Spartacus

Summary

The Ancients – "Spartacus" (May 31, 2026)
Host: Tristan Hughes
Guest: Ben Kane (Roman historical novelist)

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Episode Overview

In this compelling episode of The Ancients, host Tristan Hughes welcomes bestselling author Ben Kane for an in-depth exploration of Spartacus, the enslaved Thracian gladiator who led the most famous slave revolt against the Roman Republic in 73–71 BC. Their discussion moves beyond the Hollywood myth, delving into the complexities and uncertainties of Spartacus’s life, the realities of slavery in the Roman world, the structure and tactics of the rebel army, and the war’s enduring significance for Rome and posterity.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Sources and Historical Challenges

[05:44–07:10]

• Sparse Evidence: Only around 4,000 words survive about Spartacus in ancient sources, spread fragmentarily between authors like Sallust, Appian, Plutarch, and Livy.
  • Ben Kane: “Less than 4,000 words survive about Spartacus from ancient texts. To translate that, that's 10 pages of a book.” [05:54]
• Multiple, Contradictory Accounts: These fragments often contradict each other, and much is lost or only glimpsed in passing references or poems.

2. Spartacus’s Origins

[07:15–09:31]

• Thracian Heritage: Universally acknowledged as Thracian (from modern-day Bulgaria), possibly from the Odrysi or Maedi tribes, though his precise origins and real name remain debated.
• Military Background: Likely served as an auxiliary in the Roman army, possibly as cavalry during campaigns such as those against Mithridates.
  • “He may have had kingly origins... But we know that he was Thracian and we know that he was a soldier in the service of the Roman Empire.” — Ben Kane [08:27]
• Wrongfully Enslaved?: One Roman source says Spartacus “was wrongfully enslaved”—a rare Roman admission—which Kane, as a novelist and self-confessed underdog fan, finds compelling.

3. Slavery in the Late Roman Republic

[14:29–17:28]

• Systemic and Massive: Post-Punic Wars, Rome’s campaigns produced hundreds of thousands of slaves, often former prisoners of war, feeding the economy and society’s demand.
  • “In the second century BC, it was over 200,000 slaves in a hundred years. So that's a lot.” — Ben Kane [16:53]
• Changing Agrarian Systems: The emergence of large estates staffed by slaves after smallholders left for the cities or army.

4. Gladiators and Gladiator Schools

[17:45–23:03]

• Gladiator Origins: Gladiatorial combat evolved from funerary ritual to mass entertainment and political tool.
• Capua – Gladiatorial Hub: Capua housed the principal gladiator school under Batiatus (or Vatia), where Spartacus was trained and possibly given his celebrated name.
• Fighting Style: Early gladiators like Spartacus may have fought as a Mirmillo, not a Thracian, perhaps to avoid over-identification with his origin.

5. The Escape and Early Revolt

[26:00–31:24]

• The Breakout: About 200 planned escape but only 70–80 gladiators escaped, improvising weapons from kitchen tools before procuring real arms.
  • “They smashed their way into the kitchen and used the implements that they found there, which were meat cleavers and even pestles...” — Ben Kane [26:00]
• Mount Vesuvius: Rebels took to Vesuvius, finding both seclusion and rich countryside to raid, building up their numbers with handpicked, physically capable slaves.

6. The Third Servile War (“The Spartacus War”)

[29:53–37:33]

• Rome’s Underestimation: Initially dismissed as a minor disturbance, Rome only sent lower-ranked commanders with hastily raised forces.
• First Major Victory: Spartacus’s forces used ingenuity—ropes from vines to descend Vesuvius and surprise Glaber’s 3,000 “citizen militias”—securing arms and rapid popularity.
  • “They fashioned ropes from… wild vines… and attacked the Roman camp under the cover of darkness and caused total panic.” — Ben Kane [31:24]
• Growing Success & Reputation: News and hope spread among slaves, swelling rebel ranks into the tens of thousands.

7. Roman Response Escalates

[41:29–47:46]

• Command and Army Structure: Spartacus, while the clear leader, shared power with other formidable figures such as Crixus, Enomaus, Castus, and Gannicus.
• Series of Roman Defeats: Multiple Roman commanders sent against him suffered major and at times even humiliating defeats—including famously the “naked officer fleeing the swimming pool” episode.
  • “He was in this swimming pool having a nice time and Spartacus men literally appeared in the grounds of the villa...” — Ben Kane [44:17]
• Military Evolution: The rebels grew more disciplined, adopting Roman tactics, scavenged better arms and armor, and even fielded cavalry.

8. Turning Points: The Consular Armies and the “Missed Escape”

[50:03–58:23]

• Army Splits and Roman Retaliation: Crixus and others broke off, with many rebels slaughtered in pitched battle. Yet Spartacus himself then defeated both Roman consular armies consecutively—a remarkable achievement.
• Alpine "What If?": Having routed Rome’s armies all the way to northern Italy, Spartacus appeared poised to escape beyond the Alps—but turned back. Why?
  • Disease of victory? Army unity? Weather? Reality remains a mystery.
  • “Maybe he suspected that...even though he wanted to leave, he didn't want to leave his army because...he was the undisputed leader and he had a big army and, you know, people have big egos...” [57:24]

9. Crassus and the Endgame

[58:50–73:12]

• Enter Crassus: Ruthless, unimaginably wealthy—funded six legions from his own purse—and relentless, Crassus at last marshaled overwhelming force.
• Brutality as Discipline: After an early setback, Crassus revived the ancient punishment of “decimation” (executing one in ten) to enforce discipline.
• Failed Crossing to Sicily: Spartacus attempted to escape to Sicily’s safer ground via pirate ships. The pirates, possibly bribed by Rome, took his gold and abandoned him.
  • “Pirates do what pirates do. And they took his money and they sailed away.” — Ben Kane [66:58]
• Crassus’s Siege: Crassus built fortifications across the toe of Italy, trapping the rebels in inhospitable territory for the winter.

10. Final Battles and Defeat

[73:31–78:02]

• Desperation and Death: Spartacus’s forces managed a dramatic, bloody breakout but were worn down by attrition and constant pursuit. The final battle—likely near Oliveto Chitra and the River Sele—saw Spartacus killed in hand-to-hand combat.
  • “He led from the front, which is obviously very dangerous. And the battle was brutal... But he led out his stallion in front of his army and sacrificed it to the gods.” — Ben Kane [70:19]
• Aftermath: Crassus crucified 6,000 survivors along the Appian Way as a terrible warning, ending rebellion.
  • “It was about one crucifix every 40 yards... and their bodies were not taken down until they had rotted.” [77:23]
• Pompey’s Political Undercutting: Pompey, returning from Spain, claimed final credit for the war—souring relations with Crassus and shaping Roman politics.

11. Legacy & Historical Significance

[78:20–80:40]

• Historic Impact: No major slave rebellion ever again threatened Rome; Spartacus became an icon for later revolutionaries.
  • “Voltaire... wrote about this being the only just war in history. You then had Engels and Marx writing about him, bringing him into the public consciousness... The Spartacus League... Soviet politicians...” — Ben Kane [78:20]
• Myth vs. Reality: Contrary to modern portrayals, ancient rebels (including Spartacus) did not seek to abolish the institution of slavery, but to win their own freedom.
  • “Back then, Spartacus was never about ending slavery... maybe you didn't want to be a slave. But he didn't want to end all slavery. He just wanted to be free.” — Ben Kane [80:08]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On surviving sources:
  “Less than 4,000 words survive about Spartacus... that's 10 pages of a book.” — Ben Kane [05:54]
• On slave society:
  “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.” — Ben Kane [17:07]
• On Roman brutality:
  “Not all of them were crucified, but 6,000 of them were. And this is the largest mass crucifixion of ancient history.” — Ben Kane [76:38]
• On Spartacus’s legacy:
  “Back then, Spartacus was never about ending slavery... He just wanted to be free.” — Ben Kane [80:08]
• On the enduring myth:
  “He’s one of the most recognized names from the whole of ancient history.” — Tristan Hughes [05:25]

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Timestamps of Key Segments

• [05:44] — Surviving historical sources and the challenge of reconstructing Spartacus’s life
• [07:15] — Spartacus’s origins and military background
• [14:29] — Structure and growth of slavery in the Roman Republic
• [17:45] — The rise and social function of gladiatorial combat
• [26:00] — The breakout from Capua and Vesuvius escape and first strike
• [29:53] — Early Roman responses and the tactics of Spartacus
• [41:29] — Army command and rebel structure, major defeats of Roman forces
• [50:03] — The split with Crixus and pivotal battles in northern Italy
• [58:50] — Crassus enters and shifts the balance: funding, discipline, tactics
• [65:14] — The failed attempt to escape to Sicily, pirate betrayal, and being outmaneuvered
• [70:19] — The final defeat and death of Spartacus
• [76:38] — Aftermath and mass crucifixion of survivors
• [78:20] — Lasting significance, revolutionary legacy, and mythology versus reality

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Conclusion

This episode offers a vivid, authoritative retelling of Spartacus’s spectacular rise and tragic fall, moving past the simplifications of pop culture to grapple with the complexities of ancient history. Ben Kane and Tristan Hughes detail not just the epic battles and personalities at play, but the social forces and historical ironies left in Spartacus’s wake. No matter how little we truly know, his legend endures—as rebel, rallying point, and mirror for our own ideals.

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Further Reading

Ben Kane’s Spartacus novels:

• Spartacus: The Gladiator
• Spartacus: Rebellion

Transcript

[Tristan Hughes]

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[Ben Kane]

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[Tristan Hughes]

It's done.

[Ben Kane]

The car is gone.

[Tristan Hughes]

I'm holding a check anyway.

[Ben Kane]

Carvana, give it a whirl.

[Tristan Hughes]

Love Ya.

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[Tristan Hughes]

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[Tristan Hughes]

Good morning on this swelteringly hot summer'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 are 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. Now on with the episode. He was the underdog who humiliated Rome. It was the rebellion that refused to die in 73 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. Instead, he led a daring breakout that turned a handful of desperate fighters into a roaming army, sparking a slave revolt that traversed 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. Welcome back to the show.

[Ben Kane]

Thanks, Tristan. It's lovely to be here and to

[Tristan Hughes]

talk about Spartacus, of all figures. You know this former gladiator who turns leader of this massive revolt? His name's become immortalized today. One of the most recognized names from the whole of ancient history.

[Ben Kane]

Correct. But the reason for that. Because his name was lost for more than a thousand years is because of modern history.

[Tristan Hughes]

Right. So how difficult is it for us today if his story has only recently been rediscovered, to sort fact from fiction?

[Ben Kane]

Incredibly difficult. As you probably know, less than 4,000 words survive about Spartacus from ancient texts. To translate that, that's 10 pages of a book. So you've got sometimes, I mean, for example, a complete cookbook by Hippicius 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 4,000 words, which is virtually nothing.

[Tristan Hughes]

So it's not just one text that talks about Spartacus story in detail. Those 4,000 surviving words are also split around various aspects that survive.

[Ben Kane]

Correct. We know there were more complete descriptions of them, for example, by Sallust, but they didn't survive. So they're fragmentary. Sometimes they're only a line in someone's poem or something like that. But.

[Tristan Hughes]

And so what are these types of sources that we have surviving? So you mentioned poems there.

[Ben Kane]

We've got poems, we've got text by Sallust, 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 Arrian 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.

[Tristan Hughes]

Roman historians and biographer like Plutarch as well. So they're the kind of figures that you have.

[Ben Kane]

And.

[Tristan Hughes]

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?

[Ben Kane]

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 conquered 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 Maedi tribe. That's M A E D I. But that comes from a presumption made by a German historian that the word describing which is Nomedikos or nomad, I think it's Nomedikos means that he was Maidai tribe. But I think most historians think that means he was a nomadic tribesman, which a lot Thracians were. So he may not have been Maedi at all. They were from the southwest of Thrace. He may have been Odysserei, which was a tribe on 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?

[Tristan Hughes]

Yes, the Spartacus.

[Ben Kane]

Yeah. And the Spartacid Sparadakos or something like that, I think.

[Tristan Hughes]

And the Odrysi, you know, for a time they were the biggest tribe in Thrace.

[Ben Kane]

Yes, they were very powerful for a time. He may have had, you know, kingly origins, but again, if that was his, if that was his real name, because it's not certain that it was. But if that, if that was his real name, he may have been named just because they wanted to, you know, have some show that he had similarities with 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 would have been a cavalryman because they were very skilled horse riders. And at the time of the rebellion, which was 73 to 71 BC, let's say he was a mature adult man. So he was in his 20s, maybe early 30s. 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 15 year war against the Romans. And the Romans were forever, you know, basically fighting them and used Thracians as

[Tristan Hughes]

their auxiliaries, among others, because 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 have 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 Mithridates lived.

[Ben Kane]

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 30 years before Julius Caesar and when there was a civil war 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 Mithridates was, which, you know, was not completely under Roman control, because although the Romans had a startlingly high success rate in Batt between 31 BC, which is the battle of Actium to 235 A.D. which is when the wheels started falling off. In that 266 year period, they had a success rate in battle of 70%, which is quite extraordinary. If you compare that to any sporting team and ask them to win 70% 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 Varro, wrongfully enslaved. So for Romans to admit that something was was done that was bad is very rare. So some Roman sources say that he was enslaved, but one of them says he was wrongfully enslaved. So I like to go with that one myself.

[Tristan Hughes]

And it's fun speculating about his time in the army and how he served the Thracians with their 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 all did that big two handed.

[Ben Kane]

The Rhomphea.

[Tristan Hughes]

The Rhomphea kind of bladed weapon as well.

[Ben Kane]

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 rumfe, literally like a spear but with a blade all along one the bottom of it.

[Tristan Hughes]

Big bladed weapon.

[Ben Kane]

Yeah.

[Tristan Hughes]

But it's testament, isn't it, that you know, if Spartacus is a Thracian auxiliary, straight away he's being linked to these people who since the time of Herodotus, like the father of history, have been renowned as pretty ferocious people indeed.

[Ben Kane]

There are lots about how savage they were and bloodthirsty and they carried the, you know, they severed the heads of their enemies and so on. A 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 no doubt to form him into the man he became.

[Tristan Hughes]

And you mentioned that you like to believe that version where he was wrongfully made, well, forced into slavery. Is there another version where he was a deserter? I mean, are there various in the surviving 4,000 words we have? Are there various Stories as to how he went from auxiliary to slave.

[Ben Kane]

My memory, my memory fails me. I think there's mention of him, potentially one of the sources, that he was a desert deserter and that he was caught. You've 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, here's my passport. If you were a non Roman, I. E. A non citizen, and some Roman soldiers in a combat zone took you 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 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 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 wrong done to them and then ultimately their story improves. Although obviously for Spartacus it went bad at the end.

[Tristan Hughes]

So do we know much about slavery at this time in the Roman Republic? Were most slaves gained as the vanquished in a war, in a battle? Do we know much about the Roman republic as a slave state at that time?

[Ben Kane]

Yeah, we know quite a lot. We know quite a lot. Rome, as I mentioned, was a dying republic. It was in a. 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 the war, the 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 hostilities 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, their families undergoing great hardship and indeed starvation, and much 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 poor 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 on end and becoming personally loyal to generals, not to the republic. But 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 source. Someone compiled a list of the numbers of slaves taken in. In wars by various sources. And in the second century BC, it was over 200,000 slaves in a hundred years. So that's a lot. That's a lot of people.

[Tristan Hughes]

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 is that the scourging of a region called Epirus, and maybe like 50 or 100,000 people slaved on the way.

[Ben Kane]

The taking of car. 146, 50,000 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.

[Tristan Hughes]

And at this time, so slaves are being acquired 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, slaves also being used for entertainment?

[Ben Kane]

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 gladiator fight in Rome being recorded in 264 BC, a celebration of two men fighting, possibly to the death at his grave site. And this was copied from the Campanians, who were a people who lived south of Rome. And we have evidence from tombs from the 4th century BC, so before that of gladiator fights taking place and painted on the insides of tombs. But by the first century bc, these had become such a spectacle, people flocking to funerals to see the gladiator fights, that politicians, because you remember people like Crassus, who defeated Spartacus or Julius Caesar, they were still politicians at this time with private armies, but they were still being elected to office. And in order to be elected to office, they would hold 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. And that's the way it went until 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.

[Tristan Hughes]

And where can you get a key source of gladiators at this time? Well, as with Spartacus, it's enslaved people. Yes.

[Ben Kane]

So they were generally prisoners of war or slaves or criminals. Very rarely. Well, depends on your sources. Sometimes, I won't say very rarely. Sometimes citizens did become gladiators, maybe as a consequence of debt, they would sell themselves into the gladiator school. But they were definitely a minority of fighters.

[Tristan Hughes]

And you mentioned Campania, So that's beautiful region south of Rome today. Think of Mount Vesuvius, think of Pompeii. 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.

[Ben Kane]

The first gladiator school was in Capua, and there wasn't actually a gladiator school in Rome at that time. So there was one in Pompeii as well, although that was later. But Capua had a large gladiator school which was run by Lanista, who was a Roman citizen called either Batiatus 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 wouldn't want to be associated with. So he would have been in the same class as a pimp, for example.

[Tristan Hughes]

Right, okay.

[Ben Kane]

Or a butcher.

[Tristan Hughes]

But it's this figure Battiatus who acquires Spartacus.

[Ben Kane]

Yes.

[Tristan Hughes]

And takes him to his gladiator school.

[Ben Kane]

And we don't know where he was bought or how. I mean some people would say it was in Rome. Personally I would think it's easier to come over the sea to Brundisium. I was thinking to come up the main road towards Rome, but 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. I've written for your listeners and viewers. I've written two books about Spartacus. It was great fun and I started it in Thrace and I moved straight into the rebellion and I get a lot of emails or I did when they were first published anyway about why didn't you have all 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. Plus we don't know what he did.

[Tristan Hughes]

Well, I was going to ask. I mean do we have any idea what he would have done whilst he was still in the service of batty artisans?

[Ben Kane]

It's thought that what's interesting. So the earliest classes of gladiators, before all the ones you see generally in 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 a Samnite who were the people's people who defeated Rome a couple of times before ultimately being defeated themselves from central Italy. One was a Gaul and one was a Thracian.

[Tristan Hughes]

So a Thracian was actually one of

[Ben Kane]

the Thracian 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 have been a 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 famous fish, the guy with the fish crested helmet and the armor and a gladius sword which would have been just basically starting out at that time. But we know really nothing else about his career.

[Tristan Hughes]

Well, it's also thinking about the name. Would he have been given the name Spartacus when he was there that link to Royal Thrace of old?

[Ben Kane]

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 Odyssey whose name was Sparadox Sparadokos, 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.

[Tristan Hughes]

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. So it's funny how you can then explain why the name Spartacus Spartacus can also be linked to Crimea just as much as Italy. As we're discussing today,

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[Ben Kane]

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[Tristan Hughes]

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 Bateatus?

[Ben Kane]

So gladiators were treated, they weren't treated as strictly before Spartacus rebellion as they were afterwards, but they weren't still trusted completely. So they were kept, you know, they were locked into the gladiator school at night and so on. And about 200 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, but somebody must have spilled the beans to Batiatus because only depending on your source, between 70 and 80 of them got out and, and they weren't able to seize the weapons which would have been kept separately in an armory in the gladiator school. 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 right now. And so they smashed their way into the kitchen and used the implements that they found there, which were meat cleavers and even pestles, you know, big pestles for pestles and mortar, smash their way out of the gladiator school. Again, we don't know how, but about 70 or 80 of them and 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 you again, your viewers and listeners are probably familiar with the very famous image of Pompeii with Vesuvius in the background and Bacchus, and it's literally green

[Tristan Hughes]

from top to bottom, covered in vines.

[Ben Kane]

Covered in vines, yeah. And so it was an incredibly fertile area, but it's also a big mountain, great place to go and hide out at the top top. So that's where they went and set up camp possibly in the crater. Now nowadays there are two craters. Back then there was only one because it hadn't erupted obviously like it did in 79. 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 the rural areas 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. So you defended your property with your slaves and, and whatever you had if somebody came to steal. But if an armed group of 80 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.

[Tristan Hughes]

It sounds like a bandit camp, you know, right at the top of the hill where you wouldn't venture this idea.

[Ben Kane]

Yeah, that's what he, that's what he was. And slaves began to come and jo. 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. Slaves 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've 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 had taken place in Sicily between 135 and 132 BC and 104 and 100 BC.

[Tristan Hughes]

So this is why if someone searches Spartacus today, you might also see the words the third servile war.

[Ben Kane]

Correct? Correct. This was the third and biggest by far slave rebellion. And the previous two had r on for years because the Romans, they had a very low opinion of slaves. Well, it'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 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 at 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 Glaber. And he didn't have any troops because the only sort of troops that were ready to go would have been the consul's legions. So he quite possibly recruited veterans and just men from towns or from Rome.

[Tristan Hughes]

It's like a town watch kind of thing.

[Ben Kane]

Yeah. On his way south. But what we know is that he had about 3,000 men by the time he reached Vesuvius, the area of Vesuvius. And let's say Spartacus had a couple of hundred men by this point, you know, maybe more, but probably not very many more. Certainly nothing to compare with 3,000. Armed, well armed. There would have been Roman soldiers of. Even if they were of dubious quality. Now, Vesuvius is pretty big, so Glaber 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 post separated around. Around the base of the mountain. 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 pertinent 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 Souvius 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. 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 COVID of darkness and caused total panic. I mean, I had such fun writing scenes like this because what's likely, I mean, a Roman army on the march, when it finishes, it digs out a 2 to 3 meter, 6 to 9 foot deep V shaped ditch and then uses the earth from that to make a 2 to 3 meter high wall, if it's doing its job properly. But maybe Glaber's men hadn't done it properly, because what do we care? They're only slaves. So they may not have even had a rampart at all. Or if they did, it wasn't high enough or there weren't enough sentries. Anyway, total panic and Gleyber's men just fled. They just ran off into the night, basically abandoning their camp and all their arms and equipment. Now, presumably some of them were killed, but it didn't really matter because suddenly Spartax's men had the arms and arms potentially of 3,000 soldiers. And at this time the slave population of Italy is estimated to be 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.

[Tristan Hughes]

The story would have been in the form of Pompeii, you know, all of

[Ben Kane]

those places, that's everybody the citizens would have been talking about.

[Tristan Hughes]

They all would have.

[Ben Kane]

The citizens would have been terrified, but the slaves importantly would have said, do 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 weren't probably were never chained up so they could just run away. And actually their fetters, even if they did come to them in fetters, they then later used them to make weapons.

[Tristan Hughes]

So I mean, the weapons part I'd like to ask a bit more about because you mentioned how early on they fortunately come across that wagon of weapons for a gladiator school. Now, weapons for gladiators, they were like army weapons, but normally slightly different. They're a bit more specialized for the whole spectacle of a gladiator fight. So can you imagine the weapons that they started with when they were fighting this first makeshift army, 3,000 soldiers were maybe slightly different. To the ones that they acquired afterwards,

[Ben Kane]

they weren't that different. The gladius used by gladiators was the same as a military one.

[Tristan Hughes]

So you're saying it's exactly the same.

[Ben Kane]

And the spear that the Gaul used, used. We don't know. But it was probably just the same as any other spear. It wouldn't have been a pilum. Now the Thracian gladiator used a sika, which is the curved Thracian blade.

[Tristan Hughes]

That's more I'm thinking of.

[Ben Kane]

Yeah, that's 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 night time you're wielding one of them even if you've never. If it's sharp and you chop someone with it. Yeah.

[Tristan Hughes]

Maybe it's more the armor as well, I guess.

[Ben Kane]

Yeah. Well, again the. The legionaries Glabour commander would have had the armor, we think. And weapons of a typical republican legionary, which was mail shirt, simple Montefutino helmet, larger shield than you're used to seeing on tv. A republican scutum, 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 gu. So still wanted to ask because it's

[Tristan Hughes]

interesting to think about how they're now kitted out after.

[Ben Kane]

Well, it brings us on to the. Which we'll talk about later. His successes in battle. Did he train them in the Roman fashion? Because it's quite possible. Indeed. There's even a suggestion there may have been a Roman or two helping them to do that because at the time there was a general called Sertorius who was in Spain, who was a rebel against the Republic. And there is some reference in the texts to potentially and obviously I used in my novels, a Roman soldier from Sertorius coming to Italy and joining Spartacus, an agent to help train his men because that would help bring down the Republic, which would help Sertorius.

[Tristan Hughes]

I love the story of Sertorius. He deserves what a story he is out in Spain. So amazing to 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.

[Ben Kane]

Yeah. So it's thought that he broke out of the Ludus or the gladiator school in the spring of 73 BC, and that he was on Vesuvius into The summer of 73 BC, when Glaber came to basically get beaten and run away. And then the army swelled in size massively, potentially beyond 10,000, potentially up to 30,000 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 legionaries, 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 Annii, for example, which was a small Roman town south of near Nola, and Nuceria, 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 raped 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.

[Tristan Hughes]

Right, okay.

[Ben Kane]

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 Republic its own backside on a plate multiple times over, you can't denigrate him and make him out to be useless and stupid and a savage.

[Tristan Hughes]

So the noble barbarian.

[Ben Kane]

So the noble barbarian. Because how else could he have beaten us?

[Tristan Hughes]

They do it with Pyrrhus and Tenebral

[Ben Kane]

and all those things. Yes, they do it with everybody. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 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, you know, you were. You really were looked down on.

[Tristan Hughes]

Yeah, you've seen as the other very

[Ben Kane]

much the other with a capital O.

[Tristan Hughes]

And so is that very much his strategy, whether he liked it or not, for the following months following that victory over Gleyber, 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 towns and settlements that feel the brunt of the force.

[Ben Kane]

Yes, yeah. They move 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, which has got a great big sort of massive bay, if you like.

[Tristan Hughes]

It's the Bay of Tarentum, isn't it?

[Ben Kane]

The Bay of Tarentum, where Taranto is now, but. But west of Taranto. Taranto's over near the heel of the boot. We're talking about places like Thurii and Metapontum, who 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 73 BC or 75 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. So 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.

[Tristan Hughes]

It immediately makes me think of something like the Fenwick treasure in Colchester, which is linked to, like a Roman family growing it.

[Ben Kane]

I mean, that's definite because it's below the ash layer from the destruction of Colchester by Boudicca's army. I show that IM image and talks. I do. And I say this is from such a date in. In 60 AD. We don't know exactly when in 60 AD, but it's so rare to have an exact date. The best one for that is the loaf of bread from the oven in Pompeii. And that 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.

[Tristan Hughes]

And the makeup of this army when they're in southern Italy, is it very much Spartacus, the charismatic leader? He is the commander in chief and the sole general. Do we know much else about the command structure?

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[Ben Kane]

We know that his force initially was made up of Celts, I.e. gauls, although there were Celts from Thrace, in Thrace as well, but probably primarily from Gaul. And Germans, very warlike people. Now, probably some Thracians as well. We do have a few names. We have the name Enomaus 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, oh, 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 a 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 73 into 72 BC in the Bay of Taranto and then started moving north again in spring of 72 BC. And by this point the Romans were taking it a bit more seriously. And they sent, sent another praetor by the name of Varinius 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 Glabers. Yes, bigger than Glabers, yeah. Not legion, not under a consul still, but stronger in force. And bad things started to happen to them pretty much straight away. Like, 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 it happened to one of Varinius officers, who was a man called Cossinius, was literally laugh out loud. He was in command of 2,000 men. So obviously Varinius army was not marching together and they were marching south to find Spartacus. 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 own, 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 men literally appeared in the grounds of the villa and in the swimming pool while 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 Spartacus men and was attacked in his camp survived, 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 Averinus was called Furius. 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 Tyrannius, I think he was, and he got beaten as well. And so. 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 50 or 60,000 men following him.

[Tristan Hughes]

So they're starting to realize that hang on, this guy we're fighting against, he actually does know how to effectively combat that the Romans at war, he's playing to his strengths like ambushes and the like.

[Ben Kane]

Yeah, and by this point, having defeated so many Roman armies, just like Hannibal did after Trasime, they would have been pillaging the corpses for their, 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, in the Bay of Tarantino and they were using cavalry. So whether they were Thracians or other, the Gauls were renowned horsemen as well. So at this point, I mean, I had in my novels a Sertorian officer teaching them how to fight like Romans and Spartacus teaching them how to fight like Thracian cavalry. Whatever they did, we know as well as the story unfolds that they beat the Romans again and again, even in open battles. A lot of people will tell you who don't know. Oh, well, Spartacus, what did he do? He never beat the Romans in open battle. Absolutely he did. He beat both consuls in open battle, did he? Right, 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 legionaries in a trained legion who could beat just about anybody.

[Tristan Hughes]

And at the same time keeping the logistics networks up that they must have sorte with the, you know, whether it's still raiding the nearby towns or taking advantage of the rich lands of formerly Magna Graecia, you know, the Greek cities and all of that stuff to their benefit.

[Ben Kane]

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.

[Tristan Hughes]

Really?

[Ben Kane]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, he was. He was a dude.

[Tristan Hughes]

Gigachads bosses.

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[Tristan Hughes]

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 consoles.

[Ben Kane]

Yeah, so by this point, the slave army had broken up. Crixus had had enough. He's decided, he's decided, you know what, actually I'm not gonna take orders probably from you anymore. And he'd split away from Spartacus by this point and his army, which they think was between 20 and 30,000 strong, so potentially a big chunk of Spartacus 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 consulates, consuls were mobilized and sent to deal with it. And one of them, who interestingly was a man in his 60s with not much combat experience, called Gellius Gallius Publicola. He was 62 years old, so that's really old for a Roman. And he encountered Crixus near Mount Gargano. 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. A bump like a callous.

[Tristan Hughes]

Yes, yep.

[Ben Kane]

And it's near the town of Bari. And that callous or bump, if you zone in on it on Google with your looking at the terrain, it's a mountain called Mount Gargano. Maybe 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. 10,000 roughly. Soldiers, two legions, with maybe some soci or auxiliaries know, but about 10,000 soldiers.

[Tristan Hughes]

Those are non citizen.

[Ben Kane]

Yeah, I mean, or maybe, maybe The Legion was 5,000 strong then, you know, because who knows strictly how big a legion was and all that. About 10,000 Romans a lot, but about 30,000 slaves. And they attacked up slope at Gellius's 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 the gaps by the cohorts in the third line, they deployed in a duplex aces. So a more concentrated fashion. But regardless of being outnumbered, they absolutely butchered the unfortunate slave army. And Crixus died. 5. They were very brave. There was a battle where the Romans defeated the Gauls some 30 or 40 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 12,300 dead were found to have wounds in their backs. So they died, you know, they were brave, but that was the end to them. And that would have really weakened Spartacus

[Tristan Hughes]

forces, would have shook them that they realized.

[Ben Kane]

And 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 four names, Roman name, but I think Lentulus was the last one. He's known as Lentulus and he went in pursuit of Spartacus and Spartacus was probably aware just from the bush telegraph 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'd be better to fight one and then have the other. So he ambushed Lentulus army and okay, he ambushed him, but they still absolutely thrashed the Romans. He was then pursued by Gellius. Soon after that, nothing survives the battle except that he beat Gellius.

[Tristan Hughes]

Right.

[Ben Kane]

So maybe it was ambush, but this is two consular armies he's just beaten one after another. He then, then continued north and came down out of the Apennines mountains to near the modern day town of Modena, which was known as Mutina to the Romans, and was there faced by a consular size army under a proconsul whose name was Longinus, Cassius Longinus, father of one of Julius Caesar's murderers or assassins. And he beat him as well in open battle. And all right, he had a bigger army, but he's still proper Roman army. And then you have this, which again your listeners and viewers will all 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.

[Tristan Hughes]

Yes, because they've gone from Campania to the south, then, you know, mutinous, all the way north. All the way north, defeating everyone as they come.

[Ben Kane]

Yeah.

[Tristan Hughes]

Do they just keep going north towards the Alps?

[Ben Kane]

Well, this is the whole story. So, you know, historians think that Sparta 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 sense to me. But 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 master's 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 think about, 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 II, 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 know, supporters of Man United back in the 90s. 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.

[Tristan Hughes]

Just one more army to beat.

[Ben Kane]

Just one more army to beat. Yeah. So Spartacus obviously could have left himself. So that's what I thought about. Interestingly, 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 know about snakes is snakes don't do that. But regardless of whether it was a dream, it was a 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. And if he'd gone, you know, turned right and just headed across through Slovenia towards 3 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 best eaten cold. Look what they did with Germanicus in his raids into Germany after the Varian disaster. I mean, they waited five or six years with Arminius.

[Tristan Hughes]

Yes.

[Ben Kane]

And then they crossed over the Rhine and they practiced genocide for a couple of years. So. But maybe he suspected that. Who knows? Maybe. 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?

[Tristan Hughes]

Funny, isn't it? But for whatever reason he doesn't.

[Ben Kane]

For whatever reason he didn't, he turned around and they marched south again. And some of the sources say they then met the double consular armies of Lentulus and Gallius and beat them in open battle as well. Which is just extraordinary. Quite extraordinary. So they bypassed Rome. Some people said, oh, why didn't they attack Rome? I mean, that's nonsense. Rome had 25 to 30 foot high walls and a double legion in size. They didn't have siege engines. There was no way they were ever going to.

[Tristan Hughes]

Same with Hannibal, isn't it? You know, it's not worth the effort

[Ben Kane]

of doing this and I'm sure you'll come to it. About whether he wanted to abolish slavery or not. We'll come to that.

[Tristan Hughes]

Maybe at the end.

[Ben Kane]

But he continued south past Rome to, you know, happy hunting grounds below, below Rome in Campania and further south. And by this point they encountered another Roman force which was small but be. But by this point the Roman Senate had realized this is really serious. We need a massive army. And so in came Marcus Licinius Crassus.

[Tristan Hughes]

Right, okay.

[Ben Kane]

Yeah.

[Tristan Hughes]

So who is Marcus Licinius Crassus?

[Ben Kane]

He was a remarkable individual. There's a bust that survives of him. And if it's true, he was a miserable looking gift. Really serious frowned morning. Doesn't look happy.

[Tristan Hughes]

A lot of stress marks.

[Ben Kane]

A lot of stress marks, yeah, you know, like bull neck. But he was, 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 20 years before, or 15 to 20 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 then 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 Sulla, although made himself very rich during the proscriptions. So hey, you supported the wrong guy. So did you. We're 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 merchant 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. And the wine merchant would say, well, save my property. And he'd say, of course, I'll buy your, I'll buy your business from you for 10% of what it's worth.

[Tristan Hughes]

Oh, it wasn't just that. How much you're going to pay me? It's I'm going to take your business.

[Ben Kane]

I'm going to take your business.

[Tristan Hughes]

So.

[Ben Kane]

And 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 knockdown price and then save that. Save the business. So he was ruthless, savage ruthless. However, he was so rich that he was able to personally pay for six legions to be put into the field. Now we know the cost. It was approximately a million denarii to support a legion for a year. And later in his life, Crassus said, you're not rich unless you can pay for a legion. And he paid for six. So 30,000. Nearly 30,000. 24 to 30,000 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 10 legions. Wow. So this is what he went to face Spartacus with.

[Tristan Hughes]

So he's now got a sizable army at his back. They're deciding we've got to deal with Spartacus now.

[Ben Kane]

Yeah.

[Tristan Hughes]

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 was.

[Ben Kane]

Because by now we're into sort of the summer coming towards autumn of 71 BC. Sorry, 72 BC. I beg your pardon. And he wasn't going to go north again because he would have heard of Crassus army, and that's where they'd come from anyway. So they would have been raiding farms and towns for food and equipment and so on. And Crassus pursued him down towards. 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 Mummius. 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 troops started fighting. Maybe they were scouts, 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.

[Tristan Hughes]

Right, okay. This is Gruesome stuff. What is a decimation?

[Ben Kane]

So I'm quite pedantic, as your readers might have ascertained, or readers, sorry, viewers and listeners might have ascertained. But this point, decimation, the meaning of decimation, is actually different today. And it's happened because of ignorance. Because decimation today, if you hear news reporters talking about it, it means annihilation. If a town has been decimated or an army unit's been decimated, almost none of them survive. However, it comes from the Roman punishment. So this is the correct interpretation, which is one man in 10 women will be executed, in fact, beaten to death in front of the rest of the legion by his comrades. So 50 men, or 48 men out of a cohort of 480 were beaten to death in front of the army. And that brutal message meant that none of Crassus soldiers ran away after that. So I get asked 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.

[Tristan Hughes]

Yes, it doesn't seem to be a very regular punishment. The only other example that comes immediately to my mind is with another rebel a few decades later, Tacfarinas in North Africa, where I think there is a similar case of a Roman army going out, being beaten by Tacfarinas, being overconfident, and then the commander in chief orders another decimation. So, yes, brutal, but doesn't seem to have been very regular.

[Ben Kane]

It was very rare. Decimation is only described three or four times in all of the Roman battles that I. That I'm aware of.

[Tristan Hughes]

And so what happens after this? So Mummius's 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, is in that case, correct?

[Ben Kane]

Yeah. So he ended up going down into the toe of the boot to near Regium, which I think is Reggio today. 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. But that 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 un. Uncertain. You had the myth obviously of the whirlpool, Charybdis, and the mythical beast, the Scylla, that killed sailors that would try to go through it. But Roman ships in general were pretty, pretty bad.

[Tristan Hughes]

So that episode from Odysseus, the Scylla Encryptus is the Strait of Messina.

[Ben Kane]

It's the strait, yeah. It's right there, yeah. And so at this point, some pirates come into the equation because pirate activity in the Mediterranean at this time was, 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. And we know that Spartacus met with some of these pirates and paid for 2000 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. But 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 Spartacus and then a bigger one from Crassus.

[Tristan Hughes]

I think Crassus can pay more, can't he?

[Ben Kane]

Yeah, Crassus can pay more. So, 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 certainly possible. What we do know is that Spartacus men then tried to build some rules 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 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 it's. There's. 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 Crassus built a wall from one side of the point of the boot. To the other. In other words, from the Ionian. No, from the Aronian Sea to the Adriatic. Now that's about 50k, 35 miles. Even when they built the siege in Eumantia, that was only a fraction of that distance of fortifications.

[Tristan Hughes]

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.

[Ben Kane]

But as, as an, 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 3/4 of a mile wide or just over a K. So the fortifications that Crassus had his men built may not have been that big, but he was still able to defend it. And so Spartan 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, 72 early 71 BC, they filled the ditch 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 the got away.

[Tristan Hughes]

So they managed to get, well, the north side, I guess.

[Ben Kane]

The north side, yeah. And that's where you had another force of slaves break away. Maybe as many as 10,000 under the leadership. This is where we have two other names. So rare with the Spartacus rebellion, but Castus and Ganicus, who were potentially Gauls who just had enough or we don't know, but they broke away from Spartacus army and they were attacked by Crassus army, but fortunately were still close enough for Spartacus, Spartacus to come to their aid. And he drove off Crassus army. But then they split up again and Crassus waited until he was further away and attacked Castus and Ganicus again. And that's when I mentioned of 12,300 bodies, only two had wounds in the back.

[Tristan Hughes]

Right.

[Ben Kane]

They were pretty much wiped out. And so by this point, Spartacus army was presumably quite depleted. Again, we don't know, but still some tens of thousands of men strong. And they were moving, moving north. And I don't know what he must have been thinking because he knew that 10 legions were on his tail 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. Again, because there have been no archaeological finds to prove it. It's really, really difficult to prove ancient battlefields, 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 Oliveto Chitra, which is on the banks of the modern day river Selle. Right. Which is the Salernus in ancient times, which is north of Piston before Salerno. So not far from Salerno, modern day Salerno. And I've been there. I mean, I've actually driven this entire route. I've driven from Medina to Reggio 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 was. And I've been to Oliveto Chitra and. 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 powers and that the two armies then attacked each other. Crassus watching from the back of a horse behind the front line, but able to see Spartacus. And again, this is a later source, but I love the scene 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 the gods. Now 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. I am with you no matter what. And as I say, there is an example of a thracian chieftain about 70 or 80 years later fighting a Roman army, who killed his own horse in front of the Romans and told his men that he. He would eat the Roman commander's intestines if he won the battle. Now, I don't think he did, but anyway, Spartacus 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 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 legion. 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 until he was killed. And interestingly, to show you that he was a plane, simple man. His body was never found. In other words, he wasn't covered in loads of special armor or, you know, 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, you know, lying because it looks better. But they killed thousands and thousands of slaves who then fled into the surrounding countryside. Indeed, 5,000 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 Brindisi, ancient Brundisium. And actually, I forgot to say Spartacus had thought about going that way, but heard that Lentulus had landed in Brundisium, so couldn't. And then you had. Pompey had been recalled as well. And he came marching down the main road from rome and slaughtered 5,000 fugitives from Spartacus army.

[Tristan Hughes]

And how that all links up is that Pompey the later Pompey the Great, had been fighting Sertorius the potential ally of Spain in Spain, and coming back from that. So it all kind of links up.

[Ben Kane]

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 Crassus, who was really angry. He was so angry. And then he was later not given a triumph, whereas Pompey was, because of his victory over Sertorius, which he shouldn't have been because Sertorius was a citizen, but he was given a triumph because you can bend the rules. And poor O 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 an ovatio.

[Tristan Hughes]

I'm sure he could have paid for it if he wanted to, but he wanted the price. And ovatio. That's where we get ovation from today. Yes.

[Ben Kane]

Yeah. Ovation, yeah.

[Tristan Hughes]

So it sounds like they're. There's no real I'm Spartacus moment, although it's still 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?

[Ben Kane]

Not all of them were crucified, but 6,000 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 crucifixions. So the prisoners were marched to Capua, which is about 70 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. It was about 130 odd miles between the two cities. And I worked out the maths. It's about one crucifix every 40 yards or 40 meters for more than 130 miles.

[Tristan Hughes]

So you would be able to see countless numbers.

[Ben Kane]

If you were a merchant or a traveler, you would be. And what's telling as well is sometimes they would take them down. Sometimes they wouldn't guard the crucified people, but Crassus 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 71 BC and must have been indescribably awful. But what this barbaric act did was it delivered in the most graphic terms possible to every slave in Italy. If you rebel against the Republic, this is what happens to you. And there was never again another slave rebellion.

[Tristan Hughes]

I mean, 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 Spartacus? It sounds like the Romans, quite harshly, but they do learn their lessons from it.

[Ben Kane]

Yeah, they learned their lessons and, you know, 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, bringing him into the public consciousness. There was a man called Toussaint Louverture, who was a former slave in what is now Haiti, the Haitian Revolution, who 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 20th century, you had a German communist organization called the Spartacus League, who. I don't idealized him moving forward. You had Soviet politicians holding him up as an example. Then Howard Fast, famously an American Communist. Yes, there was a thing as an American communist who was imprisoned for his beliefs during the McCarthy era. He wrote the book Spartacus, which was essentially an allegory about the free people being against the evil Roman Empire, which he meant the American Republic. And it sold 5 million copies, sparked the film Spartacus with Kirk Douglas and the I am Spartacus moment, and had this huge impact on public awareness. But back then, Spartacus was never about ending slavery. Thracians had slaves, Gauls had slaves, Germans had slaves. Having a slave, no disrespect meant, was like having a washing machine in your house. You don't say, oh, look, you've got a washing machine when you go around to your friend's house, because everyone has a washing machine. If you could afford it, you had a slave, so maybe you didn't want to be a slave. And I'm a trained soldier and gladiator, so I'm not going to be a slave and I'm going to fight, fight for My freedom. But he didn't want to end all slavery. He just wanted to be free.

[Tristan Hughes]

So that's not the reason why he went back south rather than going back.

[Ben Kane]

Not at all. And if you ever read that or see that, that's just modern interpretation. There's no people back then didn't want to end slavery. I mean, you had Roman authors talking about slaves being human beings and having feelings and you could like them and so on, and you should treat them well and so on and so on, you know, to varying degrees. And we know of many slaves who were freed by their owners and given lots of money, but those owners did not try and abolish slavery. They just treated individual slaves really kindly.

[Tristan Hughes]

So, Ben, this has been absolutely fantastic. Last but certainly not least, you have written a couple of books that talks through the story of Spartacus.

[Ben Kane]

Indeed, indeed. It was supposed to be one, and then I got so excited and so involved in it, I said to my editor, can I write a second one? And she said, go on, sure. So what one's called Spartacus the Gladiator. The second one's called Spartacus Rebellion. They're in English, Polish, Italian, German, French. Not French, sorry. Quite a few languages if you're not English, speaking by native and available in all good online bookstores or in real bookstores. And I hope I did him justice. It was really enjoyable writing them. I wanted him to survive.

[Tristan Hughes]

Well, as you've explained throughout this episode, this story is full of amazing tales that, you know, for a writer like yourself, it must be amazing to bring to life. So. So I'm sure they're brilliant reads and you can buy them wherever you know. Yeah, all good bookshops and online and everything as well. Ben, it just goes for me to say, once again, thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the podcast.

[Ben Kane]

Thanks, Tristan. It's always great fun.

[Tristan Hughes]

Well, there you go. There was Dr. Ben Kane talking you through the story of Spartacus, one of the most famous rebels of ancient times Rome. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Now, if you want to listen to more of Ben, well, you can. He's been on the show several times before. Our latest episode with him before this one was all about the Roman centurion. But Ben, he's also done episodes before on the Roman Legionary Soldier, the Roman Auxiliary Soldier, and how to survive in ancient Rome. We'll put a link to several of those episodes in the show. Notes. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Ancients. Please make sure to follow the show on spot, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. That really helps us. You'll be doing us a big favor if you'd be kind enough to leave us a rating as well. Well, we'd really appreciate that. Lastly, don't forget you can also sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week. Sign [e-mail] subscribe.

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