Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Spartacus and the Third Servile War (Encore)

Starting point is 00:00:00 The following is an encore presentation of Everything Everywhere Daily. In the year 73 BC, Rome faced one of its greatest threats to its existence. An army of over 100,000 liberated slaves rose up in revolt and threatened the very fabric of the Roman Republic. The revolt was led by a gladiator slave who led his Mali army, and, to the astonishment of Rome, managed to defeat many Roman legions. The end of this rebellion resulted in one of the most horrific displays in all of ancient history. Learn more about Spartacus and the third survey. Vile War on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. To understand what happened in the Spartacus uprising, we first need to understand the

Starting point is 00:00:55 institution of Roman slavery. The Roman economy, and indeed all of Roman society, was heavily dependent upon slavery at the time of the Republic. Slaves were mostly taken from conquered lands. For example, when Julius Caesar conquered Gaul, which happened several decades after the events in this episode, it's estimated that he enslaved over a million people. Likewise, slaves were taken from pretty much everywhere Roman armies went, including Germany, Greece, and Britain. While those represented the vast majority of slaves, people could be enslaved in other ways. Very poor families were known to sell their children into slavery to survive. If you were found guilty of a crime, the Romans didn't really have prison, so you could be enslaved. If you deserted from

Starting point is 00:01:36 the army, and you weren't executed, you could be enslaved. Slavery was often used for people who defaulted on debts. You could literally use yourself or your children as collateral for a loan. slaves were used in almost every segment of the Roman economy. There were certainly plenty of slaves used for heavy manual labor, but there were also white-collar slaves as well who were doctors, teachers, and accountants. Life as a slave ranged from bad to really, really bad. If you worked as a domestic servant, you had no rights, but you probably wouldn't be worked to death.

Starting point is 00:02:06 If you were sent to work in the mines, your life expectancy would have been only a few years. The number of slaves in Italy during the first century BC was astonishingly large. The Roman Senate once had a plan to make all slaves wear special clothing so they could be easily identified. The idea was eventually scrapped because they realized if they did that, the slaves would realize just how many of them there were. It is estimated that 35 to 40 percent of the population in Italy during the first century BC were slaves. I very well may do an entire episode on Roman slavery in the future as it is a pretty involved topic. While the Roman economy relied on slavery, they were also terrified of their slaves. slave revolts were always a concern as were escaped slaves. As Rome grew and more territories were conquered,

Starting point is 00:02:51 the slave population grew as well, rendering the threat of slave revolts even greater. The first such revolt, known as the First Servile War, occurred from 135 to 132 BC in central Sicily. The second uprising took place just 30 years later in 104 to 100 BC, and it again took place in the island of Sicily. The third, final, and greatest slave uprising in Roman history began in 73 BC. Unlike the first two revolts, this one took place on the Italian Peninsula. It began with a group of slaves from a gladiator school in the town of Capua, which was just north of Naples. Gladiators, which is also on a list for future episodes, were not all slaves. About half of all gladiators were slaves, and many freed gladiators had formerly been slaves.

Starting point is 00:03:37 Gladiator slaves were always considered to be very dangerous. While slaves were always a threat to rebel, gladiators were trained and had access to weapons. A group of 70 gladiators escaped from their school, and in their ranks was one gladiator named Spartacus. Little is known about his early life. We know that he came from Thrace, which is the region in Europe where Bulgaria, Northern Greece, and European Turkey currently reside. Many historians think that he was not born a slave, but rather was enslaved after deserting the Roman army. It would help explain how a Thracian became a slave, and also how he was so accomplished in battle.

Starting point is 00:04:13 The gladiators used what weapons they could, including kitchen utensils, to overcome the guards at the school, and then captured a wagon full of weapons and armor. Once free, the gladiators elected Spartacus and two other Gauls as their leaders, and began rampaging through the countryside around Capua. As they went from villa to villa, they freed the slaves they found, added to their numbers, and gathered supplies. When these slave revolts took place, normally a small number of units would be sent out, and it would quickly be quashed because slaves were usually not a match for trained Roman soldiers. This revolt was initially just considered a crime spree and not an existential threat to the republic itself.

Starting point is 00:04:48 However, when the small force was sent against Spartacus and his men, they beat the Romans. Spartacus and his group kept growing and eventually took up camp on the slope of Mount Vesuvius. There, a Roman preator named Gaius Claudius Galber, assembled a militia of 3,000 men, not trained legions, and blocked the only exit off the mountain. His plan was to just starve them out. However, Spartacus and his men were extremely clever. They created ropes and ladders and used them to scale down the cliff faces on the other side of Asuvius where it was assumed they couldn't go.

Starting point is 00:05:19 They then snuck around the Roman militia and slaughtered them. The success seen by Spartacus and his army only encouraged more slave uprisings in southern Italy. Not only did slaves join the movement, but free people who didn't like Roman rule did so as well. A second larger group of two legions were sent out, again led by a preator. This time the Romans split their forces trying to outflank the slave army, but Spartacus's forces once again were victorious. Not only did they win, but they captured all the Roman weapons and supplies. By the winter of 73 and 72 BC, Spartacus had a group of over 70,000 men, women and children. They spent the winter training and preparing their slave army, most of whom

Starting point is 00:05:59 had never been in combat before. There had never been anything like this in Roman history. This was now well beyond a simple crime spree or a local slave uprising. There are differing accounts as to what happened in the year 72 BC, but what we do know is that Spartacus and his army moved north, evidently with the idea of escaping to Gaul. Along the way, he defeated not one, but two armies led by Roman consuls separately, and then defeated the two combined armies at the Battle of Picnium. It was somewhere in northern Italy, around the modern day city of Modena that he changed his mind and took his wandering army of now 120,000 people south. This is one of the biggest riddles in the entire Spartacus story. No one is quite sure why he

Starting point is 00:06:39 turned his army around. He was on a roll and could have quite easily made it to Gaul or Germany, and once he got to that point, the Romans might have just let him go. Some historians think that he was intending to escape by sea to the south, and some think he wanted to march on Rome itself. It was at this point that Rome totally lost it and went to Defcon 1. The Romans had been busy putting down a rebellion in Spain and fighting a war in Asia Minor in what is modern day Turkey. They hadn't expected an enemy force to just suddenly appear in the middle of their heartland, let alone one that could defeat multiple Roman legions. Moreover, if Spartacus had tried to march on Rome itself, there could have been huge problems because Rome was the home to several hundred thousand slaves.

Starting point is 00:07:21 If the slaves in Rome thought their liberation was at hand, there wouldn't have been anything stopping them from going on a killing spree inside the city walls and opening the gates to Spartacus. To solve this problem, they turned to one Marcus, Licinius, Krasis. Krasis was an extremely wealthy man. Prior to the Roman imperial period, he was arguably the richest person in Roman history. While he had wealth, what he lacked was military success, which was vital to any Roman seeking status in Roman society.

Starting point is 00:07:51 Crassus was given somewhere between 30,000 and 50,000 troops to deal with Spartacus. Spartacus had moved past Rome, and was quite far into southern Italy by this point, and now moved north to meet Crasus and his army. During one of the first battles between Crasus and Spartacus, Crasus had a smaller force under the command of his legate Mumius, maneuver behind Spartacus's army with orders not to engage them. Mumius, however, decided to disobey the order and engage, and his men fled the field. Krasus eventually was able to engage and won a victory, killing 6,000 of Spartacus's men. The legions under Mummius, however, were punished harshly. Krasis brought back the ancient punishment of decimation.

Starting point is 00:08:33 500 men were selected, of which 50 were chosen by lot and beaten to death by their comrades. From this point, the war really started to turn. Spartacus supposedly tried to hire pirate ships at the Strait of Messina to take his followers to Sicily, where he could begin to liberate more slaves and grow his army. However, the pirates double-crossed him after taking his money. They took his money and then left the slave army stranded at the toe of Italy. At this point, Crassus took measures to ensure that they couldn't escape by sea and began building fortifications across the entire peninsula

Starting point is 00:09:04 to make sure that the slave army couldn't escape. As this was happening, and Crassus was nearing his long-awated military glory, his main rival Pompey was returning with his legions from Hispania. They were told to just skip Rome and head south to reinforce Crassus. Moreover, the Senate even sent more troops to Rome to reinforce Crassus. This was bad for Crassus and for Spartacus. Crassus didn't want anyone else getting credit and taking the glory, and Spartacus didn't want any more legions arriving to make a bad situation even worse.

Starting point is 00:09:35 Spartacus broke through the Roman lines and made a dash to the north up through the toe of Italy. This was the point where things began to fall apart for the slave army. They had reached their limit after two years of running. Discipline fell apart as small groups went out to attack the Romans. One large group was split apart from the main army, and over 12,000 of the rebels were killed. Finally, Spartacus risked everything in a valiant last stand at the Battle of the Salarius River. The Romans routed them and showed no mercy. 5,000 rebels tried to flee and were slaughtered down to the last man.

Starting point is 00:10:07 Spartacus himself was killed in battle, although his body was never found. The I Am Spartacus scene from the movie is a total fabrication. There were only 6,000 survivors after everything was over. Crassus took those 6,000 survivors and subjected them to the cruelest form of execution that the Romans knew. Crucifixion. All 6,000 survivors were crucified along the Appian Way from Capua to the gates of Rome. The distance from Capua to Rome is about 120 miles or 193 kilometers, which means that there was one crucifixion every 32 meters or 100 feet.

Starting point is 00:10:44 The Spartacus uprising had several long-term repercussions for Rome. For starters, Romans actually, at least initially, started to treat their slaves better out of fear of another uprising. Also, many of the large estates, which were formerly run by slaves, were now run by freedmen, sometimes in sharecropping arrangements. Although not a result of the third servile war, over the next several centuries, most reforms with regard to slaves were all in the direction of better treatment and more rights. The institution still existed through the fall of the Western Empire, and over time, as Christianity came to dominate Western Europe, slavery just sort of morphed into serfdom. While slavery never disappeared in Rome over the next 500 years, this was the last great major slave revolt.

Starting point is 00:11:27 As for Crassus, both he and Poppy were given credit, and both of them marched their armies and camped outside the walls of Rome. They were both elected consul the next year, and their rivalry was part of a series of events that ended up leading to the fall of the Republic. Spartacus has been celebrated throughout history. There has been a movie, a miniseries, and a full TV series about him, Spartacus has been a popular name for football teams in former communist countries.

Starting point is 00:11:51 He's been the subject of ballets, jazz compositions, rock operas, video games, and has even been a character in many novels. Toussaint-Lovetur, the leader of the Haitian Revolution, was known as the Black Spartacus. The difference, of course, was that his slave revolt was actually successful. While ultimately unsuccessful, Spartacus has been remembered for over 2,000 years, as leading one of the greatest fights against slavery and for freedom in world history. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Benji Long and Cameron Kiever. I want to give a big shout out to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon, including the show's producers.

Starting point is 00:12:33 Your support helps me put out a show every single day. And also, Patreon is currently the only place where Everything Everywhere Daily merchandise is available to the top tier of supporters. If you'd like to talk to other listeners of the show and members of the completionist club, you can join the Everything Everywhere Daily Facebook group or Discord server. Links to everything are in the show notes. I bring a message from your master, Marcus Lyssinus Crossus, Commander of Italy, by command of his most merciful excellency,

Starting point is 00:13:09 your lives are to be spared, slaves you were, and slaves you remain. But the terrible penalty of crucifixion has been set aside on the single condition that you identify the body or the living person of the slave called Spartacus. I'm Spartacus. I'm Spartacus. I'm Spartacus. I'm Spartacus. I'm Spartacus. I'm Spartacus. I'm Spartacus.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Spartacus and the Third Servile War (Encore)

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