The Spartacus War

Chapter 9 — The Celtic Women

It was just before dawn and the light was still dim. In approximately March 71 BC in the hills of northern Lucania, the two women probably felt a chill in the air as they climbed the mountainside. Budding branches alternated with green-clad pines, and there might even have been some snow on the peak. The women were Celts, members of the breakaway army of rebel slaves led by Castus and Cannicus. Privacy is a rare luxury in an army on the move. This morning, though, they had needed to get away from the crowd in order to carry out monthly rituals. They might have been druids, and privacy, a sacred grove and precision in timing were essential elements of Celtic religion.

The nature of their rite is unclear. Celtic rituals were legion; as Caesar wrote: ‘the whole of the Gallic people is passionately devoted to matters of religion.’[174] Celtic women commonly met in small groups to call on the gods. ‘The magic of women’[175] galvanized many in Celtic society. As for the two women on the mountain, Sallust says that they were ‘fulfilling their monthly things’[176]. Some scholars take this as a reference to menstruation, while others consider it a reference to the phases of the moon, pointing out that the Celtic religion paid close attention to the calendar. (The moon is still visible in pre-dawn light.) Plutarch says that the women were ‘sacrificing on behalf of the enemies’[177] (i.e. Rome’s enemies - that is, the women’s own soldiers). These possibilities are not mutually exclusive. Many religions connect the menstrual and lunar cycles, and many communities link their success with women’s fertility.

The two women stumbled upon the sight of Roman soldiers, 6,000 men carrying out the mission of circling around the enemy and taking unobserved a ridge of the same mountain the women were climbing, Mount Camalatrum. Crassus had sent the men under the command of Caius Pomptinus and Quintus Marcius Rufus while he prepared to lead the main attack from another direction. The men under Pomptinus and Rufus had gone to the trouble of camouflaging their helmets, an effort that kept them invisible from any scouts that the rebels might have posted. The Romans were on the verge of achieving complete strategic surprise when the two women discovered them. If they managed to sound the alarm, the Romans’ battle plan would unravel and yet another of Crassus’s traps would snap shut empty.

Unfortunately for Crassus the two women rose to the occasion. They did not panic, which is no surprise, given the ancient evidence. A Roman writer says Celtic women were always ready to help beleaguered husbands by charging into battle, where they would bite and kick the enemy[178]. Archaeological evidence shows elite Celtic women buried with chariots and weapons. So, on that day in 71 BC, hurrying back to camp in order to sound the alarm was easy.

The incident symbolizes how much had gone wrong for the rebels and yet how formidable they remained. Their divided forces paid less attention to security than to religion. That wasn’t entirely negative, as the women’s versatility demonstrates. But if religion encouraged a spirit of resistance, sometimes it grew too stubborn. Let us set the scene and then return to the women’s dis-covery on the ridge.

Earlier, the news that the rebels had divided their forces had probably proved a tonic to Crassus. Any gloom over the prospect of Spartacus’s whole force careening towards Rome had given way to enthusiasm over the possibility of picking the new, smaller armies apart, one at a time. Having followed them from Bruttium, no doubt taking the Via Annia again, Crassus turned first to the easier target. The breakaway group had made camp beside a lake in Lucania.

The lake piqued the ancient sources’ interest because of its unusual property of turning from drinkable to bitter and back again. That sounds like a seaside lake, and it would be reasonable to place it near the coastal Lucanian city of Paestum. The ‘lake’ might in fact have been the marsh that stretched between Paestum and the mouth of the Silarus (modern Sele) River before land reclamation projects dried it up in the 1930s.

Many armies have marched through Paestum. Lucanians conquered it around 400 BC when it was still a Greek colony called Poseidonia. The legions annexed Lucanian Paestum in 273 BC, after the city made the mistake of supporting Rome’s enemy, Pyrrhus. The ancient city’s ruins lie practically within sight of the beaches where the Allies landed in 1943, en route to Salerno, about 35 miles away to the north. The Germans fought at Paestum for nine days before they withdrew. Archaeologists have found tens of thousands of so-called acorn missiles at Paestum, and some suggest that they date to Crassus’s campaign in 71 BC. Acorn missiles are named after the small nuts that they resemble in size and shape. They were made of stone, baked clay or lead. Sling missiles were a weapon of choice against cavalry, and Spartacus deployed horsemen effectively, so it would have made sense for Crassus to have loaded up on them.

Five miles east of Paestum, on the edge of today’s Cilento Hills, above the modern town of Capaccio, there rises craggy Mount Soprano; some identify it with the ancient Mount Camalatrum. The plain at the foot of the mountain is a fertile area, not far from the Via Annia; it would have been a good place to raid for supplies. The Lower Silarus River ran through the plain, about 10 miles away to the north-west. At this time of year the river would have looked silvery, swollen with mountain run-off. A strong sea breeze blows here on the plain. The insurgents might have smelled the scent of freedom in it. Riyos[179], which many scholars believe was the Gauls’ word for ‘free’, might have echoed around the lake.

Admittedly, there is another candidate for the Lucanian lake: a mountain lake (now dry) near the inland Lucanian city of Volcei

(modern Buccino), some 40 miles north-east of Paestum. This lake’s water was drinkable in spring, thanks to the run-off of melting snow, but turned brackish in summer. But soon afterwards the rebels seem to have been in the vicinity of Capaccio, which tips the scales in favour of locating the Lucanian lake near it.

It was here, beside the lake, that the two Celtic women made their fateful trip up the mountain. The sources imply that they made it down again and they warned their men about the threat. The Romans ‘were in danger’[180] say the sources. But Crassus saved the day. He arrived from another direction and caught the enemy by surprise. Apparently, in the heat of battle the rebels forgot about the men on the hill. Suddenly, with a loud cry, the Romans hidden on the hill ran down and took them in the rear. The terrified rebels ran for their lives. The cool and professional behaviour of the two Celtic women on the hill failed to pay off in the end. Crassus and his lieutenants would have slaughtered the rebel army, if not for the sudden appearance of help.

Spartacus had arrived. His presence in spite of the split with Castus and Cannicus is not surprising. Neither Paestum nor Volcei is far from the point where the turnoff for Samnium leaves the Via Annia; the breakaway group would have continued on the Via Annia towards Capua and then taken the Appian Way to Rome. Evidently, the Thracian had not given up on his wayward colleagues. Indeed, perhaps he stayed close because he hoped to win them back. His timely appearance made Crassus give up the hunt and saved the breakaway army.

But Crassus attacked a second time. The second battle took place at a spot called Cantenna. Three miles south of Capaccio lies the town of Giungano[181] (modern name), behind which rises Mount Cantenna. Perhaps this is the Cantenna of the ancient source; like Camalatrum, its location is unknown, but all indications put Cantenna in northern Lucania.

When Crassus attacked the second time Spartacus and his men had not yet moved off. But Crassus managed to distract them, thereby leaving the men under Castus and Cannicus on their own. After barely surviving the first attack, they were physically weak and perhaps demoralized as well. The failure to stand and fight had violated every rule of Celtic and Germanic culture; now they paid a price for their safety in shame.

Before attacking, Crassus had laid the groundwork well. He had divided his forces in two marching camps, each with its own trench and earthworks. He placed both camps near the enemy in a gesture of self-confidence and intimidation. Crassus set up his headquarters tent in the larger of the two camps. Then, on a designated night, he pulled all his troops out and posted them in the foothills of the mountain. He left his headquarters tent in the camp, though, in order to fool the enemy.

Next, Crassus split his cavalry into two groups. He sent one unit out under Lucius Quinctius, his legate, with orders to tempt Spartacus with a feigned battle. It is a tribute to Quinctius’s professionalism that he executed this delicate manoeuvre well. Then again, the example of the decimation of Mummius’s troops after they had failed to carry out a similar manoeuvre against Spartacus no doubt focused the minds of Quinctius’s men. In any case, they followed orders well. They neutralized Spartacus’s forces while avoiding losses of their own.

The other group of cavalry had a job that also called for finesse. Arguably, they had the more difficult task. They had to approach the German and Celtic forces under Castus and Cannicus and lure them out to fight, only to simulate retreat. The goal was to lead the enemy into a trap. Crassus and his infantrymen were waiting, perhaps around a bend in the hills. The rebels followed Crassus’s cavalrymen right into the ambush. At this point the Roman cavalry fell back into the wings. Drawn up in battle formation, opposite the rebels, was cold Roman iron.

It was Crassus’s dream and Spartacus’s nightmare: a pitched battle against the Roman army. The rebels’ best hope was to flee to safety. Whether that was still possible, now that the trap had been sprung, is doubtful. Besides, even if they could have fled, the men of Castus and Cannicus were unlikely to have done so. They had the stain of their flight at Camalatrum to wipe out. They stood and fought.

For Celts, battle was a religious act. Beforehand, they vowed to their war god the booty they hoped to take. Their thoughts went to the aftermath of a successful battle, when they could sacrifice captive animals, bury the enemy’s weapons, and cut off the heads of his slaughtered chiefs. If they lost the battle - well, a man’s ultimate offering to the gods was his own body, and a pious Celt would have given it gladly.

The odds did not favour them against Crassus. He probably outnumbered them and his men certainly far outstripped the enemy in weapons and discipline. Castus and Cannicus no doubt displayed good leadership skills but they are unlikely to have matched Spartacus’s tactical gifts. Above all, the Celtic way of war stood in the way of success.

Unlike the Romans, who emphasized coordination and discipline, Celts thought of battle as a series of heroic duels. Celts - and Germans too - grouped themselves in battle around their hero chiefs, fighting along with them to victory or death. This was no way to counteract the military science of the legions. As a Roman veteran, Spartacus knew this, and no doubt he laboured mightily to cure his men of this notion, but Spartacus was gone.

Cantenna proved to be a crushing Roman victory. No figures of their losses survive. The sources disagree about the number of rebel casualties. One tradition cites 30,000[182] or 35,000[183] dead, while Plutarch records 12,300[184]. The larger figures can be discarded as implausible; not even the lowest can be taken at face value. It is safest to say that the rebels suffered very large losses. Both traditions agree that Castus and Cannicus died on the battlefield. Plutarch states that this was ‘the most valiant battle of all’[185] that Crassus fought. The author was referring to the stiff resistance that the Celts and Germans put up. On his account, only two dead men out of 12,300 were found with back wounds. All the rest kept their places in the battle and fought the Romans to the death.

If that is true, it was a very Celtic ending. The Celts idealized a hero’s death on the battlefield and despised the thought of flight. For example, not a single Gaul turned in flight during the Battle of Bibracte[186] (near the modern Autun, France) against the Romans in 58 BC, as Caesar noticed. The Celts considered it better to take one’s own life, in fact, than to surrender. The Celts long honoured the principle of suicide in defeat, from the famous Hellenistic statue of the Dying Gaul and his wife to the suicide of the British queen Boudicca. Castus, Cannicus and many thousands had kept their honour. But the glory of Gaul and Germany lay dead on a field in Lucania.

We hear nothing of prisoners but there probably were some. Others might have escaped and made it back to Spartacus’s army. One wonders if the two Celtic women who went up Mount Camalatrum were there at Cantenna, perhaps at the edge of the battlefield, praying for their men. If so, did they die with them, perhaps by suicide?

Crassus had the right to relish victory. Outside textbooks, no army works like a machine, but even so, Crassus had trained his men to give him their best. Brutal discipline had finally paid off. Machiavelli, who would say that it is better for a prince to be feared than loved, would have approved of Crassus’s methods. Crassus had avenged defeat on the Melìa Ridge. He had achieved more through one night of cunning than he had in weeks spent moving masses of earth.

After the battle, the Romans took in a rich haul of loot from the defeated army, but the greatest treasures had propaganda value. According to Livy, they found five fasces with rods and axes, tokens of a Roman magistrate’s power to beat and behead. The loss of the fasces had shamed the lictors, the magistrate’s attendants who normally carried them; the recovery honoured Crassus’s men. More important, they recovered five Roman eagles and twenty-six battle standards. Each standard was a long pole decorated with various symbols and insignia, and every century, cohort and legion had its own. The legion’s standard was a single silver eagle. Officers called standard-bearers carried the standards in battle, often taking them into the teeth of the enemy. At the Battle of Pydna in 168 BC a standard-bearer hurled his standard into the enemy, and many men died in order to win it back. Every Roman standard had, as it were, blood on it.

Roman standards embodied the unit. The men revered, even worshipped their standards. Losing a standard in battle was a disgrace, while recapturing a standard was a mark of distinction, especially if achieved by force of arms. The Emperor Augustus (29 BC - AD 14) was so proud of getting back Rome’s lost standards from the Parthians (i.e. Iranians) that he had coins issued to commemorate the feat - and he acquired them through negotiation, not battle. By recovering such a collection of Roman honour, Crassus had practically won a second battle.

Spartacus no doubt had Roman battle standards of his own to brandish, taken in past victories, but on this day he probably did not win any new symbols for rallying his troops. He would have to find other ways to put his great communications skills to work. Surely he mourned Castus and Cannicus as he had mourned Crixus. This time, though, he did not have the leisure to hold funeral games or force Roman prisoners to fight as gladiators in their honour. Like Celts and Germans, Thracians too were men of honour. Spartacus was enough of a Roman, though, to think of survival. There was, he knew, no shame to live and fight again another day.

Spartacus convinced his men ‘to retreat towards the Peteline Mountains’[187]. Debate swirls over just where that was. Among the locations proposed are the Cilento Hills south-east of Paestum, the hills around the city of Atena Petilia (the modern Atena Lucana) in the Campus Atinas, and the Picentini Mountains (on the grounds that ‘Peteline’ represents a manuscript error). The simplest explanation is to have ‘Peteline Mountains’ mean the mountains around the city of Petelia, possibly the Sila Mountains, a time-honoured haunt of brigands and bandits. Petelia was a city in Bruttium, probably the modern Strongoli, near Croton and almost 200 miles south-east of Paestum: in other words, to reach Petelia, Spartacus would have had to drag his tired troops all the way back practically to the Melìa Ridge. Yet all indications are that the final events of the war take place within a brief span of time, far too brief for Spartacus’s army to have marched 200 miles and back.

Another source provides the missing piece of the puzzle. It says that Spartacus set up camp near the headwaters of the Silarus River[188], not far from the modern town of Caposele. The valley of the Upper Silarus skirts the Picentini Mountains, lying to the west. Caposele sits on what was a border region in ancient times between north-western Lucania, south-western Apulia, and north-eastern Samnium. Caposele lies about 45 miles north of Paestum, a few days’ march away. The nearness of the two sites, the presence of the Picentini Mountains, and the vicinity of Samnium (Spartacus’s goal after the Melìa Ridge) all make the area of Caposele a strong candidate for the place ‘towards the Peteline Mountains’ where the next events unfolded.

Wherever Spartacus and his men were heading, they probably did not get very far before the Romans caught them. Crassus had sent a contingent of troops after them, under the command of his lieutenants, Lucius Quinctius and Gnaeus Tremelius Scrofa. Scrofa served as quaestor, Quinctius was the cavalry commander who tricked Spartacus at Cantenna. Why Crassus himself did not undertake this important mission is unclear. Presumably he wanted his men to assess the enemy’s intentions before he committed the bulk of his army.

Once again Crassus had misplaced his trust. Neither Quinctius nor Scrofa exercised the appropriate caution as they pursued Spartacus. Instead they clung to his heels, oblivious to the danger of his turning on them. Suddenly he did, and the Roman army fled in panic. In spite of the disappointment of recent defeat, the veteran fighter still had tricks in him. Things went so badly for the Romans that Scrofa was wounded and the men barely carried him away to safety. They might have wondered what awaited them at camp, a medal or decimation.

The sources contain two different stories about Spartacus’s next move. This is not surprising, as ancient observers had to piece together the truth from the few surviving rebel eyewitnesses and from the claims of Roman commanders. Ultimately they might have had to guess at Spartacus’s plans.

According to the first account, Spartacus now began to lead his army towards the city of Brundisium (modern Brindisi)[189]. Now more than ever, he had only one reasonable goal: leaving Italy, the sooner the better. A southern Italian port city on the Adriatic coast, Brundisium was the maritime gateway to the East. Sulla, for instance, had landed there when he returned to Italy in 83 BC from the Mithridatic War, ready to begin his bloody march of conquest up the Appian Way, which stretched 364 miles from Brundisium to Rome. Perhaps Spartacus hoped to find ships at Brundisium to take him and his fellow Thracians home; maybe this time he would meet pirates who kept their promises. Failing that, there was Apulia, the region in which Brundisium lay; it was rich in food and potential recruits. So, the rebels went back on the march.

From Paestum, the road to Brundisium led through Caposele. (Another reason to identify it with the place ‘towards the Peteline Mountains’, if only military history were neat and logical.) An ancient highway from Italy’s Tyrrhenian coast to the Adriatic ran through the valley of the Upper Silarus. Not far from the headwaters of the river, near the city of Aquilonia, Spartacus would have reached the Appian Way. From there, Brundisium lay about 175 miles to the south-east. Presumably, this is just the route that he started his army on after their victory over Quinctius and Scrofa.

But bad news stopped them in their tracks. The situation in Brundisium had changed. Spartacus learned that Marcus Lucullus had landed there with his troops, fresh from his success in Thrace. Better now to march into the Underworld than into Brundisium.

The second account takes off perhaps from that point[190]. It begins with the men on the road. They were wearing their armour, maybe to be ready for further Roman attacks. Fresh from their success over Crassus’s deputies, they had grown overconfident. ‘Success destroyed Spartacus,’[191] writes Plutarch, ‘because it aroused insolence in a group of runaway slaves.’ They no longer considered it worthy of their dignity merely to engage in a fighting retreat. Instead of continuing to obey their commanders, they threatened them with their weapons. In short, the men mutinied.

Mutinies are usually the work of soldiers who want less, not more fighting and Plutarch inspires less trust the more he ascribes motives. These reasons make the tale of the mutiny suspect, but there are grounds for believing it. Victorious armies do not like to retreat, especially if they are people’s armies, in which the ordinary soldier is used to voicing his opinion. Death before disgrace is a familiar motif of ancient warfare, not least in accounts of Thrace. Spartacus himself had encouraged this way of thinking. At the very outset of the revolt, back in the house of Vatia, he had said that freedom was better than the humiliation of being put on display for others. One of the rebels, possibly Spartacus himself, had said, perhaps on Vesuvius, that it was better to die by iron than by starvation.

Besides, the mutineers’ goal had some merit. Having just successfully tricked Crassus’s lieutenants, it was reasonable for them to try tricking Crassus himself. With Pompey on his way, it was better to bring things to a head quickly than to let Rome build its military muscle. Spartacus might have objected that Crassus had learned too much by now to fall for a trick. But the men insisted.

Spartacus’s army probably stood on the Appian Way. If they marched southwards on it they would soon cross a bridge over the River Aufidus (Ofanto). Roaring for 100 miles to the Adriatic Sea, the Aufidus passed close to the the town of Cannae. There, about 150 years earlier, in 216 BC, Hannibal gave Rome its greatest battlefield defeat in history, killing perhaps 50,000 men in one day.

History, strategy, honour and mutiny all swirled around him. Rhetoric might change the mutineers’ minds, but only careful reflection could illuminate the right path. Spartacus paused, then he moved his army.

Chapter 10 — Spartacus

The Thracian was practically at the gates. His slaves and gladiators had already reached the Appian Way, and a march of 50 miles would bring them to Venusia (modern Venosa). An ancient city planted in the shadow of an extinct volcano, majestic Mount Vultur (modern Vulture), Venusia had been a Roman colony for 200 years. Now, in spring 71 BC, it would have been well advised to firm up its walls. Surely raiding parties had already looted outlying farms.

And raids were perhaps the least of it. People were saying this of the rebels: ‘they indiscriminately mix murder, arson, theft and rape.’[192] They took Roman citizens prisoner. One Roman matron[193] was supposed even to have killed herself in torment over the violation of her sexual honour. Venusians could imagine worse still, based on recent experience. After joining the rebels against Rome in the Social War, Venusia had been stormed and recaptured by a Roman army in 88 BC.

One of the inhabitants of Venusia in 71 BC was a freedman named Horatius. Although an ex-slave, he was unlikely to have sympathized with Spartacus, because Horatius represented a success story. If the ancient biographical tradition[194] can be trusted, he had started out selling salted fish: the kind of petty retailer who, in Cicero’s opinion[195], could turn a profit only by making a habit of lying. Currently, however, he was an auction broker, a profession that made up in profitability what it lacked in prestige. The prosperous freedman might have feared Spartacus as much as any blueblood did.

But Horatius need not have worried. Spartacus’s rabble in arms would not disrupt his road to success. If not then in 71 BC, then soon Horatius would own a farm as well as a townhouse. Six years later, in 65 BC, his wife (her name is not recorded) would give birth to their son, Quintus. He would prove to be a talented child. Horatius could afford to send the boy not only to the best school in Venusia but then to a better school in Rome and, finally, to university in Athens, where he shared classes with the son of Cicero, no less. Quintus would live to become Rome’s most polished poet: Quintus Horatius Flaccus, better known as Horace.

In the end it would all work out for Horatius’s family but for one moment in 71 BC he held his breath. Or so we might imagine: Horatius, the poet Horace’s father, is a real historical figure but his situation as Spartacus approached Venusia is an educated guess. For that matter, Spartacus’s approach is itself a deduction from sources that are too sketchy and contradictory to permit certainty about the last phase of the war. In any case, it seems that Spartacus turned south and away from Venusia. He led his army down the valley of the Upper Silarus River towards the Romans’ camp - again, a plausible itinerary but not certain. What is clear is that, as one source says: ‘he gave up on all [his other plans] and came to blows with Crassus.’[196] Why?

The ancient sources disagree about Spartacus’s motivation. One says that his men forced him to fight the Romans[197], while the other says that he made the choice on his own[198]. Was it the mutiny or the bad news from Brundisium? Historically, only one possibility can be right but the contradiction may reflect Spartacus’s own mixed motives. The Roman in Spartacus knew that the odds of battle were against him. As a Thracian chieftain, though, he embraced a fight to the death for freedom.

Meanwhile, Crassus was a moving target. As soon as he got the news of Spartacus’s approach, Crassus went on the march himself. He was eager to fight. Like many of the rebels, Crassus wanted to force a confrontation before Pompey arrived but he marched as much on political as on military grounds. Crassus wanted the credit for victory.

Naturally, Crassus wanted to win. He had grounds for optimism. Since taking command in the autumn, Crassus had improved the odds considerably in Rome’s favour. He had inflicted repeated and considerable battle losses on the enemy (dead, wounded and prisoners) in northern Lucania, on the Melìa Ridge and at Cantenna. In addition, Spartacus had lost the men of the Celtic-German splinter group and perhaps other individual defectors too as the going got rough. At its zenith, Spartacus’s army had consisted of about 60,000 men. It was ‘still of great size’[199], says one source, but it was surely much diminished. It would be surprising if he had more than 30-40,000 soldiers left, but that is just an educated guess.

The Romans seem to have done better. Crassus had suffered some losses among his 45,000 or so legionaries on the Melìa Ridge and in the engagement ‘towards the Peteline Mountains’. After the end of the rebellion, the Romans liberated 3,000 Roman citizens[200] held prisoner by the rebels; how many of them were soldiers is not known. At a reasonable estimate, Crassus now had 40,000 legionaries. In other words, the Romans matched the rebel army in size and may have outnumbered it.

That did not bode well for Spartacus’s men. The Romans were used to taking on larger armies and beating the odds through their superior training and leadership (especially at the centurion level). They had better arms and armour than the enemy and were surely better fed. They knew that reinforcements were on the way and from two directions but they were cocky enough to take on the enemy on their own.

The rebels could count. They cared little about expectations, however, because they didn’t want an ordinary battle; they wanted a grudge fight. They wanted to avenge their fallen friends. They wanted to achieve the hero’s death that Thracians, Celts and Germans had all been raised to desire. They wanted to kill Romans because rebel slaves knew what awaited them if captured. A group of Sicilian slaves[201] in the Second Sicilian Slave War (104- 100 BC), for example, chose suicide over surrender; another group killed each other in captivity, according to some sources, rather than let the Romans send them to the lions. Spartacus’s men might have reasoned that if the coming battle was to be a slaves’ Thermopylae, then so be it.

It was 71 BC, probably April. As the rebels marched southwards through the Upper Silarus Valley, the Romans marched northwards. There was symmetry to the location. Spartacus’s first clash with a Roman army had taken place on Vesuvius, the most fatal volcanic region in Italy. Now, on a plausible interpretation of the evidence, the last act would unfold in one of Italy’s most dangerous earthquake zones, the valley of the Upper Silarus. In AD 79 Vesuvius erupted and destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum. In 1980 an earthquake centred on Conza[202] (ancient Compsa, a city near the Appian Way), killed 3,000 people, injured more than 10,000, and left 300,000 homeless.

The Silarus begins almost unnoticeably in the north, winding through a maze of hills. Then the river flows southwards for 20 miles following a regular course, guarded on either side by mountain walls as high as 5,000 feet. The Picentini Mountains rise in rocky highlands to the west, while the massifs of Mount Marzano and Ogna (modern names) wall off the eastern side of the valley. The space between the mountains is nowhere wider than about 3 miles. Much of the valley is hilly; the widest stretch of plain is about 2 miles wide. The valley ends dramatically in the south, where the curtain wall of mountains stops abruptly at the plain, leaving the Silarus to flow towards the sea over its middle and lower courses. Looking back towards the Upper Silarus from the plain, the mountains seem to retreat gracefully from each other at the valley’s entrance, only to throw up a rock wall again where the river turns.

Green and well watered, the valley’s air is fresh but humid, and clouds are not uncommon. It might look as much like Upstate New York or Quebec as the Mediterranean if not for the many groves of olive trees. No doubt slaves tended them in Roman times. Entering the valley from the plain, past the hot springs of Contursi Terme (modern name), the odour of sulphur is unmistakable. About 10 miles to the north sits the town of Oliveto Citra (modern name), on a hill overlooking the river.

Oliveto Citra claims the honour of being the site of Spartacus’s last battle. So does the town of Giungano (modern name), 50 miles away in the hills near Paestum. Neither claim can be verified, but Giungano can be ruled out, since in fact Giungano was probably the site of a different battle, the one in which Crassus defeated Castus and Cannicus. Oliveto Citra lies south-west of a plain that stretches for about 2 miles and which would indeed have made a good battlefield. Each side might have seen advantages in the relatively narrow space: the numerically superior Romans could not outflank the rebels, while Spartacus’s cavalry had only limited space to manoeuvre. If ancient conditions were like today’s, the valley contained olive trees and deep-ploughed soil. But in the west, the pockmarked cliffs of the Picentini Mountains mark deep gorges, while on the east, the long ridge of the Ogna massif stands guard. A Roman breastplate was once found in these fields. Still, one breastplate does not a battlefield make: safer to say that the battle probably took place somewhere in the valley of the Upper Silarus.

When his scouts located the rebels, wherever that was, Crassus marched up to them and pitched his camp close by. It was a provocative act, an expression of his eagerness to fight. It was also risky. When the sources criticize Crassus for moving too quickly[203] in his zeal to beat Pompey, they may have been referring to this moment.

‘He [Crassus] was digging a trench,’[204] say the sources, ‘when the slaves sallied forth and started fighting with the workers.’ This might mean a trench around the Romans’ camp, but more likely it is a reference to a ditch or ditches dug to keep Spartacus’s cavalry from outflanking the legions, just as Sulla had done at the Battle of Orchomenus in Greece in 85 BC. As the Roman general Corbulo would later say, ‘you defeat the enemy with a pickaxe.’[205] Crassus’s men might also have been building strongholds at the end of the trench for the emplacement of light and mobile catapults known as scorpions. Caesar used this tactic fifteen years later in his invasion of Gaul. Scorpions fired bolts that delivered a vicious sting, as the name of the machine suggests. We know of a case in which a scorpion bolt pierced a cavalry commander’s body[206] and pinned him to his horse.

The rebels attacked the trenches. The Romans whom Spartacus had faced in the first two years of the revolt might have turned and run towards safer ground. Crassus’s men stayed and fought. More Romans arrived, and then more slaves, and now it was a mêlée.

Nothing suggests that either general joined the fray at the trench. Sulla’s veterans might have thought back to their chief’s behaviour at Orchomenus when Mithridates’ men attacked his ditch-diggers. Seeing his soldiers flee, Sulla had jumped down from his horse, grabbed a standard, run through the crowd of deserters towards the enemy, and shouted words of abuse. He, for one, planned to die with honour; they could later declare, when asked where they betrayed their leader, ‘At Orchomenus!’[207] He turned the men around and, after furious fighting, saved the day.

The situation was different at the Silarus. Plutarch, who tells the tale, makes it sound as if Spartacus’s men attacked the ditch-diggers on their own initiative and so forced their leader’s hand. ‘Seeing the necessity,’[208] Plutarch writes of what happened next, ‘Spartacus arranged his entire army in battle formation.’ But it is just as likely that Spartacus had sent his men out deliberately. A veteran like Spartacus should have foreseen Crassus’s trenches and their threat to the rebel cavalry. A successful flank attack by the rebel cavalry could break up Rome’s light infantry, whose job it was to send a steady stream of slings and arrows against the enemy. A cavalry ride surely played a role in Spartacus’s battle plan - and he is likely to have had a battle plan. He may not have wanted to fight at first but once he realized the inevitability of battle, Spartacus would have set his mind to work. A man like him did not let events hold him prisoner. He would probably have held a council of war and hammered out plans with his lieutenants.

Spartacus might have hoped to squeeze out a victory by first disrupting the Roman formations with his cavalry. A successful offensive by horsemen could deprive the Romans of their missile capability. Then his infantry would attack. Instead of a howling, hell-for-leather charge, Spartacus would try to decapitate the enemy by killing its leadership.

Crassus too surely had a battle plan. Apparently, he intended to neutralize the enemy cavalry and thereby ensure the freedom of his light infantry to rain missiles on the rebels. Light javelins, sling-shot missiles, scorpion bolts and arrows - perhaps even fire arrows - were the likeliest projectiles. Meanwhile, his legions would beat back an anticipated charge by the enemy. Then they would counter with a much more disciplined and formidable charge of their own, and thereby win the battle.

The two generals now prepared their armies for battle. This was a long process, more a matter of hours than of minutes. On the Roman side, the military tribunes carefully supervised the exit of the troops from camp and their deployment in the field. In the absence of other evidence, we might imagine that the legions were drawn up in the standard triple-line pattern. The rear line would serve as reinforcements, if needed. On the rebel side, preparations are likely to have been less regimented. Nonetheless, Spartacus’s lieutenants probably kept things on a tighter rein than the Romans would have wished. It would not be surprising if the lines each extended for about a mile.

In the rebels’ front there probably stood veteran troops who knew how to keep calm in battle. The Romans’ weapons might have gleamed with spit and polish. After all, only at the eleventh hour did legionaries remove their shields from protective covers. The rebels’ arms and armour were probably duller and far less uniform in quality. But many of the pieces recalled the Romans from whose corpses they had been stripped. Likewise, the rebels’ standards, hoisted under the Italian sun, had travelled a path of victory from Vesuvius to Mutina to Bruttium.

Before the fight began, each commander addressed his troops or at least the portion of them within earshot. Crassus’s words do not survive. Spartacus engaged in a bold gesture. After calling for his horse to be brought to him, he drew out his sword and addressed his soldiers. According to Plutarch, he said ‘that if he won he would have many horses, and good ones, from the enemy, but if he lost, he would not need any’[209]. Then he slaughtered the animal.

Now and then an ancient general sent away his horse and fought on foot, in order to encourage the men. But Spartacus took a further step and engaged in a religious ritual, the solemn gesture of a man facing death. Spartacus’s gesture stood out for its drama but not for its pursuit of the sacred: every ancient people considered war a religious act and consulted the gods before battle. The Romans, for instance, brought chickens along with them on military campaigns; they considered these birds sacred. They fed the birds before battle and took it as a favourable sign if the chickens ate with gusto and let food drop from their beaks. Celtic armies consulted priests and bards before battle. We can assume that Spartacus’s army always carried out pre-battle rituals but no details survive except in one case, the Battle of the Silarus.

Thracians, like many ancient peoples, including Celts and Germans, regarded the horse as sacred. An incident from one of Rome’s various wars in Thrace echoes Spartacus’s act. Around 29 BC a Roman army of invasion stood poised to fight a battle with a Thracian tribe, the Moesians. At the last moment, the Moesian commander stood[210] before his battle line and sacrificed a horse. Then he vowed to slaughter the Roman leaders as human sacrifices - and to eat their intestines. Spartacus apparently left Crassus’ s viscera out of it.

By killing the horse - his own mount, no less - Spartacus made a vow in the hope of victory. He also made policy decisions about tactics and morale. Generals normally fought on horseback. By killing his horse, Spartacus might have improved the men’s morale but at the price of limiting the general’s vision and mobility. Without his horse, Spartacus could not change plans once the fighting began nor flee if things went badly. But the men may have seen only his courage and generosity. Perhaps they responded, as Thracians usually did before battle, by singing and dancing[211] in sight of the enemy; perhaps the Celts among them redoubled the taunts they customarily levelled at the enemy. On either side, commanders signalled; banners waved; trumpets blared. Then they fought.

Two armies collided at the Silarus and so did two worlds. It was a clash of military science and heroic ideals, precisely the sort of battle to give birth to legends. What few details have survived are in large part melodramatic; the sceptical reader might choose to dismiss them altogether. Yet the story is more unusual than implausible. Besides, several authentic details of Roman combat can be culled from the sources.

When the signal for battle was given, we might expect that each side’s infantry attacked. The rebels are likely to have cheered and charged. The Romans had been trained to advance slowly. They would have come to within about 50 feet of the enemy and thrown their javelins. Then they would have drawn their swords and charged. The legionaries would have raised a shout, meant as much to encourage themselves as to terrify the enemy.

All this is speculation, and it leaves out key points. Roman battles were complex affairs; commanders sent in cavalry, called for reserves, wheeled their men around, retreated and re-formed their lines, looked for gaps in the enemy’s position - all at the proper times. Too little is known about this engagement even to guess about these details. The Silarus was an epic fight, involving 60,000 men or more, but the ancient world cared mainly about what Spartacus did that day. How could it not, when he turned the battle into a duel? Spartacus’s strategy was to target Crassus. ‘He pushed towards Crassus,’[212] writes one source, ‘through many weapons and wounds.’

Crassus probably sat on horseback close to his army’s front line, the usual position of a Roman general in battle. From here he observed, exhorted and commanded. He was close enough to the fighting to inspire his men, call for reserves, or make mental notes for future reference. Not for Crassus the safety of the rear: he ‘exposed his body to danger’[213], says one source. But Spartacus ran an even greater risk because he stood in the front line itself and he fought on foot.

For a general to stand in the front line was rare but not unheard of. Hannibal, for instance, stood in the front rank at Cannae in 216 BC and both Caesar and Catiline would each do so at times in the decades following Spartacus’s revolt. But what was indeed rare in ancient warfare was to turn a clash among tens of thousands of men into a contest between two generals. Spartacus embodied a throwback to the old Thracian ideal of one man with a sword.

But not just Thracians. By singling out the enemy general, Spartacus acted like a Roman seeking Rome’s highest military honour. Called the spolia opima (‘splendid spoils’), this distinction went just to one historically attested Roman in the entire history of the Republic. Marcus Claudius Marcellus won this prize from a Gallic chieftain in 222 BC. More recently, at some point between 79 and 76 BC in Spain, the renegade Roman commander Sertorius had challenged the proconsul Metellus to a battlefield duel; Metellus declined. Sertorius, however, did not then charge Metellus’s army with his loyal retainers, as Spartacus did with Crassus.

Attacking Crassus was brave and foolhardy. Penetrating the enemy line was always dangerous, and more so since the Romans would fight tooth and nail to protect their commander. No doubt Spartacus had a retinue around him, perhaps a bodyguard of picked men, but to protect Crassus the legionaries would swarm them and eventually break through. Spartacus had to gamble on speed: to kill Crassus quickly before the Romans killed him, and then to hope that the legion crumbled at the news of its general’s death. It was a desperate move but arguably a good one under the circumstances. Attacking Crassus risked death; charging an entire legion assured it.

Spartacus’s charge is one of the unforgettable events of ancient warfare. It was a real-life aristeia, to use a Greek word, borrowed by the Romans. Aristeia is an epic story of a warrior’s heroic deeds. The Romans marvelled at his courage. Spartacus ‘fought fortissime’[214], writes one author, that is, ‘with the height of personal bravery’. As he battled towards Crassus, ‘he killed two centurions who fought hand to hand with him.’[215] Centurions always led from the front and held their ground: ‘they shall not pass’ might have been their motto. As much as any legionary, they knew how to fight at close quarters. While protecting himself with his large, rectangular shield, a centurion’s practised eye could find a target for his sword in the enemy’s head or torso. But centurions were not trained to face a gladiator.

Spartacus never reached Crassus. Two different versions of Spartacus’s fate survive. ‘In the end,’[216] according to one account, ‘when those around him had fled, he stood his ground, surrounded by many, and although he defended himself, he was cut down.’ The second report says: ‘Spartacus was wounded in the thigh by a short javelin. He got down on one knee, thrust his shield before him and continued to fight off those who were attacking him, until he himself and the large number of men around him were surrounded and fell.’[217]

The differences are clear. One story says that Spartacus’s friends abandoned him, while the other has them fight and die with him. One report mentions a javelin wound in the thigh, which forces Spartacus to his knee, while the other report says nothing of wounds or kneeling. The little javelin (doration in the Greek text, so iaculum or telum in Latin) is just the sort of weapon to have been thrown by Rome’s light infantry. Spartacus’s men had tried to stop the Romans from digging an anti-cavalry trench. Apparently the Roman pickaxe had prevailed, which held back the enemy horse and allowed a Roman light infantryman to do what Roman centurions could not: to bring down Spartacus. How demeaning for a gladiator not to fall in hand-to-hand combat.

It is impossible to choose between the two versions, so we have to settle for the common details: Spartacus was surrounded, he defended himself, and he died fighting.

For all their fear and loathing of gladiators and rebel slaves, Roman writers stood in awe of Spartacus’s courage that day. The historian Sallust (86-35 BC, first sounded this note by commenting that ‘he did not die quickly or unavenged.’[218] Florus (c. AD 100-150) paid Spartacus the compliment of saying that ‘he died almost an imperator.’[219] In Latin, imperator means ‘commander’ but it was a special title of honour, symbolizing the bond between a winning general and his men. After a victory, his soldiers saluted the winner as imperator. Sulla, Pompey, Caesar and Augustus all made great use of the term. By Florus’s day, imperator was the generic title for ‘emperor’. In short, nothing became Spartacus’s life so well as his manner of losing it.

Compared to Spartacus, the tens of thousands of other soldiers on the field receive scant attention from the sources. It is clear that they fought hard and long. ‘The battle was long and strongly contested because of the desperation of so many myriads of men,’[220] says one source.

Battle inspired, terrified and disoriented its participants. Always loud, the sound of battle echoed between the hills, leaving men uncertain about the location of a given action. Commanders might have had to guess the course of action by watching dust clouds raised by charging troops.

One source uses a metaphor from the arena to characterize the rebels’ fighting spirit: ‘As befit an army led by a gladiator, the battle was fought sine missione - to the death.’[221] Sine missione is a technical term for a bout in which the producer denies a defeated gladiator the chance to live. The Romans knew that no opponent was more dangerous[222] than one who cannot live but can still kill.

By killing Spartacus the Romans had turned the tables on his strategy. They apparently inflicted the psychological shock on his men that Spartacus had hoped to inflict on the Romans. After he was killed, the rest of his army fell into disorder. The loss of cohesion is fatal in pitched battle. The legionaries, we can imagine, now pushed and chopped their way into the rebels’ lines, opening up pockets here, there and everywhere. The bravest of the rebels would have stayed and fought but many would have run - if they still could. ‘They were cut down en masse,’[223] says one source. Another puts it more admiringly: ‘They met with a death worthy of real men.’[224]

They may have owed their courage in part to their women, who likely stood in the rear ranks. The Triballi, a tough Thracian people, are said to have stationed women there during one battle. They rallied any wavering men with cries and taunts. It was deserved humiliation, but at least the women did not kill them, as Cimbri women are said to have done under similar circumstances.

By the battle’s end, the Romans had crushed Spartacus’s army. They paid a price for victory: the rebels, it is estimated, had killed about 1,000 Roman soldiers. At about 2.5 per cent of Crassus’s troops, that amounted to what was probably a lower-than-average death rate for the winning side in a Roman infantry battle (based on the limited surviving evidence). The Romans caused massive carnage in turn.

One source claims 60,000 rebel dead[225], but that is preposterous. A more honest assessment of rebel casualties concludes that ‘a slaughter of them came about that cannot be counted.’[226] Still, thinking out loud is permissible. Lopsided casualty ratios were not unusual in ancient battles; soldiers who broke and ran were at the mercy of those in pursuit. We know of cases in Roman history in which the defeated army is said to have seen more than half of its men killed or taken prisoner. If there is an element of exaggeration in those figures, there is also the fact that victorious cavalry could ride down an enemy in flight, and infantrymen could encircle their foes and cut them to pieces. If the victorious Romans suffered a death toll of 2.5 per cent, it is possible that the defeated rebels suffered several times as many deaths: it is not difficult to imagine 5,000 to 10,000 deaths out of 30-40,000 rebel soldiers.

Indeed, the sheer number of slippery corpses and scattered weapons might have slowed down the Romans’ pursuit of their broken foe. Bodies might have been piled up two or three high, and even the air might have seemed to be thick with blood. A large number of rebels managed to flee into the nearby mountains. We might assume that any man who could took women and children with him, rather than leave them to the Romans. Crassus had to engage in extensive mopping-up operations after winning the battle. The shock waves spread even further, as survivors took the fight both north and south.

Contrary to myth, Spartacus was not crucified. Crassus could never have asked the question that led to the chorus shouting, ‘I am Spartacus!’ That response is a brilliant Hollywood touch - but it is entirely fictional.

Spartacus died in battle and his corpse was never found. This may seem hard to imagine in the case of so famous a man: surely, someone recognized him. But the slave commander might have worn ordinary armour: finery would not have suited a man who outlawed gold and silver, divided loot equally, and killed his own horse. Spartacus’s final struggle might have left only the badly disfigured body of a soldier dressed in ordinary armour. Then the tide of battle flowed over it, no doubt rendering it unrecognizable in the end. Crassus was denied the chance to decorate a trophy with the arms and armour of his rival.

Spartacus had failed. He had freed tens of thousands of slaves and built them into an army that even some free people joined. He had upended much of the southern Italian countryside. Conquering legion after legion, he had taxed Rome’s resources for more than two years. But in the end, Spartacus went down the same path of catastrophe as Hannibal and, in later years, Cleopatra. Spartacus’s defeat was both a failure of the intellect and of the imagination. Any thoughtful analyst would have reached the conclusion that, sooner or later, the Roman army would crush the insurgency in Italy. Most of the insurgents, however, could not imagine a safe and happy life over the Alps in a strange country. Spartacus built an army that was bold enough to win if it would only quit while it was ahead, but not wise enough to see this.

Whether Spartacus’ s leadership failed is a difficult question. He did not fail on the battlefield, where he excelled as a commander, as long as he maintained limited goals. Nor did he fail in training or inspiring the troops. Spartacus did not attempt to abolish slavery altogether nor did he make a serious effort to conquer the city of Rome, but he offered grand ideals nonetheless. He gave his followers realistic but noble goals: freedom, equality, honour, prowess, vengeance, loot and even the favour of the gods. But not even Dionysus’s favourite could convince them of his ultimate strategic goal: Spartacus failed to persuade his men to cross the Alps. It is doubtful that anyone could have persuaded them. Desperate men are easy to inspire but difficult to reassure. After proving to his army that the gods had turned against Rome and its legions, he could not convince them that disaster lay around the corner unless they fled Italy.

Spartacus suffered the common fate of prudent revolutionaries: he lit a fire that he could not put out. He discovered as well that the very vigour that makes insurgent armies successful makes them fragile. Rebel forces, built from scratch, are notoriously volatile and wilful. Spartacus’s army suffered from massive internal divisions between Italian-born and emigrants and, especially, from divisions among different ethnic and national groups. The mix of Thracians, Celts, Germans and Italians was unstable, yet it was all there was. Spartacus had no choice but to fight with the men he had.

Given those limitations, Spartacus acted well when Crassus brought on the inevitable crisis. It was prudent and proper for him to cross into Sicily. Spartacus cannot be blamed for being double-crossed by the pirates, especially if they were bribed and bullied by the Roman governor of Sicily, Verres. Did Spartacus botch the crossing by raft or was it beyond the technical capabilities of all but the best-supplied forces?

Spartacus was a failure against Rome but a success as a myth-maker. No doubt he would have preferred the opposite, but history has its way with us all. Who, today, remembers Crassus? Pompey? Even Cicero is not so well remembered. Everyone has heard of Spartacus.

Strangely enough, though, they often remember the wrong man. Neither firebrand nor idealist, the real Spartacus wanted to mix hope and prudence. Ultimately, one suspects, he would have been happy to carve out a small space free of Rome and retire as a king or lord in a corner of Thrace. But history taught him a hard lesson: unlike games in the arena, revolutions spill out of control.

Meanwhile, thousands of corpses lay back near the Silarus River. We can make educated guesses as to their fate. The bodies of officers might be transported back to Rome. For ordinary Roman soldiers, it was standard practice to be cremated on the battlefield, where their ashes would be buried in a mass grave. The corpses generated a thick cloud of smoke as the flames consumed them and filled the valley with a sickly-sweet smell. Before the pyre was lit, the legions would give their fallen comrades a final salute, marching around the pyre in full armour to the blare of trumpets, and it is possible that arms and armour were tossed into the flames. Numerous animal sacrifices ended the ceremony.

The rebels probably did not receive similar treatment. Wood was too expensive to waste on them, so their corpses were likely to have been dumped into a mass grave. The body that had been Spartacus probably ended up in an anonymous mound of flesh in a trench covered with dirt.

Somewhere between the headwaters of the Silarus and the spot where the river breaks out of the mountains into the plain, somewhere along the ancient highway between Italy’s two seas, somewhere between the road to Cannae and the beaches where the Allies would land one day, Spartacus was laid to rest.

Chapter 11 — The Victors

Spring belongs to Venus, goddess of gardens and love. In Capua, the famous roses bloom. Crowds thicken in the city’s perfume market, where exotic scents fill the air. Meanwhile, in 71 BC, 681 years since the founding of Rome, in the consulship of Publius Cornelius Lentulus Sura and Cnaeus Aufidius Orestes, the machinery of the Roman state grinds on. On 1 April - the Kalends of April, to the Romans - a Capuan slave named Flaccus[227] inspects a sack of coins. He is the property of the house of Novius, a prominent business family in Capua. The slave confirms the authenticity of the coins, seals the sack, inscribes his name on an ivory rod attached to it, and completes a tiny step in the vast process of sending the Roman people its taxes. Taxes are as timeless as the roses blooming.

Meanwhile, on the outskirts of Capua, the Roman people exact another payment. Down the road to Rome, as far as the eye can see, there stretches a line of slaves dying on crosses. It is the end of Spartacus’s revolt.

The crucified were Crassus’s last victims. They had done everything they could to avoid this fate. After surviving defeat in battle in Lucania, a still considerable number of rebels had fled rather than surrender. They had lost Spartacus and their other leaders but apparently they chose new ones. If pitched battle no longer lay within their means, they could still carry out guerrilla operations. The sources say that they went into the mountains[228] - perhaps the Picentini Mountains that they knew so well. Crassus and his army followed them. The rebels divided into four groups, no doubt hoping that by scattering they would increase the odds of survival. Apparently, they failed; Crassus claimed to have captured them all.

Crassus took 6,000 rebels alive. He then marched them to Capua, a distance of about 75 miles, assuming that they were captured in the Picentini Mountains. Were any of the original seventy-four gladiators who raised the rebellion among them? If so, they would not have had long to contemplate the irony of their return to the city where they had first broken out of the house of Vatia. Crassus had in mind a punishment that the Roman world considered ‘terrible’[229], ‘infamous’[230], ‘utterly vile’[231] and ‘servile’[232]. He planned to crucify all 6,000.

In the western world, crucifixion has a profound religious meaning because of the crucifixion of Jesus. In ancient times, crucifixion signified capital punishment; the cross was the equivalent of the gallows but far crueller. The Romans considered crucifixion the supreme penalty, reserved for rebellious foreigners, violent criminals, brigands and slaves. Verres had crucified an alleged agent of Spartacus, thereby unwittingly subjecting a Roman citizen to a punishment from which he was exempt. Spartacus had purposely crucified a Roman prisoner in the Battle of the Melìa Ridge. He wanted to warn his men about what they could expect from the Romans, and he was right.

The crucifixion of 6,000 people maybe the largest recorded mass crucifixion of the ancient world. Only Octavian Caesar, the future emperor Augustus, matched it in 36 BC when he captured and crucified 6,000 slave rowers from the fleet of his rival, Sextus Pompey. In both cases, the figure 6,000 is an approximation and, like most ancient statistics, it must be taken with a grain of salt. But ancient sources mention other mass crucifixions, among them: 800 men crucified in 86 BC, with their wives and children killed before their eyes, under Alexander Jannaeus, king of independent Judaea; 2,000 rebels from Tyre crucified along the Mediterranean shore by Alexander the Great in 332 BC; 2,000 rebels crucified in Judaea by the Roman official Quintilius Varus in 4 BC; 3,000 rebels crucified in Babylon by the Persian king Darius in 519 BC. Supposedly 500 people a day were crucified during the six-month Roman siege siege of Jerusalem in AD 70, a shockingly high total of 90,000 crucifixions - if true.

If crucifying 6,000 slaves was extreme, the action bears Crassus’s signature. The man built his career on the willingness to go the extra mile, from buying a legion to decimating a cohort to walling off the ‘toe’ of the Italian ‘boot’. Why not cap his victory with a spectacular, cruel and extravagant gesture of Roman justice?

We find crucifixions disgusting, but Romans probably tolerated them as a grim necessity. Nowadays many people reject the death penalty as cruel and unusual or criticize a tough interrogation technique like waterboarding as torture, while other people accept them. The purpose of crucifixion, in Roman eyes, was less revenge than deterrence[233]. Most Romans considered the slave revolt as a crime inflicted on the people of Italy. They disregarded the injustice of slavery and noted only the devastation of the countryside[234]. The sight of slaves in arms had aroused the Romans’ fear, anger and indignation[235]. Now they wanted peace of mind promised by a sight burned for ever into the mind’s eye, a warning to Italy’s slaves never to repeat their rebellion.

In Capua, the freedman Publius Confuleius Sabbio might have walked outside the city walls to take in the sight. Sabbio had done so well in the cloak-weaving business that, in the early to middle first century BC, he was able to build a large townhouse decorated with elegant and ornate mosaics. He welcomed guests with his favourite greeting, Recte omnia velim sint nobis[236], ‘I would like all things to go well for us!’ The ex-slave would probably have faced the prisoners on the crosses with less kind words. He was a city-dweller; they were country folk; he had achieved success in the Roman order; they had threatened to destroy it. Although Sabbio too had once faced the threat of the cross, he may well have thought that Crassus had done the right thing.

He had not done so on the cheap: crucifying 6,000 people was surely expensive. Perhaps Crassus advertised himself afterwards as the man who paid for all the lumber, nails, rope and leather for whips. He was the man who arranged for 6,000 posts to be transported to intervals along the road and affixed in the ground, and who had guards stand watch over the dying rebels for days, including night-time. He might have presented himself once again as a man whose huge wealth paid outsized dividends to the Roman people. Some of the owners of the 6,000 slaves might have seen matters differently, since every cross represented a lost investment. Slave owners might have been willing to accept the rebels back, as owners had done after the First Sicilian Slave War, in a time of labour shortage. They might have argued that a good whipping would make any rebel docile again before Crassus slammed that door shut.

Crassus had the rebels crucified along ‘the whole road to Rome from Capua’[237], as the ancient sources say. By doing so, he followed the protocols of Roman justice and advanced his political career. Roman jurists recommended crucifying notorious brigands[238] at the scene of their crimes, which made Capua, the birthplace of Spartacus’s revolt, the logical place to erect the crosses. Roman authorities also favoured[239] the most crowded roads for crucifixions, in order to impress the maximum number of people, so the road between Capua and Rome made sense. In politics, as in transportation, all roads led to Rome, so naturally Crassus erected his crosses on the way to the capital city.

It is usually assumed that the ‘road to Rome from Capua’, was the Appian Way. In fact, two roads connected Capua and Rome; the other road was the Via Latina. The Appian Way was more famous but the Via Latina probably had more local traffic. The Appian Way (132 miles) was 14 miles shorter than the Via Latina (146 miles) and took a day’s less travel: it took five or six days to reach Rome from Capua on the Appian Way compared to six or seven days on the Via Latina. Whichever road Crassus chose would have been crowded with crosses.

Roman crucifixion normally consisted of three elements: scourging, carrying of the cross by the condemned and lifting. We might imagine a lamentable parade of the condemned, marching slowly northwards towards Rome through a landscape of spring flowers, their flesh torn and beaten from the whip, their throats parched. They might have included women as well as men, since Roman justice did provide for the crucifixion of women[240]. The Romans even crucified dogs[241], in an annual ritual, so perhaps children too ended up on Crassus’s crosses. The victims carried only the cross bar; the upright stake had already been fixed in the ground. When the condemned person reached the assigned stake, the executioners hoisted them into place via a ladder and poles.

All the condemned suffered cruelly, yet experiences on the cross varied. Depending on how the victim was hung, they might have suffocated within minutes or survived in agony for days. The sources make clear that the crucified could linger[242]: they record cases of men talking from the cross, making legal contracts from the cross, and being cut down and spared after a bribe to the officer on guard. Some victims were displayed with special grotesqueness, to mock them, and some were crucified upside down.

Some of the condemned were tied to the cross by rope while others were nailed to it. Archaeologists have found the bones of one crucifixion victim in Israel, dated to the first century AD. Possibly named Yehohanan, his feet were nailed to the cross but his arms seem to have been tied to the crossbar by rope. The victim was 24 years old and stood 5 foot 5 inches tall, probably shorter than the average height of the northern European males who predominated among Spartacus’s rebels. Yehohanan’s right anklebone still has a nail and piece of wood attached to it.

Perhaps some of Spartacus’s followers remained defiant on the cross. The ancient sources record cases of crucified men who laughed[243], spat on spectators or even sang victory songs when nailed to the cross.

We can only hope that the slaves on the road to Rome died quickly instead of suffering prolonged pain. After they died, the authorities would not have hurried to cut them down. The longer their corpses remained hanging, rotting and stinking, the more they would deter future rebels. As lowly criminals, the slaves were probably crucified close to the ground; high-status prisoners were raised 3 feet above ground level. All corpses were food for vultures, but dogs too could pick at the lower ones. Eventually, somebody had the job of taking down the remnants and hauling them to the nearest garbage dump. It is unlikely that the slaves received a proper burial; perhaps someone eventually burned the heaps of rotting flesh to spare the citizens the lingering smell.

It had taken Crassus six months to defeat the rebels. Since he entered office no later than November 72 BC, the revolt was over by the end of April 71 BC. The crosses should have been in place by May. Perhaps celebrants of the Floralia, the Roman equivalent of May Day, wearing traditional flower wreaths in their hair, went out to stare at the condemned. Through fields of red poppies and opposite hillsides of yellow broom, in valleys and over passes, along waterways and beside aqueducts, past junctions and way stations, milestones and mausoleums, villas and vineyards, gateways and gardens, the line of crosses marched on and on. Chariots and chain gangs, flocks of sheep and herds of cows, school children skipping along and senators carried in litters, bandits sneaking through the night and bakers up before dawn, they all passed by and saw. If any gladiators happened to view the crosses on the way between Capua and Rome, they might have taken the lesson especially to heart.

Perhaps we should imagine Crassus at the head of a column of soldiers, riding between the crosses, heralded by trumpeters, headed for Rome on a macabre victory lap. It was his moment; surely he made the most of it. As long as the slaves hung on their crosses, they would bring Crassus the publicity he craved. His hunger might have gone deep.

In spite of his success, Crassus feared oblivion in the public eye. In half a year he had defeated Spartacus, a man who had held Rome at bay for one and a half years before that. Crassus had tried Rome’s patience, however, by walling off Spartacus rather than finding and destroying him in battle. He had, furthermore, required help from other generals, so Crassus could not claim sole credit for victory.

His rival Pompey had turned injury to insult. It had happened this way: in addition to the rebels whom Crassus followed into the mountains, a second group of survivors remained at large. They fled Lucania and went north, perhaps after concluding belatedly that Spartacus had been right, after all, about crossing the Alps. Considerations of timing as well as a hint in ancient sources suggest that these were Celtic and German refugees from the Battle of Cantenna. Five thousand people, they made it as far as Etruria (Tuscany) in central Italy when their luck ran out. They landed right in the path of Pompey and his victorious army, marching back from Spain. Showing no mercy to runaway slaves, Pompey wiped them out.

Pompey wrote a letter to the Senate announcing his success. According to one source, the letter said: ‘Crassus had defeated the runaway slaves in open battle but he, Pompey, had torn up the very roots of the war.’[244] A clever put-down, it touched a sore truth. Crassus had killed Spartacus but left insurgents at large. They could still make life miserable for free Italians, as would become painfully clear about a year later.

In his prosecution of Verres, Cicero refers to an incident in early 70 BC that he calls ‘the troubles at Tempsa’[245]. Tempsa was a town in Bruttium known for its copper mines. Where there were mines there were slaves. The ‘troubles at Tempsa’, Cicero says, involved ‘the remnants of the Italian war of the fugitive slaves’[246].

Just what were those troubles? Cicero doesn’t say. They were bad enough to be reported to a meeting of the Roman Senate but not so bad that the senators sent an army to deal with them. According to Cicero, Gaius Verres should have handled the problem. He happened to be in the vicinity, on his way back to Rome after finally completing his extended term as governor of Sicily. A delegation from the town of Vibo Valentia, near Tempsa, led by an important local inhabitant named Manius.’ Marius, went to Verres and asked for his help. A ‘small band’[247] of rebels was at large, Marius told him. Surely the insurgents looked with eager eyes at the villas that dotted Vibo’s fertile territory. As a governor, Verres would have had a modest military escort, and Marius wanted them to restore order.

Cicero claims that Marius’s pleas fell on deaf ears; Verres preferred the company of his mistress on the seashore to helping the citizens of Vibo. Cicero may be telling the truth, but it may also be that things were more complicated: perhaps the rebels scattered before Verres could intervene. Or perhaps the ‘small band’ was really too large for Verres’s men. In any case, once the rebels had sacked the territories of Tempsa and Vibo, they melted into the hills. In Rome, the Senate shrugged.

The senators had other business at hand. War still raged against Mithridates, while pirates continued to terrorize the Mediterranean. At home, Cicero was prosecuting Verres - his term as governor of Sicily had ended on 31 December 71 BC - on charges of corruption. Cicero was brilliant and a former quaestor but he was young; Verres was defended by the greatest advocate of the day, Hortensius.

But the most diverting spectacle of domestic politics was the rivalry between Crassus and Pompey. By summer, both men had reached Rome with their armies. Normally, Roman generals were required to disband their armies once they entered the boundaries of Italy, but these two generals were exceptions because they each fought rebel slaves. Crassus commanded 35-40,000 troops; Pompey about 25-30,000. Neither man disbanded his army. They sat outside the city, waiting and wheeling and dealing.

Each man wanted to be elected consul for 70 BC, preferably at the expense of the other. Rome had two consuls each year; surely Pompey and Crassus would have preferred to share their year of office with a lesser figure. Neither could get his wish without the consent of Rome’s power brokers. Roman elections mobilized a mass electorate but they were heavily weighted in favour of the rich and powerful. No one could be elected without the support of a few, well-connected people. In the end, the generals agreed to a deal: when elections were held in July, Crassus and Pompey were each chosen as consul for the following year.

They would take office on 1 January 70 BC. With political success assured, the two generals might have each disbanded his army, save for one remaining item of business: the victory parade. Every Roman general aspired to the supreme honour of celebrating a triumph. A triumph was a spectacular victory march through the city of Rome with his army, culminating in a sacrifice to Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill and a feast. The general who celebrated a triumph was called triumphator.

Two other victorious generals had returned to Italy in 71 BC and they too each wanted a triumph. They were Marcus Lucullus, who had been summoned home to fight Spartacus after winning victories in Thrace, and Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius, proconsul and Pompey’s colleague in Spain.

Every triumph was different. Few details of the triumphs of 71 BC survive, but on a plausible (but by no means certain) reconstruction, a triumph proceeded as follows.

All Rome turned out on the day of a triumph. The triumphator began the morning outside the city with an assembly of his troops. He addressed them and distributed honours to a few and cash gifts to everyone. Then the triumphal parade began, entering Rome through the special porta triumphalis, ‘triumphal gate’, which was otherwise closed. It headed towards the Capitol via a long and very visible route. The Senate and the magistrates led the way, followed by trumpeters. Then came floats, displaying paintings of sieges and battles and heaps of spoils, with gold and silver prominent. Next came the white bulls or oxen headed for the slaughter, accompanied by priests. Freed Roman prisoners of war came next, dressed as the triumphator’s freedmen. Prominent captives marched in chains, usually headed for execution.

Then, preceded by his lictors, came the victorious general. Dressed in a special toga decorated with designs in gold thread, the triumphator rode in a four-horse chariot. He carried a sceptre and wore a wreath of Delphic laurel. A slave stood beside him and reminded him that he was mortal. His grown sons rode on horseback behind him, followed by his officers and the cavalry, all on horseback. Finally came the infantry, marching proudly, singing a combination of hymns and bawdy songs about their commander. Caesar’s men, for instance, mocked their chief as ‘the bald adulterer’[248].

The climax of the day came on the Capitoline Hill. There, after the execution of the enemy leaders, the triumphator attended the sacrifice to Jupiter. He gave the god a portion of the spoils as well as his laurel wreath. Afterwards he appeared as the guest of honour at a banquet on the Capitoline. Throughout the city the people feasted at public expense. Finally, the pipes and flutes accompanied the triumphator home at night.

To celebrate a triumph, a commander had to receive the permission of the Senate and a vote of the people. He also had to fulfil certain requirements. He had to have won a victory in a foreign war over a declared enemy. He had to have killed at least 5,000 of the enemy and brought the war to a conclusion - one of many reasons for inflated body counts in ancient texts. He had to have held public office and fought in the theatre officially assigned him. As a final matter of dotting the ‘i’s and crossing the ‘t’s, he had to have carried out the proper religious ceremonies before fighting.

His victory over Spanish rebels allowed Pompey to request - and receive - a triumph. So did Pompey’s co-commander in Spain, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius, and likewise Marcus Lucullus. Crassus, however, did not qualify for a triumph, in spite of his official commission and his victories, because his enemies were slaves. It was beneath the dignity of the Roman people to celebrate a triumph over a servile foe. Crassus had to settle for an ovatio instead.

An ovation was a stripped-down version of a triumph. Like a triumph, it featured a victory parade through the city, leading up to the Capitol and culminating in a sacrifice to Jupiter. There was money for the soldiers and feasts for the people. But the general did not ride on a chariot like the triumphator; he either walked or, in Crassus’s day, rode a horse. He did not wear the triumphator’s gold threads but the standard purple-bordered toga of a magistrate. He had no sceptre. Trumpets were banned; the victor had to settle for flutes. Finally, he wore a myrtle wreath instead of laurel.

As minor as this last detail seems to us, apparently it meant a great deal to the Romans. Crassus swallowed his pride when it came to accepting an ovatio instead of a triumph, but a myrtle wreath was too much. He asked the Senate for a special decree, a private bill as it were. The Senate complied, allowing Crassus to wear a laurel wreath at his ovatio.

Marcus Lucullus’s triumph probably took place first[249], well before the end of the year. Metellus Pius, Crassus and Pompey followed in late December, apparently within the space of a few days. Scholars reconstruct the order of events thus: Metellus Pius came first because of his rank as a former consul, then Crassus the ex-praetor, and finally Pompey, who, in spite of his military prowess, was a mere Roman knight.

Within the space of about a week, some 100,000 men marched through the city and accepted the cheers of a public grateful that peace had been restored in the heart of the empire and in one province, if not everywhere. These were very lavish affairs to judge from a surviving detail of Metellus Pius’s triumph, that he served 5,000 thrushes[250] for the public feasting. The cost for these birds alone was 60,000 sesterces, which was roughly equivalent to the annual pay of about 100 legionaries[251].

By the time of Pompey’s triumph, Rome had crowned four brows with laurel wreaths in one year. It was the last day of December 71 BC. The Spartacus War was officially history. The legend had already begun.