Rome's worst nightmare: the story of Spartacus

When the Spartacus revolt erupted in 73 BC, it exposed a terrifying truth: that the cocksure Roman Republic was nowhere near as invincible as it liked to believe. Guy de la Bédoyère takes up the story

A white marble sculpture of a man holding his arms across his chest, holding his shoulders

Published: June 5, 2025 at 9:00 AM

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It’s a measure of the enduring appeal of Stanley Kubrick’s 1960 swords-and-sandals epic that, when most of us hear the name Spartacus, a dimple-chinned Kirk Douglas springs immediately to mind. Heroic. Noble. Doomed. Roman citizens, it’s safe to say, saw Spartacus rather differently – as a rebellious slave who threatened the future of the Roman Republic. Violent. Disobedient. Dangerous.

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Though writing in the imperial Roman era long after the defeat of Spartacus, the words of the author Plutarch (AD 46–c120) capture something of the dread the warrior inspired. “It is said that, when he was first brought to Rome to be sold, a serpent was seen coiled about his face as he slept,” noted Plutarch, “and his wife, who was of the same tribe as Spartacus, a prophetess, and subject to visitations of the Dionysiac frenzy, declared it the sign of a great and formidable power which would end in misfortune.”

So what’s the truth behind these very different legends? Why did Spartacus take up arms outside the gladiatorial arena? And why was the uprising he led – the third of the so-called Servile Wars, following rebellions in 135–132 BC and 104–c100 BC – perceived as being so threatening to Rome?

Brutal degradations

To answer these questions, it first helps to remember just how reliant upon slaves Rome had become by 73 BC, when the renegade band of trainee gladiators led by Spartacus burst out of their barracks in southern Italy. Their rebellion exposed the terrifying truth: that every city, every village and every villa estate was at risk from the slaves on whom every aspect of Roman life depended.

Paradoxically, this reliance on slave labour had grown from Rome’s success. Having seen off the naval trading power of Carthage in three Punic Wars (264–241 BC, 218–201 BC and 149–146 BC), and having seized Greece in 146 BC, Rome had vastly increased its reach and territory. The Romans had also defeated Macedon and, in 133 BC, been granted the kingdom of Attalus III of Pergamon (spanning much of western Anatolia, now in Turkey) by the terms of his will.

Booty poured into Rome. In an era when slavery was ubiquitous, this included the trafficking of human beings – a practice Rome industrialised on an unimaginably vast scale. Its generals brought back hundreds of thousands of slaves – people who were sold in its markets and put to work on tasks that ranged from looking after wealthy men and women in fine homes to labouring on plantations. For some of the least fortunate, the brutal degradations of the mines awaited.

The streets of Rome heaved with slaves scuttling about on the business of their masters and mistresses. Then there were the gladiators. This profession had grown out of a funerary custom of the Etruscans (the people of central Italy from whom the Romans borrowed many traditions) to evolve into a central component of crowd-pleasing Roman entertainment, funded by the elite as part of their political competitiveness.

Two men wrestle each other over a fountain. Around them, three other men stand in military stances

Wrestlers in a sixth-century BC Etruscan tomb fresco near Tarquinia, central Italy. Roman gladiatorial games evolved from Etruscan funerary customs (Image by Getty Images)

Among those gladiators was Spartacus. Born in Thrace, an area in the south-eastern Balkans spanning parts of modern Turkey, Greece and Bulgaria, Spartacus had, according to one translation of the historian Appian (c95–c165 AD), “once served as a soldier with the Romans”. Not unlike the fictional Maximus Decimus Meridius in Ridley Scott’s 2000 blockbuster Gladiator, he had somehow been enslaved and eventually sold to a school run by the lanista (gladiator trainer) Lentulus Batiatus in Capua, southern Italy.

It seems that Spartacus’s military training stood him in good stead when, outraged by Batiatus’s treatment of his fighters, mostly Gauls and Thracians, he took part in a rebellion to overpower the training-school guards. Surviving accounts of the revolt written by Plutarch and Appian some 200 years later unsurprisingly don’t quite tally – an all too common problem with ancient sources. Nevertheless, it seems that around 200 gladiators planned a breakout, and that 78 did manage to escape. Only then did they elect Spartacus as leader. He had a reputation for being unusually wise and cultured for someone of his background. He was also exceptionally courageous and strong.

Spartacus had a reputation for being unusually wise and cultured, exceptionally courageous and strong

Whatever the precise details of those events, the Third Servile (or Spartacus) War had begun. Spartacus and his rebels made for the nearby slopes of Vesuvius, and were joined by runaway slaves and even some free peasants. Any loot gathered along the way was shared out equally – an egalitarian gesture that attracted others. They defeated soldiers sent from Capua and helped themselves to their equipment, discarding their own less-effective gladiatorial weapons.

Around 140 years later, Pliny the Elder (c23-79 AD) recorded how Spartacus had allegedly forbidden any of his followers to possess gold or silver. Pliny interpreted this rule as showing that slaves in Rome’s recent past had more moral fibre than Romans themselves.

Opportunity missed

At the start of the rebellion, few took Spartacus and his followers too seriously. Initially, the praetor (commander) Clodius was sent from Rome with 3,000 troops to trap the rebels on the volcano. The renegades, though, made ladders from vines and shinned down sheer cliffs to make their escape. Even then, arrogance and complacency prevailed in Rome, where no one appreciated quite how dangerous the revolt was becoming. Once more, only a scratch force was sent against Spartacus, who repeatedly beat off attacks. His army grew larger, stronger and better equipped day by day: with his military experience, Spartacus was able to oversee training and the manufacture of weapons.

Appian estimated the number of rebels at 70,000; however, such rounded figures are meaningless, especially when they involve Rome’s enemies. Not only was there no way of accurately measuring the strength of armies but, by exaggerating the strength of opponents, Roman victories were given additional sheen – a powerful incentive to tell tall tales after the event.

Only belatedly was a proper consular army of two legions sent out by the Senate. In 72 BC, they defeated a force of ‘30,000’ rebels led by another gladiator, the Gallic Crixus, killing “20,000” including Crixus himself.

According to Plutarch, this defeat made Spartacus more cautious. “Spartacus was soon great and formidable,” he wrote, “but he took a proper view of the situation. Since he could not expect to overcome the Roman power, he began to lead his army toward the Alps, thinking it necessary for them to cross the mountains and go to their respective homes – some to Thrace and some to Gaul. But his men were now strong in numbers and full of confidence, and would not listen to him, but went ravaging over Italy.”

Determined to pursue his escape plan, Spartacus persevered with his march north – but was cut off by one of the consuls (Rome’s highest elected officials), while the other blocked his retreat. However, the consular army amounted to only about 10,000–12,000 men, so splitting them up was a mistake. Spartacus attacked each half of the Roman army in separate engagements: his force having now grown to (supposedly) 120,000, he defeated both, sending the consuls fleeing in separate directions.

Buoyed up, Spartacus headed towards Gaul, defeating the 10,000-strong army of the governor of Gallia Cisalpina (in the north of what’s now Italy). Spartacus executed 300 Roman prisoners as a sacrifice in honour of Crixus. He then marched on Rome and – acting as brutally as his former Roman masters – killed all of his remaining prisoners and his pack animals so that he could move as quickly as possible. By now, the consuls had regrouped and together tried to block Spartacus. He defeated them again.

Terrifying humiliation

That highly trained Roman troops were being repeatedly overcome by an army led by an ex-slave was a devastating and terrifying humiliation for the Roman military. Spartacus, though, understood that his force, for all its size, lacked the equipment and training to take Rome. Instead, he captured the city of Thurii (on the Gulf of Taranto in southern Italy) and traded with merchants for iron and brass to manufacture more arms. Another victory over a Roman army followed.

The Spartacus War was now in its third year, and the revolt represented an unmatched opportunity for any Roman general who could crush it. Rome had two great military leaders at the time. One was the fabulously wealthy Marcus Licinius Crassus (c115–53 BC), who had fought on the side of the dictator Sulla in the civil war of the 80s BC. The other was Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (106–48 BC), commonly known as Pompey, who had recently crushed the rebellion of the senator Sertorius in Spain.

The Senate placed Crassus in charge of the war. Determined to win at all costs, and desperate to do so before Pompey was called upon to help, he raised an army of six legions and added the consular army of two legions – except those men he executed as punishment for their failure to defeat Spartacus previously.

A cast of a mask of a man's face

A cast of a mask of Roman general and statesman Marcus Licinius Crassus, who fought Spartacus in 71 BC (Image by Getty Images)

In one ancient account of what followed, Crassus sent Mummius, one of his legates, with two of the legions to fight Spartacus. Mummius was defeated, and some of the survivors fled. Crassus regrouped them, but took the 500 most cowardly and decimated them – executing one in 10. Though brutal, his methods worked: facing 10,000 of Spartacus’s men, who were encamped some way from the main force, Crassus’s force killed two-thirds. With that victory under his belt, he led his men to rout the rest.

Spartacus’s army fled south to the sea, hoping to cross to Sicily, but was thwarted when Cilician pirates, who had agreed to help him with sea transport, double-crossed the rebels. He and his men were now trapped in what’s now Calabria, on the far south-western tip of Italy’s toe.

Plutarch described how any chance of the rebels escaping from southern Italy was thwarted: “[Crassus] determined to build a wall across the isthmus, thereby at once keeping his soldiers from idleness, and his enemies from provisions. The task was a huge one and difficult, but he accomplished and finished it, contrary to all expectations, in a short time, running a ditch from sea to sea through the neck of land 300 furlongs [about 37 miles] in length and 15 [Roman] feet [about 4.4 metres] in width and depth alike. Above the ditch he also built a wall of astonishing height and strength.”

Whatever the justice of his cause, we should be under no illusions about Spartacus’s capacity for brutality. According to Appian, “He crucified a Roman prisoner in the space between the two armies to show his own men what fate awaited them if they did not conquer.”

Spartacus ignored the fortifications for a while but, as his food supplies dwindled, he was forced to break out with some of his men – and Crassus became worried that Spartacus might now decide to march on Rome. The events that followed are confused in the accounts, and difficult to follow. However, it seems that, though Spartacus suffered the defection of some of his army, he enjoyed some success, too.

The last battle

Back in Rome, concern that the siege might drag on even longer drove the Senate to invite Pompey and his army, recently returned from Spain, to head south and help defeat Spartacus. This infuriated Crassus, who believed that Pompey would take all the glory from such a victory, and was desperate to fight Spartacus before his rival arrived. So when the rebel leader tried to negotiate terms with Crassus, the Roman bluntly refused.

Nevertheless, Crassus seemed to have lost his chance of glory when Spartacus escaped and headed for Brundisium (now Brindisi) on the Adriatic coast in another attempt to flee by sea. The rebel leader, though, abandoned that plan when he heard that Lucullus, proconsul (governor) of Macedonia, had arrived back in Brundisium after defeating supporters of Mithridates, king of Pontus.

Crucially, at that point Spartacus defeated a force sent against him under the command of Quintus, one of Crassus’s officers. Until then, Spartacus had kept his head – but now “this success turned out to be the undoing of Spartacus, because it filled his slaves with overconfidence”, said Plutarch. Those rebels attacked the Roman soldiers as they were digging fortifications, and that confrontation forced Spartacus into preparing for a full-blown showdown with Crassus.

The story goes that Spartacus was brought his horse, ready to carry him into battle – but instead he pulled out his sword and killed it, saying that if he won this day, he would have many fine horses from the enemy – but if he lost, he would want none. The Roman and rebel armies finally met in open conflict in the clash that became known as the battle of the Silarius River – where, Plutarch and Appian affirm, Spartacus died on the field. Appian wrote that the renegade’s body was never found, but that he “was wounded in the knee, holding his shield in front of him and contending this way against his assailants until he and the great mass of those with him were surrounded and slain”.

A black and white depiction of Roman soldiers in hand to hand combat, with spears

Spartacus’s death, imagined in a 19th-century engraving. The Roman historian Appian wrote that the rebel leader “was wounded in the knee... he and the great mass of those with him were surrounded and slain” (Image by TopFoto)

Revenge and recrimination

The Romans fell on the remainder of Spartacus’s men, who were now floundering around in leaderless confusion. Crassus had won, but Pompey rolled up in time for his men to cut down the surviving rebels as they tried to escape. Some fled into the mountains, and Crassus pursued them.

According to Appian, the last 6,000 fugitives were captured and crucified by Crassus along the Via Appia between Capua and Rome. Pompey, though, claimed that it was he who, by mopping up the vestiges of the rebel forces, had brought the war to an end.

The following year, 70 BC, the two men were joint consuls – but disagreed on almost everything. Even worse for Crassus, Pompey was able to hold a magnificent triumph in Rome to celebrate his defeat of Sertorius in Spain, while Crassus was too ashamed to hold one for merely winning a slave war.

The Third Servile War had put Rome in a precarious position. Spartacus had dented the military prestige won by Rome over several centuries of expansion, and made a mockery of the military system that the Greek historian Polybius, writing in his Histories, had so feted only 80 years earlier.

The Roman historian Florus, writing almost two centuries later, summed up Roman disgust at what had happened: “I know not what name to give to the war which was stirred up at the instigation of Spartacus, for the common soldiers being slaves and their leaders being gladiators … added insult to injury which they inflicted upon Rome.”

Never again?

Considering the damage to Rome’s prestige, one of the most remarkable aspects of the Spartacus War is that there was no repeat in later years. This certainly wasn’t because Rome changed its stance on slaves: untold numbers continued to be acquired in, for example, Caesar’s Gallic Wars.

This reliance on slaves had a profound impact on Roman society. Under the emperors from Augustus (27 BC–AD 14) onwards, historians habitually bemoaned how wealth and power were turning the Romans into feeble, luxury-loving layabouts. With slaves on hand to do almost everything for them – carrying them in litters, cooking, labouring, flapping away flies and even telling them the time – Romans who could afford these unpaid servants were, it was said, no equals of their ancestors, hardy farmers and soldiers.

Perhaps one of the reasons nothing like the Spartacus rebellion happened again was because the Romans, once the bloodshed and retribution were over, managed to find a way to give slaves a form of hope. The Romans were as barbaric as any other ancient civilisation – more so, in terms of the sheer scale of their dominance – but there was one crucial difference: they were endlessly pragmatic
and adaptable.

Despite the risks they faced in the arena, gladiators could become popular heroes and celebrated heartthrobs

Not only did the Romans develop a system of manumission, giving slaves the opportunity to gain their liberty, but freedmen and freedwomen were able to run businesses, accumulate savings and see their children grow up not just free but eligible to vote and hold office. That did nothing to overturn the cruelty and injustice of slavery, but the tombstones of freedmen and freedwomen in the cemeteries of Rome, the port at Ostia and at Pompeii bear witness to the lives that some of the more successful built for themselves. It was certainly better than risking crucifixion along the Appian Way by rebelling.

Despite the risks they faced in the arena, gladiators, too, could become popular heroes and celebrated heartthrobs – they might even be freed, some becoming wealthy along the way. The truth, of course, was that most of them ended up dead or disabled long before that happened, but the fact is that there was no second Spartacus, nor anyone like him. No gladiator-led slave rebellion ever threatened Rome’s existence again.

A slave to the truth?

How accurate is Kubrick's 1960 blockbuster, Spartacus?

It’s one of the most famous films of the 20th century. When the Stanley Kubrick-directed Spartacus was released in 1960, its scale and ambition caught the imagination of cinema-goers everywhere. But how true to real events is it?  The answer is: more than you might think. The central narrative in the film is the conflict between Spartacus (Kirk Douglas) and Crassus (Laurence Olivier), reflecting historical accounts. In the movie, Crassus encounters Spartacus while watching a private bout at Batiatus’s gladiator training school, though is unaware of his identity. In fact, it seems that Crassus never knowingly saw Spartacus in real life.  Pompey does not appear in the film, though is mentioned. The success of the rebels’ breakout and defeat of Roman armies is essentially accurate, as is Spartacus being wrong-footed by the duplicity of the Cilician pirates. The brilliant Peter Ustinov played the real lanista Batiatus, shamelessly stealing every scene in which he appeared. Who could forget his pompous arrival with his entourage in search of new gladiators, spying a bedraggled Spartacus being punished for hamstringing a guard? “Hamstrung? How marvellous,” he says, “I wish I’d been here! I’ll take him.” Some key characters in the film are fictitious, including Spartacus’s ex-slave wife from the gladiator barracks, Varinia (Jean Simmons), and Crassus’s slave Antoninus (Tony Curtis), who joins the revolt. In fact, Spartacus’s wife, name unknown, was said to have been Thracian.  The screenplay did capture vividly the notion of Rome as a living force beyond the insignificance of human beings. As Crassus, Olivier proclaims that Rome, “that bestrides the known world like a colossus”, cannot be withstood by any man. The city must be served, and all must abase themselves and grovel before Rome, he declares: “You must love her.” The final, celebrated “I’m Spartacus” scene, in which every one of the surviving rebels stands up to claim to be the eponymous hero, is of course pure movie make-believe. The mass execution along the Appian Way was not – this was Rome’s way of deterring any slaves from attempting such a venture in future.  In the movie, Varinia shows the dying Spartacus his son, promising that the boy would grow up in liberty: “He is free Spartacus, free.” Yet slavery lasted as long as the Roman empire and beyond.

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Guy de la Bédoyère is a historian and broadcaster. His latest book is Populus: Living and Dying in the Wealth, Smoke and Din of Ancient Rome (Abacus, 2024)

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