Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 128 - Spartacus Part 1: Jupiter's Cock!

Episode Date: November 9, 2020

Rome really loves enslaving people. Spartacus disagrees. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources for all related episodes: Appian. Civil Wars. Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives. "The Life of Crassus." "The Life of Pompey" Bradley, Keith. Slavery and Rebellion in the Roman World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow today. And now, back to the show. Oh, Jupiter's cock. Jupiter's cock. Fucking God's cock, because there's no wine left. Not if Jupiter himself were to rip open the heavens and dangle his cock from the skies. Hello, and welcome to yet another episode of that podcast that we do with lions and donkeys. Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe, with me today when the army allows him to be. It's Nick. Hey. I have to file paperwork to get

the army to allow you to PCS back to podcastlandia. Don't even get me started. I'm convinced it's a deep state plot. It's a goddamn deep state. I've been listening to Too Much Knowledge Fight where they talk about Alex Jones, where the army is attempting to

inject cancel culture into my podcast, so I can't make it because you're always in the field. This is censorship. Half of the stuff we do is off a whim. That sounds about right. This may happen, so let's prepare for it. But it's

highly unlikely that it would happen, but we're preparing for it anyway. I've never understood stuff like that, because it's like, this might happen. Okay, but you're the person coming up with the plan, so you could very easily make sure that doesn't happen. Yeah.

Who am I but a man screaming at the clouds? Now, Nick, speaking of screaming at the clouds now nick uh speaking of screaming at the clouds it's not a good way to explain this what do you do about spartacus oh yeah oh i thought we're gonna go into trails chemtrails spartacus huge into the king into into the chemtrails yeah uh that's what i had um what do you know about spartacus he's kind of like now people know more about him in like entertainment wise then yeah they they didn't wear a lot of clothes fighting okay that part's kind of true though uh at least in the at least in the glen in in like the arena which we'll talk

about that's what this almost entire first episode is in this two-part series it's because they had referees like fucking herb dean down there making sure they didn't bring Brass Knuckles in. Sometimes Brass Knuckles were encouraged. No, it was because it's for show. People will say that, well, they reenacted battles, and they did. But they wanted to be entertaining. And it's a lot more entertaining to watch people slash the shit out of each other than is it just like thump up against one another wearing armor. slash the shit out of each other, then is it just like thump up against one another wearing armor? It's why

if we actually watch knights fight like they did, it would probably be incredibly boring. Unless it was like, I don't know, like Agincourt, people just getting drowned to death in mud and shit. To be fair, I know there's a Russian MMA company that does knight fighting.

Oh, yeah. And that is super entertaining, but i have a hard time believing that it'd be that cool there's also one on the history channel of course there fucking was scott it was pretty sweet dudes were getting like dudes in the middle of interviews just had 100 bacon cakes and shit i saw this clip uh where a guy got like shield fucked in the head while he was on the ground like straight up ground and pound getting shield to dome piece and that dude 100% forget his fucking

times tables after that incident I mean I don't know my times tables that well so okay he forgot his alphabet we got that one see this is why we he forgot it I just want to go home and remember my kids name so I brought that up I bring all this up because also He forgot his... I just want to go home and remember my kid's name.

So I brought that up. You fought a good fight. I bring all this up because... Also, fuck it. How do you get that gig? So what do you do for a living? I'm the referee for night fighting. I want to be... This whole podcast is just a grift for me

to become a night MMA referee. So call me Night People. A shittier version of Dana White. I want to be a blimp pilot and go inverted. I feel like that's a one-way trip, my friend. To fucking...

I understand that we're recording this the day before the election, but I don't think any of us need to want to recreate a blimp explosion for funsies um i mean actually it sounds pretty rad anyway uh we're talking about spartacus and uh i think the show that will come up i i had to address it oh because it's not based in reality to the surprise of nobody so we're talking about real people? Kind of.

See, Spartacus is a land of contrast. And most of the person that we have in our head regarding Spartacus and the things that he did or whatever probably didn't happen. Because this might surprise you. When you're leading a slave revolt, you don't generally stop and take notes. Also, probably because Spartacus is illiterate. But yeah, there's not a lot of information on the guy. And instead, a lot of people just made shit up.

And there's a lot of not necessarily conflicting accounts of his rebellion, but there's parallel accounts like very few of them actually straight up contradict one another but a lot of them run parallel and because you know on this show we we're here for entertainment like obviously we want people to learn something but you know you're not going to listen to an hour of us droning on about bland ass history shit there's other podcasts that do that better so I picked the one I think that makes the best story

and we'll talk about that more on episode two but on episode one we're going to talk mostly about Roman slavery fun I have some personal problems with why

Spartacus is so famous at least the story of Spartacus as we know there's been multiple movies there's been miniseries the miniseries is like Game of Thrones if it was written by a 12 year old who really liked titties also Game of Thrones is also kind of written like that

but without the budget but I have my own personal problems is why we here in the west Game of Thrones is also kind of written like that, but without the budget. Um, but I have my own personal problems is why we here in the West lionize Spartacus when we had half dozen slave revolts in her own backyard and nobody ever talks about them. Um, like, you know, the Stono rebellion,

the New York conspiracy of 1741, Gabriel's conspiracy of 1800, the German coast uprising of 1811 of course there's nat turner's rebellion which will absolutely be an episode of this podcast eventually i know that most people know that one yeah and that was 1831 that was in my history book for like half a page that's about all you get um and you know we here in the u.s like to because like you know when people talk about spartacus like well he was only fighting for his freedom motherfucker we had slaves doing the same thing here you only care about spartacus because he's white um or at least

kind of white the idea of race hadn't really been around yet we'll talk about that too but like people have a much better time putting all these ideas of freedom and liberation on someone who they think looks a lot more like them i think that they're comfortable talking about like nat turner because you know there's documented accounts of nat turner killing civilians and people are like well that's bad motherfucker spartacus raised entire towns he slaughtered the shit out of some civilians you know absolutely uh he they literally went on a war of revenge kind of sorta so like yeah america we have a problem with our history and patriotic education

is not gonna fix it um so before we talk a bit more about Spartacus' rebellion, which will be most of episode two, we have to talk a little bit more about how slavery and gladiators worked in Rome. And Nick, I've got to tell you, it's kind of grim because, you know, cockfighting human beings

for people's entertainment gets dark. No, yeah, I wouldn't want a penis fight either. Anybody. Sure. Now you have to think of it. You have to go the whole nine yards at that neck. How do they make roosters fight? They attach razor blades to them. So that means you're attaching a razor blade to your dick.

That's the only way I'd do it. God damn it. I hate you. So Rome, in case anybody didn't know, love them some slaves. Much like America, slavery is quite literally at the foundation of Roman being. It was a whole thing.

According to Greek historian Dionysus of Heliconarsis, not the cool wine god, slavery in Rome began when Rome's founder Romulus gave a Roman father the right to sell their own children into slavery. Cool. So the kid you didn't like? Probably.

Or more likely a daughter. I was about to say fuck, so that'd be me? That'd be you? That 100% would have been me. Because that was what they call a surprise. Otherwise known as, if you're not my mom, an accident. So slavery was also listed as being legal in the 12 tables which is the oldest organized roman legal code

from there slavery kind of expanded with rome which in case you were not aware expanded quite a bit um as the military pushed roman borders out further and further and they absorbed more and more people who would eventually become slaves into what was then the republic uh it was considered perfectly fine and legal for people to enslave people that they defeated in war if they had not previously surrendered under negotiated terms like it wasn't uncommon for people like yeah fine we'll become part of rome but like you can't enslave us and we're like okay fine because you know it was in their best interest to not get involved in wars all that often

because killing a large amount of soldiers is bad. If Rome loses 5,000 soldiers or 10,000 soldiers, that impacts the city of Rome and impacts Italy. So if some tribe like, look, look, you can come right on in, like leave us alone and for a while there rome would take that uh because you know they're expanding their borders um and but then they began fighting larger and larger opponents and as rome became more and more powerful they became less and less likely to just simply want to talk things out um as a result slaves being

brought back as war booty started in the hundreds and then quickly turned into the tens of thousands for each war and sometimes for a single battle in one famous case julius caesar eventually brought back 50 000 slaves after a single campaign which i need to point out were his personal property which he then sold he's a very rich man yeah that was a lot of the reason why people would like soldiers would go fight in these wars um like at the time this is before the marine reforms which we'll talk about so uh joining the roman military wasn't necessarily uh an act of like upward social mobility though you could win military glory and so on and so forth and make your way through the i think they called like the cursius honorium which is like the

political life um but it was it was for war booty like you were gonna rob and loot and sell slaves and make as much money as you possibly fucking could like that was their main drive like the the average soldier was to become rich and you know military glory being like a side hustle uh because you know your average everyday roman soldier that wasn't really a thing for them the the military glory was a general thing or maybe um a junior leader under them right uh so while rome eventually became one of the largest slave dependent nations in human history they were not the worst i i feel like I should point out. That honor still goes to the Spartans, who are

the grand champion of horrible, horrible shit. I believe it was like 40% of the Roman population at any given time was slaves. Really? Holy shit. Slaves has a lot of different condonations in Rome,

which we'll talk about. The Spartan population was even worse than that. Though they called them helots, they were slaves. Though that does not mean that Rome did not completely depend on slaves for economic output, because they did. Or at least they eventually turned into that. eventually turned into that um slave markets existed in pretty much every major roman city and made a very small amount of people incredibly rich because that's how that normally works in case anyone was curious making your entire economy depend on the slaves does have some downsides confederacy previous to this most roman agriculture was based on small farms operated by

small families who could maybe sometimes afford a few slaves. But what was more common was that they simply hired people to work the fields for a small cut. In other cases, large farming estates would employ a larger amount of people because at the time, slavery was like the population of slaves wasn't there wasn't everywhere. You actually had to pay people for their labor um yeah and this is before uh soldiers would be given a pension of land after their service to the state which would become a thing under the marian reforms um because at the time in order to enlist or serve in the roman military you had to be a landowner and you had to afford your own stuff so like you had to buy your own armor you had to buy your own weapons you also had to be a landowner and you had to afford your own stuff so like you had to buy your own armor you had to buy your own

weapons you also had to own land um so like you had to have some amount of pocket change in order to fight to go you know possibly make more money uh but however more and more slaves were brought into the republic as Rome made more and more war and

captured more and more people um sounds like a shitty investment. It's bad. It turns out like most investments, it eventually fucks everyone except rich people. And also, you know, it sucks to be a slave. Yeah. So it made fewer and fewer people rich

as wealth became centralized across the upper class of Rome. Now, some people call them like the equestrians or the patricians but this wasn't specific to any caste in rome it was because like you could have been a very very high born person rome but also desperately poor if you sucked with money and also sucked at the slave trade for the most part but this is just like an all-around upper class of rome because you could be very rich but also not be part of an important family. So the only power play that you had was money. That happened a lot, actually.

It was like a competition of who could be a bigger piece of shit in order to make money while they were out campaigning. A lot of these people were slave owners and slave sellers, though being the specific person at the market selling slaves was considered a low-class job because these things don't have to make sense. Now, the people who had centralized all that wealth upon themselves would eventually buy up more and more land, which was being offered, or they'd offer small landowners, those normal soldier types that had a you know a very small plot of land um much more money than their plot of land was worth in the short term um see the problem was as brome fought more and more wars these farmers turned part-time soldiers who remember had to own that land and tell it like that's also how they lived um would end up being

called away for longer and longer wars or more and more wars like say like the punic wars or whatever uh so then they'd return home and their farms had fallen into disrepair um they wouldn't be able to make any money off of it or were they able to eat off of it because you know it fell into whatever yeah it's dirty can't eat it's not they can't even farm dirt anymore. I don't understand plants. Anyway, people couldn't afford the time, the effort, or the money to bring the farm back to being bountiful or whatever. So they would sell their farm to this newly growing landowning class, which would soon buy more and more of these farms as the wars ground longer and longer on. This is a problem. What became worse is

this new landowning class would have to find people to work these fields. You think, well, they have all these trained farmers who just sold these land. Maybe we should employ them. No. Which this would have still been a problem. That would have been a shitty

way to go but instead they just bought slaves um more and more and more slaves because why not right there's they're everywhere uh then that wealth became centralized even more and even more because remember now they're not actually spending it on employing anyone they're just buying slaves which at a long enough time frame pay for themselves if you're owning massive swaths of land like according to plenty the elder six men owned half of all of the property in all of roman africa um so congratulations you curated seattle um like it's like an incredible amount of centralization to the Congratulations, you created Seattle. It's an incredible amount of centralization to the point that there was no employment in the rural countryside. So this caused a massive rush of the rural unemployed who could not possibly work for less than a slave because they'd run into Rome looking for work. Now, soon these unemployed and homeless

overcrowd the streets of Rome. Because weird how that happens in times of big, flat, dumb circle. Now, this is when the Gracchi brothers come into play, who are some of my more favorite characters from history. Who what? The last name was Gracchus, but there's two of them.

They're known as the Gracchi brothers, because it's the plural. That's an unfortunate name. Now, the Gracchi brothers were known as the Populars. So they would attempt some yield socialism, which is like land redistribution, free grain for the poorest of Romans, which soon be expanded to all Romans. They also wanted to build more houses for people people like put all these things on the state so they of course were murdered um i assume by some cia time travelers but thankfully gaius gracchus was able to get what was known as the grain dole passed into law, which would go on for so many years after that,

which effectively meant no matter how poor you were, no matter how fucked over you were by the world, you could go to a distribution point and you would be given a set amount of grain every single month. I think it was every single month by the state of Rome, which is more progressive than what we have in the United States to this day.

A set amount of grain. Yeah, like you'd be able to eat. You weren't going to starve to death. Now, I've been getting a little off topic, but I'm going to get a little bit more off topic because it's what I do. They said the trickle-down effect, that centralization of wealth and power in Rome, that led to people being massively unemployed.

Now, remember I said that in order to serve in the Roman army, you had to buy your own weapons, own land. Seeing how this could become a problem. Nobody owns everything and everybody's living in the streets. This led to what most people think of the Roman military, the legions, people signing up and getting land and money. Then the first real military pension, which is known the marian reforms and the marian reforms i'm not sure which it was the professionalization of the roman army turning into the tool of upward social mobility and movement and land ownership for people that could never or could never hold on to those sorts of things um and you could now the state was going

to pay for your money or the state was gonna pay for the state was gonna give you a paycheck the state was gonna pay for your armor and at the end going to give you a paycheck. The state was going to pay for your armor. And at the end of an X amount of years, which would move to the left or the right as Rome became more desperate later on, you could retire, you'd get a pension, and a plot of land. Pretty fucking sweet deal.

Yeah. And so it became a piece of upward mobility for people who could never, say, pay for school or get health care. Oh, wait, no, fuck, that's today. My bad. Weird how that keeps happening. I guess what I'm getting at is centralizing wealth and power while failing to serve the needs of the people at large might be bad. Moving on.

I should say at no point was any of the slavery based on race. The concept of modern race didn't really become a thing until the ideas of settler colonialism became a thing in Europe. And the need to make one group of people below another group in order to explain away the terrible things that you're about to do to them became a thing. Normally, it's thought of between 14 and 1600, 1500 that, that really became an idea. So Rome is an enslaving base on, on race or really anything.

It's just bad luck. Really? You happen to not be Roman when we came into town, their idea was cultural supremacy. It was, it had nothing to do with race. Yeah. It didn't matter if you're black,

white or whatever, you had an equal chance of being put in chains. If you happen to be the losing side of a Roman war, supremacy it was it had nothing to do with race um yeah it didn't matter if you're black white or whatever you had an equal chance of being put in chains if you happen to be the losing side of a roman war uh though like most roman slaves would be what is considered today as european uh a lot of gauls uh you know people from modern germany britannia things like that um so you're yeah i'm definitely fucked actually, Armenia was, uh, eventually like a puppet of Rome where we were like, Hey, we're going to keep our King and we'll be on your side, but like, we're still going to be Armenian and Rome is like, cool. Uh, so the joke is like Armenia outlived Rome and the Soviet union, Azerbaijan can go fuck

itself. Um, yeah. Um, oh, and the Ottomanoman empire they can go fuck themselves too anyway so if you became a slave you're almost always captured by the roman military soldiers will then sell you off to a wholesaler like a human version of costco but more evil uh who would then follow the army for that exact purpose like there's because you know back then we talked about this a little bit during our bonus episode about uh when we ate all the horrible rations um that every army is kind of followed by can't followers these are like cooks tailors mule drivers whatever um like and one of those people

would happen to be a slave guy like yeah what oh like if you capture a whole bunch of slaves you take him down to fucking pete the slave guy or whatever sell into him you get a certain amount of money which would not be nearly as much money he would go and sell them for but you're a fucking soldier so whatever it's any little bit of money works but yeah that's what that was certainly a hustle in place. That's how most slaves ended up back in Rome. It wasn't great. From Pete, the slave guy. I think I used that name for a lot

of horrible things. I don't even know anybody named Pete off the top of my head, but I just reflexively go to that terrible name. Then if you were the slave, you'd be taken to an auction house where you'd be sold. Depending on who you were, how old you were the slave, you would be taken to an auction house where you'd be sold. And depending on who you were, how old you were, what you could do, uh, you'd be worth more or less money. Um, generally men were worth more than women and women were worth more than children.

Uh, because Roman buyers would want to know exactly what they're buying. The slaves would be set naked upon a rotating platform with an information plaque around your neck, like all of your stats, like an RPG character sheet. And then they would pick them off and haggle over the price. I'd be in the dollar bin. Yeah, they would just huck

both of us in the garbage can outside. Yeah, like these guys are worthless. Yeah, take it. Free, please take one yeah we just get spit on uh what the buyers were looking for varied wildly depending on

what the buyer was doing if you were a slave who had the good luck of being like I don't know somewhat from an area I want somebody to watch movies with me well I want that kind of like that obviously there was sex slaves which I guess is the closest thing that comes to I want somebody to watch movies with me. I want that guy. Obviously, there were sex slaves,

which I guess is the closest thing that comes to entertainment for the day. That's not where I was going. But if you were lucky, you would end up as a house slave. Rich Romans had staffs of hundreds of slaves that tended to their large villas, regardless of cooking, cleaning, landscaping, whatever. I'll'll cuddle i'll be the big or something look i'm just i'm here for some just friends cuddling if you'll give me three squares a day um well like being a slave sucks but like this is the best living arrangement you could have like you the the tenants like the the areas that they would uh put in, like the little slave

quarters, were almost certainly nicer than most Roman citizens' places that they were living in the city of Rome. You'd get decent food because they didn't want sickly, weak house slaves. Yeah, they needed somebody to give them a massage. Honestly,

100%. Yeah, that's something they would do. Though there is possibly one better category if you were lucky and that is a publicly owned slave or the service publicus um they're a slave which is not technically owned by anybody but was instead purchased by the municipal authorities meaning that your public property but a person that That sounds worse. It's good because you could might, you might be able to find your way out. Um,

they could do anything from like tending to temples to working in public buildings to like clerical work. These are like people who are probably pretty smart. They're, they're literate. Um, they can do paperwork. Like you made yourself useful to kind of get out of it,

like get out of like farm work and stuff. You could get paid a government salary. Oh, okay. If your municipal boss thought you were good at your job, they could just free you. You're making this sound pretty good. I mean, I'm not. I'm trying not.

This is effectively being in the military. Fuck. God damn it. Maybe that's why it's working on me i mean tell the recruiter whatever person that the the service publicist was beforehand you were probably a pretty high up person because you're you're obviously intelligent you had some kind of education you could read you can write you can do basic math and stuff like you're that's why i say it's hard to say this is like the best case scenario

because you probably come from a much better way of life and then we're enslaved right um right after this became the urban slaves this being people that worked in shops that were bought by you know small business owners um which honestly is the the weirdest aspect here. It's like normal people could own slaves. This wasn't like 100% incredible wealthy person thing. A normal, decently well-to-do person absolutely would own a slave to work the front counter at a shop

or whatever. Yeah, pretty much. Dollar General would be ran by a slave. They'd be cobblers, muleule drivers and then obviously most uh women and that became slaves would end up in brothels as sex slaves uh also children because history is grim they'd be making me do the lawns god damn it what what part of rome did you come from sir uh california but no really fuck god damn it rome's racist yeah it's like every time someone did you come from, sir, California? But no, really.

Fuck! God damn it, Rome's racist! It's like every time someone pronounces your last name, like, so where are you from? And you know they're not talking about California. Oh, yeah. Except that, except it's some... To the lawns you go! Except it's some guy named Lucius Varinus and he's still just being racist as hell.

Now, this all sounds really bad, and it is uh but it all gets much worse from here uh this is of course farm slaves which sounded exactly what they what that sounds like working on a farm um now you'd tell these giant fields that those rich people had all bought up called latifundia um for your rich asshole owner. Now, generally speaking, the living conditions weren't terrible, but they didn't have to be. You're doing manual labor on a Roman farm where you

are the engine of labor. Every day is incredibly dangerous. Medicine isn't a thing. If you accidentally bring the hoe down on your foot, you're going to fucking die from gangrene. If you fucking step on a thorn. Oh, yeah. It's going to get infected. You're gonna fucking die from gangrene um if you fucking step on a oh yeah it's gonna get infected you're gonna die like accidents and illnesses

were very common um and this uh all goes down to the worst off of all the slaves the mine workers um yeah if you're thinking working in a mine now sounds terrible imagine being a slave in a mine for Rome um now if you're thinking working in a mine now sounds terrible imagine being a slave in a mine

for rome um now if you were they didn't know anything about bracing oh 100 uh i mean maybe i don't know but to be to be perfectly clear being sent to the mines was a death sentence it was literally known as dom nati melium or condemned to the mine. Now, if you were any other slave, you could hypothetically become a free person if your owner just made you free. You were property. You're not thought of as a person

and you were property as long as your master wanted you to be property. Being a slave and then being freed was not uncommon. And some people sold themselves into slavery for food, effectively.

That was not uncommon. And to pay off debts. Debt slavery is a huge thing. Now, people wouldn't just buy slaves to work in the mines. Not any slave could just end up here this job was set aside for people who were sentenced to slavery for a legal penalty or which was a criminal penalty at the time or other slaves that had committed crimes or tried to escape their slavery so if you were sentenced to slavery by the Roman state as a judicial punishment,

you could end up here, which is effectively just a death sentence of extra steps, or you were already a slave and you, I don't know, try to kill your owner or whatever, um, or try to run away. Um,

you told a bad joke. Yeah. You farted and you thought I was going to be quiet, but it was kind of loud. And it was one of those really rancid ones. Um, that would definitely end up in the minds, but it's going to be quiet, but it was kind of loud. And it was one of those really rancid ones. To the mines! I would definitely end up in the mines. Oh, yeah, you'd end up as a priest.

Not just any mine worker. Just jam them into the wall until the dirt stops falling down. Now, unlike any other kind of slave, these slaves could not be sent free in any way you were literally condemned to die working at some point no it did not matter um you were sent to the mines to work until you died um and it shouldn't shock you when i say that the average life expectancy for most slaves was 17 years old. Yeah. Most slaves died by the age of 17 in all form.

That was a general average that I could find. I should point out that, yeah, I understand that life expectancies in general were not that high, but it wasn't uncommon to live to be 60 years old in Rome. 17 years old still pretty fucking abrupt so like an 18 year old miner they're just like wow you're old at that

part you're like the fucking mine manager or something uh this of course brings us to the kind of slave that we'll be talking about the most the gladiator um and i should point out that russell crowe russell russell crowe sold him the slavery uh because he was captured well not necessarily but whatever um first off some misconceptions not all roman gladiators were slaves um you could sell yourself to el ludus which is like a gladiatorial school because gladiators made like could win glory riches fame everything but by the late republic most were not uh most were not slaves by the late republic um like if you were a gladiator that people knew people would shower you with attention

well love and wealth like there was product placements and billboards and shit yeah absolutely like they fuck they uncovered um like it was like the piece of an advertisement for like olive oil and it was being advertised by a gladiator that's their type of gatorade yeah it's like these people could become legitimate celebrities so people who are kind of like down on their luck didn't have anything else going for them like why not give it a shot i mean what's the worst that happens you die that was gonna happen anyway you might as well get a fucking sword through the skull um now obviously most people who volunteered to be gladiators were desperate man looking for wealth and attention sometimes as they get out of debt um every once in a while was an emperor who had badly fixed the games

which happened like five times like the job was incredibly dangerous and most gladiatorial fighters did not survive more than a few matches it was considered incredibly impressive if you survived past ten fights though there is a case of

someone surviving 150 um yeah what yeah at that point you just like it um yeah you're and like at in the very beginning um or the origins of gladiatorial combat are murky but most people in the very beginning were volunteers uh but they knew that people really liked these games like you know the bread and circus type deal um and the the best way to not run out of people for that was to force people to do it um but like weird uh the origins of gladiatorial combat are kind of murky like i said some people said it began with the etruscans others with the companions uh what we do know is that rome in rome they began as a funeral rite uh games would be held to honor a powerful dead person as a form of human sacrifice but with a little bit more steps because they make them kill each other um and then human sacrifice would the concept of human

sacrifice would go out of vogue in rome but not really like it's hard to say that eventually they no longer saw this as a form of human sacrifice but they weren't just like sacrificing people to the gods anymore uh this slowly evolved into celebrations and other forms of religious worship until people finally dropped all the pretense and admitted they just kind of liked watching people fight to the death for the entertainment though they would keep up religious overtones and dedicate the games to one god or another. But that was almost completely

secondary. It's like, oh, so why are we going to the gladiatorial games? Oh, it's for Jupiter, I guess. I don't know. I want to watch that guy get stabbed in the head. Like, it's all decorations. People were going because they're bloodthirsty and they're bored. a guy gets stabbed in the head. Huh. It's all decorations. People were going because they're

bloodthirsty and they're bored. It's like whenever you watch a movie of the 1950s or 60s or whatever and you see people just sitting around. What do they do for fun? Everything sounds so boring, but everything is amplified because they live in Rome.

There's nothing else to do except watch the couple slaves that you collected stab each other with various different implements you know I guess I mean it'd be cooler if they had like sports other than oh yeah what kind of sports

they had to have had sports they definitely had sports i'm not entirely sure uh and i know there was like some bare knuckle boxing and stuff like that like there wasn't all fighting to the death um and most and there's like all sports wrestling stuff like that where you know greco-roman wrestling um and other forms of like they'd wrestle naked and stuff like that and some very interesting art survives from that olive oil brand comes into play i do believe they oiled themselves up first actually because it makes them more slippery and hard to grab onto like g like gsp did that one time though when

he did it it was illegal um so almost universally uh that gladiators would be a soldier that was captured by rome and sold off um but rather than being sold off to different owners to work the fields or whatever, they'd be perfect purchased by a Lannister who is someone who runs a Lutus, uh, to further training gladiatorial arts, uh,

in the school that they would sometimes it's some, uh, I'm not sure what else to call it. Um, because to be fair, I want to see that. It was not, uh, uh, just like learning how to hack people to bits.

Like there's a fair bit of weird art that goes into it. We'll talk a little bit more. Some of these luduses could be a couple dozen people. Some of them are hundreds and hundreds of gladiators. So in the early days, the arena combat from the slaves would fight from around Rome would be expected to fight with like your own weapons and style that you came with. Like, you know, people would be captured from Gaul or Thrace or wherever, like whatever you are a trained soldier.

And we're going to pair these different soldiers off fighting one another because it'd be interesting. Two different styles that eventually got boring um because yeah people would see all of them so the the luduses uh the ludi whatever would come up with their own versions of this and they would now force these slaves to train as a specific kind of gladiator which would almost always be paired up against a different kind of gladiator because there's opposites, and it would make it a more entertaining fight. Because remember, this is supposed to be for entertainment.

If they wanted people to just fight to the death, they would give them no armor at all. Fucking WWE? Yeah, WWE, but with battle axes. So there were light and heavy gladiators some used armor while others didn't this could create matches were small and agile but lightly armed fighters fought slow ones who are more armored but also armed much better uh like the intention was not to set up like a short fight it was to create an entertaining balance for like a back and forth like you're

you're fixing the fight and some of the fights were straight up fixed obviously but like you want to create a spectacle you don't want like we're gonna send this guy out there to immediately get marked because it'd be kind of funny yeah he's got a toothbrush

he's fighting a guy with a spear and a hoplite shield what do we give him he has a push broom, sir. Yes. Sometimes it's meant you didn't use weapons at all. There's something called the Cestus, or men who are armed with only what I can describe as boxing gloves from hell, but also they were butt-ass naked.

A lot of people were naked all the time because it was pretty comfortable and normal back then um these gloves were made of leather strips and reinforced with metal plates spikes and blades um from what i can tell most cestus only fought other cestus but that was not always the case sometimes this naked boxer was tossed in against people with swords and spears. And it's noted that while they were at a disadvantage because yeah, no shit, all it would take is one hit from the Sestos to normally

lay out their opponent like a gritty reboot version of One Punch Man. And also sometimes the Sestos was on top of other weapons like you'd have your sword, but also you'd have your fucking I don't know, Hellboy glove to punch people with as well um you need that as a home defense and uh do you ever watch the simpsons where homer goes the box

no wait yes the the gloves with the fucking barbed wire on it is like we call that the stinger you can't use that anymore uh so probably thinking like what how does the school run what's the ludus like um so the training was pretty fucking intense uh but not as intense as people would assume because remember gladiators were not fucking cheap they're an investment and damaging the goods before you can make money off of them is kind of dumb uh so like if you've watched Star's version of Spartacus, most of the training is through physical punishment and just brutality, which is exceedingly unlikely. It was expected for you to learn your new kind of fighting, which everyone has chosen for you. But remember, they weren't soldiers anymore. They were entertainers. So they had to learn a new way

how to fight one another um like it's like the difference between wwe and mma gladiators were taught what i could best be described as forms or kata um like choreographed moves that they would use against someone that they would be normally paired against um so for people who aren't karate nerds like us or know what these words mean they were pretty much taught dance moves right like and i don't mean that like they didn't fight for real when they're in the arena because they obviously did people were straight up killed a lot of them were uh but they wanted it to last as long as possible to get the most amount of return so you and your compatriot would quite honestly try not to fuck each other up for a very long time um and there's normally like a series of hand signals that

allowed like for your handler or the crowd as well to kind of like cheer if like it's like I think they call it wrestling getting at the pop like this shit pops like you know people were booing or cheering so like the gladiators would literally feed off the crowd when people are going wild they would keep doing what they're doing and when people were booing at

them or like clearly not engaged they try to be more entertaining maybe fuck each other up eventually leading to what maybe might be a death blow though not always so yeah I did not know that gladiators were pretty much professional wrestlers I just thought they were

two slaves trying to murder one another to try to go home yeah now if you when do lions come into play oh we'll get to that actually um oh it's real that that 100 happened um so say you refused um or like i'm not gonna learn this shit i'm not gonna fight for you fuck you you know you bought me i'm a free soul or whatever um so sometimes you would just immediately be murdered.

There's accounts of gladiators who were burned to death for refusing to learn or refusing to train. Or what happened? What most of the time is some people just weren't good at it. And the trainers who were probably free gladiators themselves at the Lutis realized like this guy ain't fucking getting it. We might as well not waste our time on him. They would be discarded as the noxai or the hurtful ones um these guys would be because like you've all heard stories about people being mauled to death by lions or other

kind of animals in the arena that was their fate sometimes um They were led out there to be murdered by animals, to be killed in set pieces by other gladiators or soldiers. They were pretty much just thrown out there to be executed, and then your body to be chucked into a ditch without a ceremony. So you couldn't really go off script? It was unencouraged, I'll say. Like our boy Maximus. Yeah, Maximus definitely would have got executed

um like there's some like like the guy who fought 150 battles there's a plenty of gladiators who became incredibly famous and well known but they did it like they didn't do it by like rebelling like they were 100 into the system uh and that made them incredibly wealthy until they died or were freed or whatever. Um, but while the Ludus wasn't terrible, most of the time, like they did, they exercise constantly. So they had to eat constantly.

But I would say that life in a Ludus was comparable to that of a normal Roman soldier. Um, each gladiator class was separated from one another once training was over, uh, and locked away because, you away because they are slaves. The idea was that because these two classes, say you're one class and I'm the other, and our classes always fight each other in the arena. They don't want us interacting outside of supervision because we might figure out that we have to fight each other during the next games.

And it might be my best opinion if I fuck you up a little bit before that happens so I might be able to win and they don't want that to happen because that's bad for business so they lock you away and segregate you so you didn't like poison each other or whatever to get the upper hand but while you're confined at night with your gladi

bros I don't know what to call gladiators you could were they in like an open bay? It seems like it, yeah. As long as the classes are separate. Because if we were the same type of gladiator outside of personal problems, there's no reason for us to fucking

fight one another. Because we're never going to fight each other for entertainment. Barring something strange happening. Which did happen from time to time, but it's very, very rare. While you're locked up, you can eat and drink a ton. Lannisters may have been slave-owning assholes, but they weren't stupid. They knew a well-fed

and well-taken-care-of gladiator fights better. They also heal better and are generally more healthy. They were pretty much allowed to eat as much as they wanted, though their meal was not as as high class or good uh like they ate um a lot of barley which was considered like punishment if you were a legionnaire if you fucked up they make you live off barley uh but like their food wasn't great but they had literally

endless amounts of it um then like another punishment is having your rations taken away um they also had much better health care than a normal roman person which i mean for the day sure it's probably all terrible people are trying to get the ghosts out of your blood um but they would also regularly receive massages in order to recover from long days of training so i mean it's better than what I do to take care of myself currently. Yeah, I can see that. I mean, when's the last time you went and got a massage, to be completely honest? I mean, even before the pandemic.

Fucking physical therapy. So, it was probably almost like eight months ago. Yeah, I think I got one over a year ago, and it's because I had a coupon. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. So, like, I mean, I'm not saying the Gladiators had a coupon um yeah nice uh yeah so like the gladiators i mean i'm not saying i'm the gladiators had a good life but it's certainly like better than it's normally portrayed as uh no some but they didn't have the drill that we have no um and some lanistas were like bastards

assholes whatever like not every ludus is was equal for sure uh but i mean it was better than largely portrayed certainly better than it showed in spartacus or people getting like just arbitrarily murdered and maimed left and right like that's you wouldn't be a rich person owning a gladiator school if you discarded your investments that easily um which is what these people were seen as right no so some slaves were probably treated better than comparisons how they've been described in popular culture. They were still slaves,

and it should come as a surprise as there were slave rebellions from time to time. We've already talked about a few that happened in the US that people like to generally ignore. But you'd probably think that slave rebellions were more common, but there really weren't a ton. Not as much as you'd probably think that slave rebellions were more common, but there really weren't a ton. Not as much as you'd expect in a country where almost 50% of the population is slaves.

And there's some weird hop around mental gymnastics type thing when it comes to what's considered a slave rebellion and what's just considered like civil unrest. Because the Romans didn't really see slave rebellions as a big deal. Um, and there's a reason why we're calling this a Spartacus's rebellion for the sake of marketing or podcast titling, I guess it's actually called the third servile war because there's two other ones and they're pretty sizable prior to it. And there's probably a good reason why we generally

only know about this one rather than the other two the first and second ones were based around slave rebellions that sparked on sicily not the roman heartland okay and they were also put down pretty quickly within a few years which wasn't that long for the time because you know remember your quick anti-slave reaction force has to march their happy ass across the countryside it takes some fucking time um and like most of the time slave rebellions fell apart as soon as an actual roman army showed up like they might be able to skirmish with some militias but like when the legion shows up shit is done they're gonna get owned right um and these were considered crime waves or civil unrest they were not considered military emergencies um so that's like normally how these things are kind

of disregarded and and and by like the romans for the most part and kind of by roman history is like you know there there may have been some small scale uprisings but they never would have been written about because they didn't think they were serious uh so that's probably why there's more than what we lead to believe but also there's something to be said for the fact that most slaves 99% of them knew there was some kind of way out eventually maybe not always fuck but i mean it's certainly better than um you know i'm surprised there wasn't more shit going on in the mines um as far as they're tired yeah yeah maybe it's like they're so beat down and thirsty or whatever um it's real try yeah like okay buddy how am i gonna rebel let's just like let what am i gonna fucking chug an

energy drink and like you know it's fucking 360 no scope roman legion probably not like you're you're probably not really sleeping as much as you are going into your cot at night or whatever and collapsing into a coma um i got fed my daily ration of one grain it's it's my my rice dole also got stolen by my next door neighbor uh so so with that out of the way let's talk about our boy spartacus uh for one it's probably not his real name um what do you think is no idea it's been completely lost to history um yeah nobody has any idea what his real name is so the best thing that people can come up with is he may have come from modern day bulgaria mostly because like the name uh spartaco or or like things kind of related to

the word spartacus were common in that area but no he's really sure where he's from either um so according to plutarch and appian that isn't the case he was thracian which would have meant anything from bulgaria to greece to turkey it's a big area but some people all say he wasn't thracian and he may have only been become known as thracian or as a thracian because Thracian happened to be a kind of gladiator known as a Thrax that he may have learned but also other sources say that he wasn't a Thrax

so who fucking knows right like I guess I'm getting at as we have no idea who Spartacus is gotcha also how he even ended up in slavery not agreed on uh some say he was an enemy soldier captured by romans during a war others say he was a roman soldier who managed to fuck up a get sentenced to slavery for something while still uh others say he was

actually a mercenary who ran afoul of a roman legion um all of these things things seem possible um because he was made a gladiator so he probably was a soldier like those things are possible um some people say that like he was an enslaved roman general not the case at all um wouldn't have fucking happened not in a million

years um that'd be fucking yeah like he was not uh uh fuck whatever his name was from the movie gladiator maximus yeah he was not him uh either way somehow spartacus or whatever his name is it was captured by the roman with maximus spartacus maximus meridius whatever uh i can't remember his full name but that speech still slaps um uh maximus Decimus fucking can't remember. Close enough. We named it.

He's captured by the Roman army and sold into slavery somehow. But because he's a big soldier boy, he was purchased by the gladiator school outside of Capua by Lenius Badiatus. Though in some documents, Badiatus is just not named as Vatia. But if you watched the star show, it's Badiatus. He's the guy who screamed jupiter's cock all the time um yeah it was like his exclamation phrase and that's the one thing

in that show that sticks out is like whenever anybody was like surprised whether it be happy or sad surprise like jupiter's cock and i i'm gonna add that to a list of things i want on my dream soundboard for this podcast like whenever i say anything to surprise anybody i'm the jupiter's cock and i you just need to add that to your everyday i'm just gonna exclaim next time in the grocery store uh and i have no idea if that's a real thing that roman said if it is cool i'm still i still find it ridiculous. Oh, sail on milk? Jupiter's cock! Fuck yeah, dude. So, by all

accounts, Spartacus was a big guy. And that's why he was made into a heavyweight gladiator known as a Mermilo. Which, probably because of the lore of Spartacus, that's kind of what you picture when you picture a gladiatorial archetype like he's the guy with the big helmet with the like the grill face mask with the plume on top and the big oval shield or the rectangular shield and a normal like gladius

roman sword he that's what yeah that's like the normal gladiatorial archetype that's what spartacus was by both accounts both appian um Plutarch both say he was a Murmillo. So the idea that he was possibly a Thrax, I don't buy it. I don't know. And also, it would make more sense as to why he seemed to be better at commanding soldiers because he already knew how to fight with a shield. At this point, I have no idea. I'm making shit up.

But so was at being in blue dark so i guess you could just call me a primary source um i guess what i'm trying to say here is spartacus is dummy thick um do you know which gladiator like you'd be like you know if if spartacus was a big guy for his time i'm'm assuming I am as well because I'm 6'3 and 240 pounds. I assume I'm also a Murmillo. So this was a roll saved for the strongest gladiators because they carried a giant heavy shield, a heavy helmet,

and were expected to fight the Thrax type, which would have been a much lighter and faster kind of like a hoplite type they had an oval shield you would expect it to be like more of a Greek version so like the idea was the Thrax moves faster and

the Murmillo moves slower so they create like you know that that back and forth so it's supposed to be entertaining yeah so I could never find any accounts spartacus actually fighting in the arena um which i think if what if it did happen it would have been noted down by appian or blutarch or somebody um but i should point out that is not uncommon gladiators did not fight all the time remember they only fight they only fought towards public games and those didn't happen all the time and like sometimes those long public

games that you hear about not all of it's gladiatorial shit like there was people who I think they're called beastier s's or something like that where they would fight animals in the arena but they were not slaves they weren't gladiators and they were like

they're effectively bullfighters. And those were a huge thing too. There's other activities that go on during the games. Not all of it's gladiatorial stuff. I'd clean up the animal pen. I just know that'd be more fun. As long as they're not biting me.

I don't care. Like, oh, you're gonna shovel lion shit. Cool. Hook me up. That's better than doing whatever the fuck everybody else here is doing put the lions in there with you this is like oh fuck I didn't sign up for this um because they're like you know the public games were only so often

though there was like private games as well um which does just kind of like literally sounds like human cock fighting to me but whatever um like if you back alley gladiator pretty much yeah i mean like a whole bunch of rich people to get together and throw their own games which were very uncommon because you made so much more money and renown from these public games and you didn't want to risk your best gladiator to die in someone's

backyard so like you know you saved them for like the big show um and like even if you were a good gladiator because like once you became famous there's a double-edged sword like people would want to see you fight so you'd fight more until you could um when was called the rudis or rudius which is like a wooden sword uh which meant you no longer had to fight anymore um and you could go home but though like that happened after a while um i just hope they had an entrance theme like an entrance like just a whole fucking wwf like we hear the glass break like my god that's spartacus's music yeah dude uh that'd be fucking sweet with pyrotechnics involved like hell in a cell somehow mankind is still in the hell in a cell jumping off after the Undertaker. Mick Foley

is 6,000 years old. Most gladiators would fight maybe two or three times per year at most. Sometimes, not at all. You could go a whole year without fighting because if there's only so many games and you're nobody and this Lutus or this Lannister has connections,

so your gladiators are fighting at the most important time of the games, you're not going to put your D squad on. You're putting your number one draft pick gladiator shit out there. So if you're famous, you could fight more, which obviously you could die more, but also you might be able to get released. It it's a fucking rigged game because you know you're a slave um wasn't there a gladiator that choked out an important dude in his own tub it was that was not a gladiator that was a wrestler uh yeah it was the emperor's name forgets it escapes me but he assassinated the Emperor via choking him out to death in a tub.

I believe it was... Was it Caligula or Nero? I think it was Caligula. I have to look it up now. I think Caligula killed himself. Now I have to Google this just to make sure I'm not saying something terribly wrong. I just think that's fucking hilarious. You think the wrestler got into actual like,

all right, let's get into Greco-Roman wrestling. The dude didn't want to because he was still taking a bath, so he just got pissed off and choked him out? So, Narsius was a Roman athlete, likely a wrestler from the 2nd century AD, who's best known to be the assassin of roman emperor commodus who's employed as a wrestling partner and personal trainer so commodus commodus is the guy that uh joaquin phoenix plays in the gladiator yes but he was not killed in the arena

no um but yeah uh so fun fact now we're off topic, but yeah, strangled by his wrestling coach pretty much. I thought it was a gladiator. Most people think he's a gladiator, but like he's a wrestling coach. Um, maybe he was previously a gladiator. That's not uncommon. Um, so it's not noted when, um, Spartacus was captured. The first date noted by Plut is 73 bc and that is for

the escape um so we might just have to work on the like coming from the idea that he was not enslaved for long um or that he fought in the arena and nobody thought to make a note of it which seems unlikely uh either way it's kind of agreed upon that in 73 bc spartacus and others plotted an escape from the ludus spartacus teamed up with 30 to 70 yes i understand that the number varies depending on who you cite uh people this included two other men that people think of when they think of spartacus and they've also made their way into shows with that is Crixus a gladiator champion from Gaul and known somewhat uncreatively as the undefeated Gaul

stone cold Crixus he was not the other man was Oni Omaus who is also a Gaul but not much is known about him because he not the undefeated Gaul that name was already taken he is the kind of sort of defeated gall

I'm the three in one gall not great not bad I am the Applebees of gladiators which isn't bad it's not bad you wouldn't pick it if you had another choice but you know I'm gonna always be

there for you it's not a bad happy hour choice uh so these three banded together with others and broke out however because lethal weapons were locked up because you know keeping a bunch of weapons around trained soldiers turned slaves seems like a really bad idea they had to arm themselves by other means so they broke into the kitchen and armed themselves with knives or they called them choppers uh i'm assuming with machetes and shit uh like giant cartoonish meat knives or something and just begin ambushing and killing the shit out of people from the ludus uh yeah including most of body artists family um like this shows that like the show

spartacus shows like him killing like kind of not being into killing the entire body out his family if I remember correctly but I have no doubt that they were excited to kill those people oh they were totally yeah dude afterwards they broke into the weapons locker where they kept them all the actual gladiatorial weapons and arm themselves

to the fucking teeth and then there was a few guards there and they immediately got butchered because you know don't fight a gladiator uh you think once they got into the arms room they did like a all right montage and they were trying on different stuff yeah because they didn't have a chance to be in the warmillo i want to be something else yeah uh though they were not free quite yet uh mass murder uh the word of a mass murder happening at a ludus spreads kind of quick uh even in those days especially because

kapua was only a short distance away uh but there wasn't exactly a military emergency um and there wasn't exactly the military people like to respond there was no like legionary qrf going on here. Um, so the, the, the main problem here was, and this will become kind of a common thread here through the early stages of the rebellion is that Rome had found itself balls deep in several different rebellions and wars,

uh, all over the place, including a different rebellion in Spain led by a traitor Roman general named Quintus Sorrentia Sertorius. I'm probably pronouncing that wrong. Sorry, Lantan knowers. A man who refused to engage the Romans in open battle and blood them through hit-and-run tactics.

They're also engaged in the longest of three wars against Pontus. Their legionnaire reserve has tapped the fuck out. As such, the Romans in Capua did not have any legionnaires to use, even if they wanted to. So they scraped

the bottom of the barrel and sent what they had to try to check out the slave school, which was like a loose collection of some local militia. Not the people that you should pick. They would have had some training, but i was almost certain that the gladiators had significantly more um right so yeah uh and they had much more experience killing people with pointed sticks than the militia did uh because of this as soon as the

local militia showed up they were killed to a man and their weapons and clothing were looted uh they added these militiamen's weapons to their collection and escaped into the mountains um now most people it's hard to understand what kind of happens next most people when they read about spartacus it's kind of explained that spartacus just kind of became the leader of the band of rebels um but he wasn't really uh both crixus and anio maoist were both leaders as well um though they kind of held sway over the gaulish slaves and anio maoist would just kind of die at an unknown place in time uh at some point and just leave crixus and spartacus kind of in charge um there were other rebels known as uh ganicus and

castus who um would play some kind of leadership role though history kind of lost those details um the rebels were a loose collection they were not a monolith they came from various different backgrounds and many of them did not speak the same language what seems much more likely is they're a lead but that's a dry i mean there's some there's some communication problems at hand. It seems like Crixus spoke the most languages because he'd been enslaved the longest, which seems like a really shitty way to learn new languages.

It really is. What's much more likely than Spartacus just becoming the leader is that they were led by a rotating community of people who happened to be former military like Spartacus or the local gladiatorial champion like Crixus. Spartacus always

kind of sort of was floating at the head, but it seemed like he did not lead like a general. They kind of led by committee because nobody really knew what they were doing. There's a good reason for this, and it may have been why it became the general depiction of the rebellion. For one, because of may have been why it became the general depiction of the rebellion.

For one, because of the immediate aftermath of it, the historians were Romans. Romans, like most cultures, didn't want to think they could be threatened by a loose collection of people fighting for what could kind of be considered a common cause of getting the fuck out of slavery. Instead, they have a hyper-organized military led by a battlefield genius like Spartacus. When instead it was a bunch of rebellious slaves going on a rampage of looting and revenge. Um, like people want to think that their enemies are like much stronger than they are.

Uh, in hindsight, like people, I should point out now, Romans did not think that this was a threat right now at all. They thought like, oh, call the,

like if they had cops, they would call the cops. They wouldn't call the military. Like this is not a military emergency, but in hindsight, when all of this is being written, after they saw what Spartacus had done, like,

ah, he must be a military mastermind who outmaneuvered even the best Roman minds. No, no, that's not what happened. military mastermind who outmaneuvered even the best Roman minds. No. No. That's not what happened. Sparty and the boys are now loose in the Campanian countryside. This was known as something of a

sick vacation spot for the Roman rich and powerful. So the rebels quickly got to know these people's summer homes by breaking into them and stealing all their shit and killing everybody who didn't happen to be a slave. Oh. They then freed their slaves, most of whom quickly joined their band of growing merry men. There was also a whole lot of torching going on. They pillaged entire towns and cities.

At some point, they would also occupy towns and cities in various different degrees of rampage. But Spartacus and crew kept hitting up the villas and the farms. Spartacus and crew? Running out of nicknames to give them. Spartacus and friends? Yeah, Spartacus and co. I don't know. Blink-180 Spartacus.

Fallout Spartacus. I'm running out of band names. Fallout Spartacartacus already says that you stole it yes i just said it fuck how did i miss now uh so spartacus and his friends his very band of malcontents freed slaves whatever um began hitting more and more villas and farms and continuing the old ultra violence and freedom bit um so uh there's a lot of these points where like

some slaves like did not go with him because they're like i want no fucking part of this i'm gonna stay right here and then they'd get killed yeah no like this like i said this isn't like a monolith this group isn't moving as one

right now like they're kind of like fanned out into small groups um with spartacus and crixus being at the head of like the biggest one and it seems like some of the groups are much more bloodthirsty than others um and some people were like yes we're here to free the slaves and other people were like no we're just here to get revenge on Romans and we're going to burn your house down. There's no motivation, really. There's no evidence anywhere that Spartacus is ever trying to free the slaves of Rome. But there's also plenty of evidence that he was okay with freeing the slaves of Rome if they would join him. And also they got to steal all that stuff.

okay with fleeing freeing the slaves of rome if they would join him and also they got to steal all that stuff um you kind of have to fill in the gaps which i'm not totally comfortable doing because you know spartacus never wrote any words of his own uh but yeah uh this quickly this is where things began to quickly change in comparison to other roman slave revolts being on sicily you know not being in the middle of the roman heartland like other things would travel like word would travel very very slowly to get back to rome if ever like sometimes the local authorities would just fucking handle it but stopping through the roman version of beverly hills meant the rich and powerful and influential immediately heard about the rebellion um though like i said it's pretty clear they didn't see

this as a threat uh that's like it's like oh this is a crime wave uh some slaves got out they're burning stuff but this isn't a big problem um but just because they think of this as not a military emergency yet it did not mean they're just going to sit back and let their property values be ruined via popular revolt. As Sparti continued to loot and free their slaves, the Roman government began to force people together to confront them. That is where

we will pick up next week. Oh, fucking bullshit. Yeah, I know how to end one on time, baby! And to be fair, we went off on quite a few tangents there, but this is a series that I have to do almost as much research on what actually happened and compared to what people

think happened. One of the things that people think of as Spartacus is obviously stars Spartacus, which is a bad show. Or also the movie where they're like, no, I'm Spartacus. No, I'm Spartacus. None of that shit ever fucking happened.

If it happened, someone would have wrote it down. Nobody ever wrote it down. Not even Spartacus. Definitely not Spartacus. He was way too busy being dead at that point. Still waiting for his hooligans of Rome to come out. Hooligans of Campania.

Significantly, it's just him carving pictures into a rock because I don't think he could read or write. Yeah. That's part one. Hopefully you don't feel good about Roman slavery. I don't know what you're supposed to get out of this episode. No.

It's, it's always interesting because like, I think that the story of Spartacus is cool. Like, cause it's it's always interesting because like i think that the story of spartacus is cool like because it's a rebellion against rome rebellions in general i'm a huge fan um and it's people like to say that like you know spartacus threatened rome itself he didn't he didn't like it doesn't have to be that dramatic for it to not be cool uh or that like he was attempting to free the slaves of rome uh these are all things these are all ideas that people put on this rebellion hundreds of years after the fact um and there's no evidence of it there's no evidence of a lot there's no evidence of a lot of the stuff i'm going to say but like when you defied

the hoa i want to see thatz series in the next hundred years. Oh, when I wasn't paying my... I used to live in an HOA for people who don't know me, which is most of you. And it was like a normal lower middle class suburb, but I had an HOA for reasons I am not entirely sure of. I guess this is our question from the Legion today, since we don't, we don't do those during series. And I didn't do things the way that the HOA said,

mostly because like when you live in Washington state and it's a heat wave, you're not supposed to use the water to say, water your lawn because that's wasteful. And I think lawns in general are horribly wasteful and a really dumb suburban nightmare but i continually get tickets for this um one like one a week for months and i just thought your lawnmower only worked that is true um it makes no sense um and so he kept getting more and more tickets. And one day I caught him when I was like going from my car to my house when he's writing me another ticket.

And he's like, Mr. Kasabian, I'm not sure if you've noticed. I have been citing you every week for the last several weeks for this lawn. I'm like, how do you think i didn't fucking notice you put 20 of them on my door uh also i'm not going to pay those uh and he i don't think he's ever been confronted by someone who didn't want to just pay a fine like i'm not doing it was it like 50 bucks every time yeah so then i just didn't pay it and he stopped writing them for me so I guess what you're saying is I'm the real Spartacus here thank you Nick I'm just waiting for the Star series

our struggles are the same except you wore more clothes yeah that's true Spartacus is a lot more naked than I generally am but it's because they didn't have such a thing as the sex offenders registry in Rome but that is Spartacus part 1 generally am, but it's because they didn't have a such thing as the sex offenders registry in Rome. But that is Spartacus part one. And until next

time, don't buy slaves. That's a good one. Later.