The Third Servile War, also called the Gladiator War and the War of Spartacus by Plutarch, was the last in a series of slave rebellions against the Roman Republic known as the Servile Wars. This third rebellion was the only one that directly threatened the Roman heartland of Italy. It was particularly alarming to Rome because its military seemed powerless to suppress it.
The revolt began in 73 BCE, with the escape of around 70 slave gladiators from a gladiator school in Capua. They easily defeated the small Roman force sent to recapture them, and within two years, they had been joined by some 120,000 men, women, and children. The able-bodied adults of this large group were a surprisingly effective armed force that repeatedly showed they could withstand or defeat the Roman military, from the local Campanian patrols to the Roman militia and even to trained Roman legions under consular command. This army of slaves roamed across Italy, raiding estates and towns with relative impunity, sometimes dividing into separate but connected bands with several leaders, including the famous former gladiator Spartacus.
The Roman Senate grew increasingly alarmed at the slave-army's depredations and continued military successes. Eventually Rome fielded an army of eight legions under the harsh but effective leadership of Marcus Licinius Crassus that destroyed the army of slaves in 71 BCE. The rebels staged a long and bitter fighting retreat before the legions of Crassus. After the rebels realized that the legions of Pompey and Marcus Terentius Varro Lucullus were moving in to entrap them, the armies of Spartacus launched their full strength against Crassus's legions and were utterly defeated. Of the survivors, some 6,000 were crucified along the Appian Way.
Plutarch's account of the revolt suggests that the slaves simply wished to escape to freedom and leave Roman territory by way of Cisalpine Gaul. Appian and Florus describe the revolt as a civil war in which the slaves intended to capture the city of Rome. The Third Servile War had significant and far-reaching effects on Rome's broader history. Pompey and Crassus exploited their successes to further their political careers, using their public acclaim and the implied threat of their legions to sway the consular elections of 70 BCE in their favor. Their actions as consuls greatly furthered the subversion of Roman political institutions and contributed to the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire.
Background
To varying degrees throughout Roman history, the existence of a pool of inexpensive labor in the form of slaves was an important factor in the economy. Slaves were acquired for the Roman workforce through a variety of means, including purchase from foreign merchants and the enslavement of foreign populations through military conquest.Smith, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, ; details the legal and military means by which people were enslaved. With Rome's heavy involvement in wars of conquest in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC, from tens to hundreds of thousands of slaves at a time were imported into the Roman economy from various European and Mediterranean acquisitions.Smith, Greek and Roman Antiquities, ; Caesar, Commentarii de Bello Gallico, 2:33. Smith refers to the purchase of 10,000 slaves from Cilician pirates, while Caesar provides an example of the enslavement of 53,000 captive Aduatuci by a Roman army. While there was limited use for slaves as servants, craftsmen, and personal attendants, vast numbers of slaves worked in mines and on the agricultural lands of Sicily and southern Italy.Smith, Greek and Roman Antiquities, ; Livy, The History of Rome, 6:12
For the most part, slaves were treated harshly and oppressively during the Roman Republic. Under Republican law, a slave was property, not a person. Owners could abuse, injure or even kill their own slaves without legal consequence. While there were many grades and types of slaves, the lowest—and most numerous—grades who worked in the fields and mines were subject to a life of hard physical labor.Smith, Greek and Roman Antiquities, summarizes the complex body of Roman law pertaining to the legal status of slaves.
The large size and oppressive treatment of the slave population led to rebellions. In 135 and 104 BCE, the First and Second Servile Wars erupted in Sicily, where small bands of rebels found tens of thousands of willing followers wishing to escape the oppressive life of a Roman slave. While these were considered serious civil disturbances by the Roman Senate, taking years and direct military intervention to quell, they were never considered a serious threat to the Republic. The Roman heartland had never seen a slave uprising, nor had slaves ever been seen as a potential threat to the city of Rome. This changed with the Third Servile War.
Beginnings (73 BCE)
Capuan revolt
In the Roman Republic of the 1st century BCE, gladiatorial games were one of the more popular forms of entertainment. In order to supply gladiators for the contests, several training schools, or ludi, were established throughout Italy.Smith, Greek and Roman Antiquities, . In these schools, prisoners of war and condemned criminals—who were considered slaves—were taught the skills required to fight in gladiatorial games.Mommsen, The History of Rome, 3233–3238. In 73 BC, a group of some 200 gladiators in the Capuan school owned by Lentulus Batiatus plotted an escape. When their plot was betrayed, a force of about 70 men seized kitchen implements ("choppers and spits"), fought their way free from the school, and seized several wagons of gladiatorial weapons and armor.Plutarch, Crassus, 8:1–2; Appian, Civil Wars, 1:116; Livy, Periochae, 95:2 ; Florus, Epitome, 2.8. Plutarch claims 78 escaped, Livy claims 74, Appian "about seventy", and Florus says "thirty or rather more men". "Choppers and spits" is from Life of Crassus.
Once free, the escaped gladiators chose leaders from their number, selecting two Gallic slaves—Crixus and Oenomaus—and Spartacus, who was said either to be a Thracian auxiliary from the Roman legions later condemned to slavery, or a captive taken by the legions.Appian, Civil Wars, 1:116; Plutarch, Crassus, 8:2. Note: Spartacus' status as an auxilia is taken from the Loeb edition of Appian translated by Horace White, which states "... who had once served as a soldier with the Romans ...". However, the translation by John Carter in the Penguin Classics version reads: "... who had once fought against the Romans and after being taken prisoner and sold ...". There is some question as to Spartacus's nationality. A Thraex was a type of gladiator in Rome, so "Thracian" may simply refer to the style of gladiatorial combat in which he was trained.Smith, Greek and Roman Antiquities, . On the other hand, names nearly identical to Spartacus were recorded among five out of twenty Thracian Odrysae rulers of Bosporan kingdom beginning with Spartokos I the founder of the Spartocid dynasty. The name came from the Thracian words *sparas "spear, lance" and *takos "famous" and thus meant "renowned by the spear".
These escaped slaves were able to defeat a small force of troops sent after them from Capua, and equip themselves with captured military equipment as well as their gladiatorial weapons.Plutarch, Crassus, 9:1. Sources are somewhat contradictory on the order of events immediately following the escape, but they generally agree that this band of escaped gladiators plundered the region surrounding Capua, recruited many other slaves into their ranks, and eventually retired to a more defensible position on Mount Vesuvius.Appian, Civil Wars, 1:116; Florus, Epitome, 2.8; – Florus and Appian make the claim that the slaves withdrew to Vesuvius, while Plutarch only mentions "a hill" in the account of Glaber's siege of the slave's encampment.
Praetorian defeat
As the revolt and raids were occurring in Campania, which was a vacation region of the rich and influential in Rome, and the location of many estates, the revolt quickly came to the attention of Roman authorities. They initially viewed the revolt more as a major crime wave than an armed rebellion.
However, later that year, Rome dispatched a military force under praetorian authority to put down the rebellion.Note: while there seems to be consensus as to the general history of the praetorian expeditions, the names of the commanders and subordinates of these forces varies widely based on the historical account. A Roman praetor, Gaius Claudius Glaber, gathered a force of 3,000 men, not regular legions, but a militia "picked up in haste and at random, for the Romans did not consider this a war yet, but a raid, something like an attack of robbery."Appian, Civil Wars, 1:116. Glaber's forces besieged the slaves on Mount Vesuvius, blocking the only known way down the mountain. With the slaves thus contained, Glaber was content to wait until starvation forced the slaves to surrender.
While the slaves lacked military training, Spartacus' forces displayed ingenuity in their use of available local tools, and in their use of clever, unorthodox tactics when facing the disciplined Roman infantry.Frontinus, Stratagems, Book I, 5:20–22 and Book VII:6. In response to Glaber's siege, Spartacus' men made ropes and ladders from vines and trees growing on the slopes of Vesuvius and used them to rappel down the cliffs on the side of the mountain opposite Glaber's forces. They moved around the base of Vesuvius, outflanked the army, and annihilated Glaber's men.Plutarch, Crassus, 9:1–3; Frontinus, Stratagems, Book I, 5:20–22; Appian, Civil Wars, 1:116; Broughton, Magistrates of the Roman Republic, p. 109. Note: Plutarch and Frontinus write of expeditions under the command of "Clodius the praetor" and "Publius Varinus", while Appian writes of "Varinius Glaber" and "Publius Valerius".
A second expedition, under the praetor Publius Varinius, was then dispatched against Spartacus. For some reason, Varinius seems to have split his forces under the command of his subordinates Furius and Cossinius. Plutarch mentions that Furius commanded some 2,000 men, but neither the strength of the remaining forces, nor whether the expedition was composed of militia or legions, appear to be known. These forces were also defeated by the army of escaped slaves: Cossinius was killed, Varinius was nearly captured, and the equipment of the armies was seized by the slaves.Plutarch, Crassus, 9:4–5; Livy, Periochae , 95 ; Appian, Civil Wars, 1:116; Sallust, Histories, 3:64–67.
With these victories, more and more slaves flocked to the Spartacan forces, as did "many of the herdsmen and shepherds of the region", swelling their ranks to some 70,000.Plutarch, Crassus, 9:3; Appian, Civil War, 1:116. Livy identifies the second commander as "Publius Varenus" with the subordinate "Claudius Pulcher". The rebel slaves spent the winter of 73–72 BCE training, arming and equipping their new recruits, and expanding their raiding territory to include the towns of Nola, Nuceria, Thurii and Metapontum.Florus, Epitome, 2.8.
The victories of the rebel slaves did not come without a cost. At some time during these events, one of their leaders, Oenomaus, was lost—presumably in battle—and is not mentioned further in the histories.Orosius, Histories 5.24.2; Bradley, Slavery and Rebellion, p.96.
Revolt's aims
By the end of 73 BC, Spartacus and Crixus were in command of a large group of armed men with a proven ability to withstand Roman armies. What they intended to do with this force is somewhat difficult for modern readers to determine. Since the Third Servile War was ultimately an unsuccessful rebellion, no firsthand account of the slaves' motives and goals exists, and historians writing about the war propose contradictory theories.