happen in quick succession. So another officer of averus was called furious qu he was probably furious. He got beaten as well ambushed They still weren't facing the Romans in open battle, but it all went wrong. There was another officer called Tyanius, I think he was, and he got beaten as well. And so in very quick succession in a matter of a few months, the Romans just suffered defeat after defeat by Spartacus' army, which presumably led to even more slaves joining his army because it's thought by At some point anyway, at the height of his rebellion, he had as many as fifty or sixty thousand men following him. So they're starting to realize that hang on, this guy we're fighting against He actually does know how to effectively combat The Romans he's playing to his strings, like ambushes and the like. Yeah. And by this point, having defeated so many Roman armies just like Hannibal did after Trassemine, they would have been pillaging the corpses for their armor and their swords and their spears and their shields. So a lot of his men were probably fighting with Roman weaponry, looking like Roman soldiers maybe racially different or whatever, but This is where it starts to get really interesting. We know that they'd caught wild horses during the winter down in the Bay of Toronto and they were using cavalry. So whether they were Thracans or other the Gauls were renowned horsemen as well. So At this point, I mean, I had, in my novels, a Setorian officer teaching them how to fight like Romans and Spartacus teaching them how to fight like Thracian cavalry. Whatever they did, we know as as the story unfolds that they beat the Romans again and again, even in open battle A lot of people will tell you who don't know, Ohh, well, Spardagus, what did he do? He never beat the Romans in open battle. Absolutely he did. He beat both consonsuls in open battle. Did he We'll talk about that in a minute, but yeah So that you couldn't do that unless your army was well trained and well drilled. You just couldn't because even if those legions weren't five years of war against Hannibal battle hardened. They were still Roman legaries in a trained legion who could beat just about anybody. And at the same time keeping the logistics networks up that they must have sorted with know, whether it's still raiding the nearby towns or taking advantage of the rich lands of Formerly Magna, Gaea, you know the Greek cities and all of that stuff to their benefit. Interestingly, he didn't let silver or gold. I mean, it probably did happen a bit, but he didn't let silver or gold come into his camps. You were only allowed to bring iron. because he didn't want people fighting over money. Really? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. He was a dude. G a chance askcause U the Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the poisonous cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and Shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. There are new episodes every week Right, so how do we go from those successful ambushes and chasing away that guy naked from the swimming pool to this You know, this pitched battle against two consuls. Yeah. so by this point, the slave arrmy had broken up. Crixus had had enough. He's decided He's decided you know what? actuallyctually I'm I'm I'm not I'm not going to take order is probably from you anymore. and he'd split away from by this point and they his army, which they think was between twenty and thirty thousand strongs, so potentially a big chunk of Spartacus's army. It went over to the east coast of Italy and was presumably pillaging its way through settlements and towns up there because nothing would have been able to stop it But by this point the Romans had realized, the Senate had realized that they had to face this with proper force. And so both consuls were mobilized and sent to deal with it. and one of them Who interestingly was a man in his sixties with not much combat experience called Gelius Galiaus Publac Cola He was sixty two years old. so that's really old for a Roman. and he encountered Crixus near Mount Gargganao. Now if you're if you look at a map of Italy and you go up from the heel of the boot and the toe of the boot On the Adriatic side, about a third of the way up, there's a bump, like a callus Yes, ye. And it's near the town of Bari. and that callus or bump, if you zone in it on Google with you're looking at the terrain, it's a mountain called Mount Garggano Mbe it was a volcano a very long time ago, but that's on the slopes of that mountain is where the Romans put their forces So they took the high ground, they were outnumbered significantly, ten thousand roughly soldiers, two legions with maybe some socii or auxiliaries. We don't know, but about ten thousand soldiers. Those the non citizen comm I mean, or maybe maybe the legion was five thousand strong then, you know, because who knows how big a Legion was and all that aboutbout ten thousand Romans a lot but about thirty thousand slaves And they attacked up the slope at Gelius' army and apparently attacked three or four times and were beaten back. And now the Romans Instead of doing the normal triplex AC formation, which is three ranks having four cohorts in the front rank, three cohorts in the second and three in the third, slightly staggered. So the gaps in the front line are covered from behind by the cohorts in the second line and likewise the gaps in the second line covered by theaps by the cohorts in the third line employed in a duplex AC', so a more concentrated fashion. But regardless of being outnumbered, they absolutely butchered the unfortunate slave army and Crixus Died fighting They were very brave. There was a battle where the Romans defeated the Gauls some thirty or forty years before where not a single Gaul was recorded to have run away And in a later battle, which I'll mention, which happened to another breakaway section of Spartacus' army, only two of the twelve thousand three hundred dead were found to have wounds in their backs So they died, you know, they were brave, but that was that was the end to them. And that would have really weakened Spartacus's forces. W would have shook them that they really would have shook them as well. Yeah. So by this point The other consul, who if my memory serves me had one of those dreadfully long fore named Roman name, but I think Lentulus was the last one. He's known as Lentulus and he went in pursuit of Spartacus and Spartacus probably aware just from the Bush teelegraph that what had happened to Crixus and that he would soon have two consular armies after him. so he knew he'd have to fight it wouldd be better to fight one and then have the other. So he ambushed Lentilus's army, okay, he ambushed him, but they still absolutely thrashed the Romans He was then pursued by Gelius Soon after that, nothing survived of the battle except that he beat Gelius.. So maybe it was ammbush, but this is two consular armies. he's just beaten one after another He then continued north and came down out of the Apennines mountains to near the modern day town of Medina, which was known as Mutinat of the Romans and was there faced by a consular size army under a proconsul, whose name was Linus. Cassius Linus, father of one of Julius Caesar's murdrs or assassins. And he beat him as well in open battle And al right, he had a bigger army, but he' still proper Roman army. And then you have this, which again, your listeners and viewers will be aware of this moment where the slave army having defeated every Roman army in its path has nothing to stop it leaving the Roman Republic Nothing but the Alps. Yes, because they've gone from Campania to the south Th then, you know, mutinous all way north. All the way north. Yeah defefeating everyone as they come. Yeah Do they just keep going north towards the out? Well, this is the whole story. so you know, historians think that Spartacus must have wanted to leave because why else did he go that way And maybe he did or maybe he didn't. I think that makes that makes sense to me The fact is that his army turned around and then marched south again And we don't know why. now There are probably loads of masters essays on it and PhD theories about it and academics love to argue about it. We simply don't know. The sources don't tell us So you've got to Was it because autumn was coming and the Alps are a significant barrier? Was it because They had spent the last year and more literally doing what they wanted up and down Italy and had beaten everybody. The Japanese during World War I, when they were moving really fast and taking everything in their path, like Singapore and all the islands in the Pacific They had a term that they called victory disease. it's like you, supporters of Man United back in the nineties. When you keep winning, you just think you're always going to win. Well, why would we leave now? What are the Romans going to do to us? We can beat anybody Just one more army to beat. J one more army to beat. Yeah. So Spartacus obviously could have left himself. So that's what I thought about. We interesterestingly we know that he had a wife who was a priestess of Dionysus. So I had her as a character in the book. We know almost nothing about her except that she interpreted a dream of his before the rebellion when he had a snake wound around his head in this well, supposedly it happened, but as anyone who knows about snakes is snakes don't do that Regardless of whether it was a dream, it was portent of him having a great and terrible power. And in the days of when everyone was a pagan and Roman generals, including Sulla had used sears in their campaigns, this would have been potentially very powerful for Spartacus to use. So he had a wife with him, we think if he'd gone, you know turned right and just headed across through Slovenia towards Thrace Who would have found him? now? I think the Romans would have gone after him because They were famous for revenge being a dish bestest een cold. Look what they did with Germanicus in his raids into Germany after the Ving disaster. I mean they waited five or six years withinius, yes. and then they crossed over the Rhine and they practiced genocide for a couple of years. But maybe he suspected that. who knows? Maybe, even though he wanted to leave He didn't want to leave his army because he by this stage he was the undisputed leader and he had a big army and, you know, people have big egos. So Who knows isn't it for whatever reason, he doesn't. Whatever reason he didn't he turned around and they marched south again and some of the sources say they then met the double consonsular armies of Lentilus and Gallius and beat them in open battle as well er whichich is just extraordinary. Quite extraordinary. So they bypassed Rome. someome people said, Oh, why didn't they attack Rome? I mean, that's nonsense. Rome had twenty five to thirty foot high walls and a double legion in size. They didn't have siege engines There was no way they were ever going to do sameame tanable, isn't it? You, it's not worth the effort of doing. No. And I'm sure you'll come to it about whether he wanted to abolish slavery or not. We'll come to that maybe at the end. But he continued south past Rome to you know, happy hunting grounds below Rome in Campania and further south. And by this point, they encountered another Roman force, which is small, but beat that too By this point, the Roman senators realized this is really serious. We need a massive army. And so in came Marcus Licinius Crassus. Right. Okay. Yeah So who is Marcus Linius Crassus? He was a remarkable individual. There's a bust that survives of him and if it's He was a miserable looking gif. Yes. Really serious, frowning, doesn't look happy. A lot of stress mark. A lot of stress mark. Yeah, you know, like bull neck But he he was a very clever man, a very able man in many ways. He was from a family which had had mixed fortunes. So in the civil wars, in the sort of twenty years before or fifteen to twenty years before this, his father had committed suicide when he wouldn't back Marius. and so the young Crassus had had to flee to Spain and he ended up joining the army of Sulla who was marching on Rome and when Sulla was attacking Rome and his army was losing the battle to take Rome, it was Crassus on the right flank who actually won the battle for Sulla But he then fell foul of Sullah, although made himself very rich during the proscriptions. So you supported you supported the wrong guy. so did you were taking your property. and he was very good at doing that and indeed may have added someone's name to the list who hadn't been a supporter of the previous regime. He was also astute at fire was a really big problem in ancient Rome because most buildings were made of wood and streets were really narrow, so fire spread very readily, No fire brigade, no aqueducts at this time He had his own private fire brigade of slaves. so when a street was busy burning down, he'd come along Let's say there was a wine merchants at the end of the street which wasn't burning yet and he would be there with his fire brigade of slaves with, you know instruments to pull down buildings to stop a fire from spreading. And the wine merchant would say, Well, save my property. And he'd say, off course'lly I'll buy your business from you for ten percent of what it's worth. It wasn't just how much youre going to pay me? I'm going to take your business. I'm going to take your business.. they would say, Well, of course I'm not going to give you that. And he'd just wait for the fire to come closer and then he'd wait till he could get it at a knockown price and then save the business. So he was ruthless. saavage. Ruthless However, he was so rich that he was able to personersally pay for six legions. to be put into the field. And we know the cost It was approximately a million Denari to support a legion for a year And later in his life, Krassus said, You're not rich unless you can pay for aegion And he paid for six six. So thirty thousand, nearly thirty thousand men twenty four to thirty thousand men in the field and he was given the four legions of the two consuls as well. So he suddenly over a period of months, obviously, but more or less suddenly had an army of ten legions well So this is what he went to face Spartagus with. So he's now got a sizable army at his back. They're deciding we've got to deal with Spartacus now. Yeah. And Spartacus in the meantime, has he just been I'm sure he's hearing the reports of what's happening. Yeah. but he's been marching south straight. He was because by now we're into sort of the summer coming towards autumn of seventy one BC. Sorry, seventy two BC, I beg your pardon. And he wasn't going to go north again because he would have heard of Krassus's army and that's where they'd come from anyway. So they would have been raiding farms and towns for food. equipment and so on and Crassus pursued him down towards southern Italy, and his army would have been moving in different parts and A leading part of his army was led by an officer called Mumius and he was given very strict instructions to get close to Spartacus but not to engage with him So he had a force of two legions under his control And in the way that often happens when men's blood is up. He got too close to Spartacus and his troops started fighting, Mbe they were scouts and maybe he deployed some legionaries. It developed into a battle and they got beaten. And they came with their tails between their legs back to Crassus' camp and Crassus decided that he had to lay down a really certain deliberate message that you do not run away from the enemy in battle. And so he ordered it's thought, a full cohort to be decimated Right, okay This is gruesome stuff. What is a destination? So I'm quite pedantic as your readers might have asthamed our readers. sorry, viewers and listeners might have assthamed by this point Deimation, the meaning of decimation is actually different today And it's happened because of ignorance Because decimation today, if you hear a news reporter talking about it, it means annihilation. If a town is being decimated or an army unit' being decimated, almost none of them survive However It comes from the Roman punishment. So this is the correct interpretation, which is one man in ten will be executed, in fact, beaten to death in front of his the rest of the legion by his comrades. So fifty men or forty eight men out of a cohort of four hundred and eighty beaten to death in front of the army and that brutal message meant that none of Crass' soldiers ran away after that. So I get ask this a lot. Well, if the Romans were forever, you know using the Fustuarium, which is where you beat a few men to death or the decimation, if they were always doing that, then how did they ever have any men to fight because they would have been executing all these men? You don't have to do something like that very often You know, do it once and it'll work for years before men run away again. Yes, it doesn't seem to be been a very regular punishment. The only other example that comes immediately to my mind is with another rebel. A few decades later, Takfarinas in North Africa Wh I think there's a similar case of a Roman army going out being beaten by Tacherinus being over conffident and then the commander in chief orders another destimation. So yes brutal but doesn't seem to be very regular It was very rare. Deesimation is only described three or four times in all of the Roman battles that and say, well happens after this. So Mummius is attack has not gone well and they've had this brutal punishment But it seems like Spartacus he's getting nearer and nearer Sicily of all places. Yeah. So he ended up going down into the toe of the boot to nearer Regium, which I think is Reium. Regio today. Yeah. And listeners and viewers will know that it's really close to Sicily. You can see it it's a mile, about a mile which is near enough to see details distance in ancient times is as far as the moon when you haven't got ships because the waters and we're now into autumn time would have been very uncertain. You had the myth, obviously of the whirlpool, Chirbidus and the mythical Beast, the Sclla that killed sailors that would try to go through it. but Roman ships in general were pretty bad. so that episode from Odysseus the Siller is the straighter messina is straight That's right thereah. And so point some pirates come into the equation because Pirate activity in the Mediterranean at this time was rife. I mean, Crete, particularly, but also Cilicia, which was an area of Turkey, were known for their piracy. And there was no Royal Navy, there was no American navy, there was no navy to patrol the sea. So the pirates really, they in fact helped drive the slave trade. And they did what they liked. We know that Spartacus met with some of these pirates and paid for two thousand of his men to cross over to Sicily. Now there wouldn't have been maybe enough money or ships or time to get his whole army over, but presumably what they were to do was to cross over and get a beachhead and maybe get some ships and come back for the rest pirates do what pirates do and they took his money and they sailed away. Now maybe did the Romans pay them off? you know, if Crassus heard, they could have got two payments. One from Spartacs and then a bigger one from Crass. I think Crassus can pay more, Yeah Crassus can pay more. So I you know, it's so long since I wrote those novels. I think I might have had the pirate captain go up and do a deal with the Romans, you know Hey, if you pay me more, I won't go and do this. I can't remember, but it's certainly possible. What we do know is that Spartx's men then tried to build some rafts. and were unsuccessful. Likely some of them drowned and they just had to give up on crossing to Sicily. By this point, Crassus legions were really close. They were in the the point of the boot. So the route back to mainland, Italy was blocked. Now any of you who've ever been that part of the world, you know that there are mountains going all the way down to Reggio and they're really high. I mean, they're up to a thousand meters, I think, and winter was here. And so It's recorded that Krass has built a wall from one side of the point of the boot to the other. In other words, from the Ionian No, from the Ionian Sea to the Adriatic. Now that's about fifty k, thirty five miles. Even when they built the siege in Numantia, that was only a fraction of that distance of fortifications. And they've had precedent for it because the Greek tyrant of Syracuse Dionysius, I think he did something similar. He built a wall over that across that area So people had done that before. But as academics that I've read have pointed out, if you go to that area, a lot of it's completely impassable with cliffs and so on. So there's actually only a few areas. the coastline on each side and the ridge at the top of the mountains, which is only about three quarters of a mile wide or just over a K. So the fortifications that Krass has had his men built may not have been that big, but he was still able to defend it And so Spartacus was basically trapped during the winter in this inhospitable area where there would have been very few settlements very little food other than what they could hunt And when they tried to break through the Roman fortifications, ditches, ramps, walls and everything, they failed initially And it wasn't until in utter desperation then in late winter seventy two, early ' seventy one BC They filled the ditches with wood, animal carcasses and even the bodies of the dead And this was having crucified a Roman soldier in view of the Roman defenses to show his own men, this is what would happen to them if they gave up They smashed through the Roman fortifications and broke away. They managed to get away. Now some sources say it was only some of his army, some say it was all. We don't know, but they did get away. Certainly a substantial amount of them got away. So they managed to get the North side, I guess. The North side Yeah. and that's where you had another force of slaves break away. mayaybe as many as ten thousand under the leadership. This is where we have two other names so rare with the Spartx Rebellion, but Castus and Ganicus potentially Gauls whod just had enough or we don't know, but they broke away from Spartacus's army and They were attacked by Crassus arrmy, but fortunately were still close enough for Spartacus to come to their aid and he drove off Crass' army, but then they split up again And Crassus waited until he was further away and attacked Cassus and Ganicus again. And that's when I mentioned of twelve thousand three hundred bodies. only two had wounds in the back. Right? They were pretty much wiped out And so by this point, Spartacus's army was presumably quite depleted. Again, we don't know, but still some tens of thousands of men strong And they were moving north I don't know what he must have been thinking because he knew that ten leegions were on his tail. Oh yeah. And they were being hounded by Crassus at this point. And there are a couple of places where we think the final battle might have been againain, because there have been no archaeological finds to prove it. It's really, really difficult to prove ancient battlefies, as I'm sure you know very rare to be able to say with certainty, but a plausible one is near a small town or village more like called Oliveeto Chitra on the banks of the modern day river Celle, which is the Soalarnus in ancient times, which is north of Pistem before Soalerno. So not far from Soerno, modern Soalerno. And I've been there. I mean, I've actually driven this entire route. I've driven from Medina to Redio and almost back when I was researching the novel, I've been to all the places in the book that we know of that he it was, and I've been to Oliveto Chitra and It's a perfect place for a battlefield. It's got mountains on both sides. There's a river in the bottom, but there's a big flat area on one side of the river. It's a big wide area. It's big enough for an army to deploy. And we know that it started with Crassus putting his camp quite close to Spartacus' one being provocative. and his men were digging ditches when some of Spartacus' horsemen attacked them. Maybe they were trying to panic. The Romans, we don't know, but what then happened is both armies deployed. This was something that was very slow. in ancient times, it probably would have taken a couple of hours and that the two armies then attacked each other. Krass is watching from the back of a horse behind the front line, but able to see Spartagus And again, this is a later source, but I love the scene because so I had to put it in the book. And we have evidence of a Thracian leader doing this in a battle later that was recorded. He led out his stallion in front of his army and sacrificed it to the gods It's horrible he killed a horse, but what he was doing was giving the a very powerful blood sacrifice to the gods to request their help, but he was also showing his men he wasn't going to run away. running. I am with you No matter what. And as I say, there is an example of a Thracian chieftain about seventy or eighty years later fighting a Roman army who killed his own horse in front of the Romans and told his men that he would eat the Roman commanders' intestines If he won the battle now, I don't think he did. But anyway, Spardacus didn't promise that, but he led from the front, which is obviously very dangerous and the battle was brutal And He went straight for Crassus because you cut the head off of the dragon and the army will run And we know that he killed two centurions on his way to Crassus. Really? So we were talking in an episode the other day about centurions and how brave they were and how they led They were the sort of inspired leaders for the Roman leegion. So to kill two centurions is quite something. And then there are two accounts of how he died. One is that he was wounded in the thigh by a spear. and that he went down on one knee and continued to fight until he was overcome. And another one is that he was abandoned by all his men which I don't think would have happened, but that he fought on unt until he was killed. And interestingly, to show you that he was a plain, simple man, his body was never found. In other words, he wasn't covered in loads of special armor or valuable pieces of equipment. He just looked like another soldier or another slave And so he fell and his body was not found, and his army just went to pieces. And the Romans did what the Romans did They they killed. they only lost apparently a thousand of their own soldiers which I I have to say, I think is a low figure. They may have been underestimating it or know lying because it looks better, but they killed thousands and thousands of slaves who then fled into the surrounding countryside Indeed, five thousand of them were met. By this stage, you had Roman generals being called in from everywhere. There was a guy called Lentulus, another Lentulus who had landed at Bundisi, Ancient Brundisium, and actually I forgot to say, Spartx had thought about going that way, but heard that Lentulus had landed in Brundisium, so couldn't And then you had Pompe had been recalled as well and he came marching down the main road from Rome and slaughtered five thousand fugitives from Spartacus's army. And how that all links up is that Pompey, the lays of Pompe the Great had been fightingoriousorious potential all in Spain and coming back from that. So it all kind of links up It all links up. Yeah, and it gets political then because Crassus had obviously won the bigger battle, and Pompey had just looked upon a small section of the army who was running away anyway. But he was closer to Rome. So he sent a message to the Senate saying that he had torn out the roots of the rebellion. and he got more credit than Cass who was really angry be pissed with. He was so angry. And then he was later not given a triumph whereas Pompe was of his victory over Sertorius, which he shouldn't have been because Sertorius was a citizen. Yeah. But he was given a triumph. because you can bend the rules. And Poro Crassus was only given an ovatio, which was one step below a triumph and you were only allowed to wear a myrtle wreath, not a laurel wreath, but he petitioned the Senate because a myrtle wreath wasn't good enough. So they allowed him to have a laurel wreath crown even though it was only a Novatio. I'm sure he could have paid for it if he wanted to. wanted the praise did. Andvatio where we get aation for Yes. Yeah, avation. ye. So it sounds like then there's no real I'mpartacous moment, although it's still a testament to, you know, the fact that how charismatic he must have been, how it all fell apart when he died. But for the people that aren't killed, for the slaves for the rebels that Don't die at that battle or in the aftermath and have the misfortune of being taken alive by the Romans, what is their ultimate fate Not all of them were crucified, but six thousand of them were. and this is the largest mass crucifixion of ancient history. It was equalled once by Octavian Augustus after the Battle of Actium but never even came close with any other crucifixion. So prisoners were marched to Capua, which is about seventy miles from the battlefield and the main Roman road, which was via Appia, which had run from the south but continued through Capua to Rome Ab about one hundred and thirty odd miles between the two cities and I worked out the maths It's about one crucifix every forty yards or forty meters for more than one hundred and thirty miles So you would be able to see countless numbers. If you were a merchant or a traveler, you would be. And what's telling as well is Sometimes they would take them down. sometometimes they wouldn't guard the crucified people. But Cassus had soldiers guarding the crucified people even at night and their bodies were not taken down until they had rotted. So the smell through the summer of seventy one BC was to been indescribably awful, but what this Barrack Act did was it delivered in the most graphic terms possible to every slave in Italy You rebel against the Rublic. This is what happens to you. and there was never again another slave rebellion. You have so brilliantly retold this story that I know you delve into so much detail about you've created in your novels What do you think then was the ultimate significance of the revolt of Spartus? It sounds like the Romans harshly, but they do learn their lessons from it Yeah, they learned their lessons. and you modern historians and modern people took Spartacus to their heart. So Voltaire before the French Revolution wrote about this being the only just war in history. You then had Engels and Marx writing about him and bringing him into the public consciousness. There was a man called Toussain Luvertur who was a former slave in what is now Haiti. The Haitian Revolution literally based his rebellion against the French on Spartacus and won freedom for his country And was then you know taken prisoner afterwards. But you then coming through into the twentieth century, you had a German communist organization called the Spartacus League who idolized him, moving forward, you had Soviet politicians holding him up as an example. thenen Howard Fast famously, an American communist, Yes, there was a thing as an American communist