SPARTACUS:

HISTORICAL
BACKGROUND

Violence Enters Politics:

133 BCE: Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, a noble plebeian, was elected tribune. He
proposed essential land and economic reforms which threatened the wealthy senatorial
classes, so he passed these through the Assembly of Tribes. Gracchus was very popular with
the masses, so he ran for a second consecutive term as tribune (though this was
unconstitutional). A group of senators led an armed band against him in the Assembly and
killed him and 300 of his followers.

123-21 BCE: Gaius Sempronius Gracchus (the younger brother of Tiberius) was elected
tribune for two successive years; through the Assembly, he increased the power of the
equestrian class at the expense of the senators. He also attempted sweeping economic
reforms. Opposition between his followers and the Senate broke into riots and bloodshed, and
he died in the violence.

The reform efforts of the Gracchi and the opposition these generated in the Senate constituted
the foundation of the two political factions, the populares and the optimates.

Rise of the Generals:

107 BCE: Gaius Marius, a plebeian of the equestrian class and a novus homo, was elected
consul and was designated by the Assembly of Tribes as general in the African war against
the wishes of the Senate. He reorganized the army and successfully concluded several wars.
Marius was elected to five consecutive consulships (though this was unconstitutional) and
then to a sixth consulship in 100. He became leader of the populares. During this time there
was considerable unrest and rioting in Rome.

88 BCE: Lucius Cornelius Sulla, a patrician leader of the optimates, was elected consul and
designated by the Senate as general in the war in Asia Minor although the Assembly had
given this command to Marius. Sulla marched his legions into Rome itself to enforce his
appointment and to stop the reform legislation of the populares; this was the first time in
history that a Roman army marched upon Rome. Sulla outlawed Marius and took up his
command in Asia Minor.

86 BCE: Marius returned to Rome and outlawed Sulla; he was elected to his seventh
consulship and led a five-day bloodbath against the optimates. Marius, however, died within
the year.
82-79 BCE: Sulla returned to Italy with his army and had himself proclaimed dictator. He
conducted first “proscriptions,” in which he posted lists of those condemned to be executed
(the Senate had asked him to publish these names with the following plea: “We do not ask
you to pardon those whom you have destined for destruction; we only want you to relieve the
anxiety of those whom you have decided to spare”). A large number of Roman aristocrats
associated with the populares (520, according to Sorbonne professor Francois Hinard) were
proscribed and their property confiscated. Sulla strengthened the power of the Senate,
weakened the power of the tribunes, and stopped the grain dole. He passed a law that no army
was to be stationed in or near Rome—in effect, he banned standing armies in Italy—and no
general was to lead his army out of the provinces without permission of the Senate. Sulla
retired and died in 79.

77-72 BCE: Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, Pompey the Great, who had been a general under
Sulla and celebrated a triumph at the exceptionally young age of 24, took command of the
Roman legions in Spain and put down a revolt led by the followers of Marius.

Revolt of Spartacus:

The real Spartacus was a freeborn provincial from Thrace, who may have served as an
auxiliary in the Roman army in Macedonia. He deserted the army, was outlawed, captured,
sold into slavery, and trained at the gladiatorial school of Batiatus in Capua.

73 BCE: Spartacus escaped with 70-80 gladiators, seizing the knives in the cook's shop and a
wagon full of weapons. They camped on Vesuvius and were joined by other rural slaves,
overrunning the region with much plunder and pillage, although Spartacus apparently tried to
restrain them. His chief aides were gladiators from Gaul, named Crixus and Oenomaus.
(map)

The Senate sent a praetor, Claudius Glaber (his nomen may have been Clodius; his
praenomen is unknown), against the rebel slaves with about 3000 raw recruits hastily drafted
from the region. They thought they had trapped the rebels on Vesuvius, but Spartacus led his
men down the other side of the mountain using vines, fell on the rear of the soldiers, and
routed them.

Spartacus subsequently defeated two forces of legionary cohorts; he wanted to lead his men
across the Alps to escape from Italy, but the Gauls and Germans, led by Crixus, wanted to
stay and plunder. They separated from Spartacus, who passed the winter near Thurii in
southern Italy.

72 BCE: Spartacus had raised about 70,000 slaves, mostly from rural areas. The Senate,
alarmed, finally sent the two consuls (L. Gellius Publicola and Cn. Cornelius Lentulus
Clodianus), each with two legions, against the rebels. The Gauls and Germans, separated
from Spartacus, were defeated by Publicola, and Crixus was killed. Spartacus defeated
Lentulus, and then Publicola; to avenge Crixus, Spartacus had 300 prisoners from these
battles fight in pairs to the death. (map)

At Picenum in central Italy Spartacus defeated the consular armies, then pushed north and
defeated the proconsul of Cisalpine Gaul at Mutina. The Alps were now open to the rebels,
but again the Gauls and Germans refused to go, so Spartacus returned to southern Italy,
perhaps intending to ship to Sicily.
In the autumn, when the revolt was at its height and Spartacus had about 120,000 followers,
the Senate voted to pass over the consuls and grant imperium to Marcus Licinius Crassus,
who had been a praetor in 73 B.C. but currently held no office. Crassus was the wealthiest
man in Rome, a noble from an old plebeian family; since he had received very little support
from the conservative nobles who dominated the Senate, he had allied himself with the
faction of the populares.

Crassus was given six new legions plus the four consular legions. When one of Crassus'
legates attacked Spartacus with two legions, against orders, Spartacus roundly defeated them.
Crassus decimated the most cowardly cohort, then used his combined forces to defeat
Spartacus, who retreated to Rhegium, in the toe of Italy. Spartacus tried to cross the straits
into Sicily, but the Cilician pirates betrayed him.

Meanwhile, the Senate recalled Pompey and his legions from Spain, and they began the
journey overland; Marcus Licinius Lucullus landed in Brundisium in the heel of Italy with his
legions from Macedonia. When Spartacus finally fought his way out of the toe of Italy, he
could not march to Brundisium and take ship to the east because of the presence of Lucullus.
(map)

71 BCE: Spartacus started north; some of the Gauls and Germans separated from him and
were nearly defeated by Crassus before Spartacus rescued them. The slaves gained one more
minor victory against part of Crassus' forces, but they were finally wiped out by Crassus'
legions in a major battle in southern Italy, near the headwaters of the Siler river. It is believed
that Spartacus died in this battle; there were so many corpses that his body was never found.
The historian Appian reports that 6000 slaves were taken prisoner by Crassus and crucified
along the Appian Way from Capua to Rome.

As many as 5000 slaves escaped and fled northward, but they were captured by Pompey's
army north of Rome as he was marching back from Spain; Pompey subsequently tried to
claim the glory of victory from Crassus, although he had not actually participated in any of
the battles. The Senate voted Pompey a triumph because of his victory in Spain, but they
decreed an ovation (a far less splendid and prestigious parade) for Crassus because his victory
had been merely over slaves. There were no political purges or proscriptions after the
rebellion was crushed.

70 BCE: Pompey and Crassus were elected consuls, although Pompey was six years too
young for the office and had never held any of the lower magistracies. As consuls, they
repealed some of the unpopular laws of Sulla and restored the power of the tribunes.

Significance of Spartacus: quotation from Erich Gruen, The Last Generation of the Roman
Republic (University of California Press, 1974) 20-21:

It was not the governing class alone that would react in horror to the prospect of a slave
insurrection. Whatever the grievances of men disenfranchised and dispossessed by Sulla, they
would have found unthinkable any common enterprise with Thracian or Gallic slaves. It
causes no surprise that Marxist historians and writers have idealized Spartacus as a champion
of the masses and leader of the one genuine social revolution in Roman history. That,
however, is excessive. Spartacus and his companions sought to break the bonds of their own
grievous oppression. There is no sign that they were motivated by ideological considerations
to overturn the social structure. The sources make clear that Spartacus endeavored to bring
his forces out of Italy toward freedom rather than to reform or reverse Roman society. The
achievements of Spartacus are no less formidable for that. The courage, tenacity, and ability
of the Thracian gladiator who held Roman forces at bay for some two years and built a
handful of followers into an assemblage of over 120,000 men can only inspire admiration.

The Roman reaction was tardy and ineffective. . . . Error of judgment induced the Senate to
treat the uprising too lightly at the outset. By the time Rome took firm steps, Spartacus' ranks
had considerably swelled and the state's finest soldiers were serving abroad. But Crassus'
efforts obtained full support, and the revolt was wiped out in 71.

Characters in Film with a Recorded Historical Existence:

 Marcus Licinius Crassus (Lawrence Olivier)

 Marcus Publius Glabrus [real name was Claudius Glaber] (John Dall)
 Gaius Julius Caesar (John Gavin)
 Lentulus Batiatus (Peter Ustinov—won Academy Award for best supporting actor)
 Spartacus (Kirk Douglas)
 Crixus (John Ireland)
 Cilician pirates

Characters in Film with No Historical Record of Existence:

 Antoninus (Tony Curtis)

 Gracchus (Charles Laughton)
 Helena (Nina Foch) and Claudia (Joanna Barnes)
 Varinia (Jean Simmons)—only Plutarch says Spartacus had a wife, a Thracian who
was enslaved with him
 Marcellus (Charles McGraw)
 Draba (Woody Strode)
 Tigranes Levantes (Herbert Lom)—though there was a King of Armenia named
Tigranes

Sources

Barbara F. McManus, The College of New Rochelle

bmcmanus@cnr.edu
revised June, 1999