William Tyler
Four Slave Rebellions, Part 1: Spartacus Shakes Ancient Rome
William Tyler | Four Slave Rebellions, Part 1: Spartacus Shakes Ancient Rome
- Hello, everyone, It’s really good to be back. I’m sorry I can’t see you all. Thank you for those who’ve sent us messages either this evening or earlier, asking, hoping I had a nice holiday. Yes, we did. My wife and I had a lovely holiday in northern Spain, at Santander travelling by ferry, which was really good, rather than by air, and the weather wasn’t good, if you are listening from Britain, the weather was the same as it has been here. That is, sunny, and then wet and miserable. And today, it’s been very cold in southern Britain. In fact, we’ve had to put on coats and jerseys and all sorts of things, very cold. Now, we are going to do a short four-week course and it’s going to be on slave revolts. The idea occurred to me that we could look at slave revolts at four different periods of history, and that’s what we’re going to do. But the important thing to say is the next three revert to my usual day of Monday. It’s only on Tuesday this week, because we didn’t get home from Spain until late on Sunday evening, and I didn’t think it was very wise to do it on Monday, and I think that was a good idea. But here we are then. Now, today’s talk, the first of the four on slave revolt, focuses on ancient Rome and slavery, and in particular, the Spartacus Revolt, of which I’m sure all of you have heard. Let me begin by saying, the Victorians used to say, “The poor are always with us.”
And so it is with slaves, too. Virtually every society through history, at one point or another, had slaves, and we’re all aware of modern slavery today. Long before my home city of Bristol in the west country, was involved in the transatlantic slave trade between Britain, Africa, and America, and the Caribbean, it dealt with Irish slaves in Saxon England. Bristol imported slaves from Ireland in the 8th, 9th, and 10th centuries. So slavery, which we think of if we’re British or American, largely in terms of the transatlantic trade, that appalling trade, which I will come to in the third of my talks, is but the tip of a much bigger era of slavery. If you ask about England specifically, slavery was abolished once the Normans came in 1066. That’s another story for another day. We are, I think, also very familiar with slavery in the ancient world, especially in the world of Rome. After all, many of us around my age group were brought up on Hollywood blockbusters like “Cleopatra.” Gosh, Elizabeth Taylor, wow. And most relevant to my talk today, the film “Spartacus,” which was released in 1960. And I watched it, I remember it well. I watched it during a school holiday with my elderly maiden great-aunt who loved the cinema, and I think she adored Kirk Douglas. And the ladies will remember Kirk Douglas in that film, “Spartacus.” Four years later, in 1964, I was at university reading law, and I did a course on Roman law. I had done Latin at a level, it seemed a sensible choice. And I did Roman law, and we studied the laws of Gaius. Those of you who are lawyers, probably many of you studied the laws of Gaius, which were written in 160 CE, AD, and a very simple Latin.
It was a good thing to have studied. My tutor was Southern Irish, very quietly spoken man, Dr. Kelly. He was a very nice man, and we thought him rather fuddy-duddy, until one day, halfway through our tutorial, a scantily -dressed Scandinavian lady entered the room, to which he hastily add, “This is my children’s nanny,” he said. We merely smiled. Anyhow, we studied Gaius’ “Institutes,” as they’re called, or the laws of Gaius, and there’s a great chunk of it which deals with Roman slavery. And at the time, I could have manumitted you if you were a slave, I knew exactly the right Latin words to say, and I could have done that easier than I could have got to a divorce in 1960s Britain. It’s strange sometimes to look back at how different university education, or at least, curricula were back in the day. Now, the story of slaves in the law book, is the same story of the slaves that feature in “Spartacus,” the film and the historical story. Although the Spartacus story, the Spartacus Revolt happened two centuries previously between 73 and 71 BCE, BC. You don’t need to remember the dates. All you need to remember is that Spartacus happened in the first century BC. That’s really the only date you need to remember. Now, whenever and wherever you have a slave-owning society, you will find slave revolts. And over the next four weeks, we shall look at four different slave revolts. Today, ancient Rome, tomorrow, mediaeval Arabia, and the use by the Arab population of African slaves, and then on to Haiti in the 18th century, and finally to America in the 19th century.
Now, these four revolts, and all the other slave revolts you can ever think of, there are of course many, and those of you who are American, no, there are many American slave revolt. None of them were successful. The only successful slave revolt in history is the 19th century slave revolt that gained Haiti its freedom. And that’s rather ironic given the state of Haiti today, but that’s the story. Indeed, the story of Haiti is often referred to as the “Black Spartacus” story. So we’ll leave those, but what is to come is mediaeval Arabia, 18th-century Haiti, and 19th-century America, the United States. Now, I’ve spoiled the ending for you for today, because you know the Spartacus Revolt is going to fail, because the only successful revolt is the one in Haiti. And so come with me if you will, take my hand metaphorically, and walk with me back in time to ancient Rome, and the slave revolt led by Spartacus, as we’ve said in the first century BCE, BC. We are fortunate always with Rome to have literary sources. And we have, not a contemporary account, but a near contemporary account, an overview of the Spartacus Revolt by the historian Plutarch. And the Roman historian Plutarch, writes this. He says, “The insurrection of the gladiators,” because Spartacus was a gladiator, and his initial followers were all gladiators, “The insurrection of the gladiators and the devastation of Italy, commonly called the War of Spartacus.”
The Romans didn’t call it the Spartacus Revolt as we do, or the Spartacus Rebellion, they called it the War of Spartacus. “Began upon the occasion that one Lentulus Batiates trained up a great many gladiators in Capua. Most of them Gauls and Thracians, who, not for any fault by them committed, but simply through the cruelty of their master, were kept in confinement for the object of fighting one with another.” There were lots of gladiatorial schools throughout the Roman Empire, but the one in Capua was a very large one, second only to the gladiatorial school in Rome itself. And these gladiators in Capua were by chance, at that date, drawn from Gaul, modern-day France, And Thrace, Thrace, you know, on the border between modern-day Turkey and Greece, eastern Thrace is part of Turkey, western Thrace is part of Greece. Now, why are they gladiators? Because gladiators are slaves, and Rome has conquered Gaul, France, and Thrace, And those who’ve been captured sufficiently, as it were suitable, to become gladiators, were sent back to Italy to train as gladiators. And that is where Spartacus came from. Spartacus came from Thrace and is a gladiator in 73 BC, or BCE, if you prefer, is a gladiator in the school for gladiators in Capua. And yet, as we are told by Plutarch, the conditions that they were kept under were so severe that they could risk, well, very much risk their lives by rebelling against the regime.
Not only that, of course, because when they were in the arena as gladiators, they faced death every time they went into the arena. So it was a dreadful life of punishments, horrendous punishments as they were training, and then in the arena, well, death and maybe death at the hand of a friend. Plutarch goes on to say this. “200 of these gladiators formed a plan to escape, but their plot being discovered, those of them who became aware of it in time and to anticipate their master, being 78, got out of a cook’s shop, chopping knives and spits, and made their way through the city and fighting, by the way, on several waggons that were carrying gladiators’ arms to another city, they seized upon them, and armed themselves, and seizing upon a defensible place, they chose three captains, of whom Spartacus was the chief. A Thracian, and a man not only of high spirit and valiant, but in understanding also,” and an interesting word, “and in gentleness, superior to his condition. and more of a Greek than the people of his country usually are.” Greeks were held in higher esteem in ancient Rome. They’re thought of as being rather clever people. And Spartacus was undoubtedly clever. Of course, we know rather little about his background. We think he may have been a soldier, and had deserted from the Roman army, and had been sent to Capua, to the gladiator school. In other words, he’d been captured by the Romans, got turned over to the Roman army, changed sides, and probably to save his life, and then had deserted, but had been captured, and this time, sent to the gladiatorial school in Thrace. It’s the classic story, isn’t it? Of slave rebellions. A cruel master and mistress, I rather dislike the reference, the age of the man in charge at Capua, if you remember he said, 78, well, that’s my age, and I’d rather resent the fact that I wouldn’t have been able to put down the rebellion because of my age, but we’ll let that pass.
And so they revolted against it. There came a point, there comes a point with slaves, and this applies to those we know most about, if you like, in the modern world, which are the slaves in the southern states of America, there comes a point at which you think it’s not worth living. So you may as well try and raise a rebellion and escape. You may have had your wives and family taken away from you, et cetera, et cetera. And so this slave revolt of Spartacus in the first century BC is not an unusual one. It is against a cruel master and the cruel background of gladiatorial combat. But what was different about the Spartacus Revolt? There had been revolts by slaves in the whole history of Rome, both before and after Spartacus, but what was important about this was that Spartacus turned out to be, as I’ve sort of mentioned already, a rather competent military leader. That’s why some people, or some historians think he must have had a military background. He knew what he was doing, in other words. And why this was so different, was beginning in Capua as a local revolt, it spread right across Italy, and it began to threaten Rome and the empire itself. It was a serious, a serious rebellion. I’ve written here, “background.” What do we learn from what I read from Plutarch? Well, first of all, that Spartacus was recognised as a leader by others, many of the slave revolts failed because they did not produce a leader. Secondly, we learned that Spartacus and the slaves who revolted with him were gladiators, therefore, they were professional fighters.
This isn’t just someone who was a clerk or a domestic. These were trained fighters, and thirdly, that the gladiators were drawn from Gaul and Thrace, and that reminds us that the empire of Rome stretched right across Europe, from Gaul in the west, to Thrace in the east. At this time, later, of course, it is to spread wider. It’s to spread into Britain, and it is to spread into the Middle East. It is a huge, huge empire, different than Britain’s, because it’s a contiguous empire. You could walk on Roman roads if you were so minded, from northern Britain, right through to modern-day Iraq. You could spend the same money in Carlisle, in Northern England, as you could spend in Jerusalem. You could speak the same language. There’s no passports. This is one contiguous empire. But there’s something that Plutarch didn’t tell us. He didn’t tell us what the institution of Roman slavery was actually like. And that’s not surprising, because the only people that would’ve read Plutarch were the educated, the elite, if you like, the slave-owning classes, if you like. And they knew perfectly well what slaves were. Now, it may be that some of you listening to me, here, it’s this evening, but whatever time of day you are listening to me, perhaps you are not so “au fait” with the nature of Roman slavery, and it’s interesting. Gaius, whom I mentioned as having to study in 1964 in my first term at Oxford, Gaius writes in this way. “Slavery is a human invention and not found in nature. Indeed, it was that other human invention, war, which provided the bulk of slaves.”
Gaius is very precise all those years ago, 60 years ago now, I could have done that for you in Latin, at the drop of a hat, I’m afraid I can’t do that anymore. But what he says is absolutely true. It’s not a state of nature. Slavery is something imposed on human society by humans, and the cause of it is war. And so we could go, if we had records, we could go way back before the ancient world, to a prehistoric world, and there would be slaves. People taken in battle, in war, and made to work for those that had enslaved them, conquered them. The law in Rome, and throughout the history of slavery, did not regard slaves as people, but as property to be bought and sold. Think the American South, the people bidding for the slaves who are there on a stage, “I’ll have that one.” They could be inherited, I could leave my slaves in my will to my son. They could be bred from in order to provide a new generation of slaves that didn’t cost you money, and you could treat them in any way you wished. And we know what that meant in the Southern States to female slaves. And of course, when Rome had slavery, it wasn’t an unusual thing. It was the norm across Europe. The Gauls had slaves before they were conquered. They could be found in all societies, and they were acquired, as Gaius tells us, through war. The life of a Roman slave could vary greatly. According to your age, frankly, you wouldn’t want to be 78 and a slave. Gender, well, if you are male, you need to be tough, so that you could do hard manual work. If you are female, you have to be attractive. And learning different. Greek slaves that the Romans had were learned. That’s the reference to Spartacus being almost Greek. They said, not Thracian, but Greek, they said because he was educated.
That’s what Plutarch is telling us. And so it goes on. So you know from the Southern States, as you look on the stage, “I’ll have that slave there, because he’s big and brawny, and will work well in the fields.” Or, “I’ll have that very attractive slave until my wife takes a look and sends her back for someone more sturdy.” Which of course, happened. It’s terrible to think of people being used as objects. This is a reference which I thought was interesting to share. “The most expensive slaves,” I read, “Were strong, agile young men. As many slaves in the Roman Republic were used to bear in various manual labour industries. Young, healthy women had value as prostitutes. Sexual exploitation of slaves was extremely common, as their lack of personhood,” they aren’t real persons, they’re objects. “Granted Roman citizens a moral loophole in regard to sexual deviancy. A slave’s intellectual ability such as being able to read or write, added value, depending on which languages they had acquired fluency in, as well as their occupation before they became a slave. Many slaves were allowed to continue in their specialised professions if they had one, such as doctors, accountants, or scribes.” So not all slaves were manual labourers. They did other jobs, but they remained objects, not people. Perhaps the best place to work, whether male or female, was in the household of the owner in his, in Latin “Domus,” we would say, home, from which we get the word “domestic,” of course. And that would’ve been a good place to work. And let me just share this.
“A domestic slave would perform duties that were necessary to the daily upkeep and functioning of a large estate. Cooks, butlers, hairdressers, barbers, nurses, teachers, seamstresses of elite households were typically all purchased slaves.” This was a very slave-oriented society, and thus, a society always at risk, serious risk of revolt. Not so different, I keep using the analogy because it’s the one we understand most with the Southern States of the United States. Those who had a skill like medicine or accountancy were even paid a small fee, a small wage, rather like prisoners today in the Western world can be paid for work that they do within prison. But the awful truth is, that the life expectancy, it’s been calculated in ancient Rome, for slaves in the most menial occupations, was calculated, or has been calculated, the age of 17. And that’s a dreadful, dreadful thought. And let us note this too, in addition to what I just said, “The harsh and often fatal conditions of this slavery were also an effective deterrent to crime.” If a Roman citizen, Civis Romanus, had committed a crime serious enough, they could be condemned to be a slave. And the sentence given by the courts was, damned or condemned to the mines. It didn’t mean literally the mines, it meant you had become a slave. They lost their liberty, they lost all their property, and they were declared non-people. They were declared non-people. If a slave broke the law, that says when Roman citizens broke the law, they became a slave, if a slave wrote the law, they were subject to capital punishment. And the most usual capital punishment in Rome for a slave was crucifixion. Think of the thieves crucified alongside Christ, Jesus Christ on the cross, the crosses were, crucifixion must have been a most horrendous way to die. And the Romans used it only against those they considered the greatest threat.
As Jesus was to them in Roman Palestine. But here, with slaves, it shows you how frightened they were of slaves. it’s boiling up underneath you all the time. You may live a luxurious life, but it’s based upon slavery. And the slave may say, “Yes sir, no sir, three bags full, sir.” But he might one day appear with a knife. You couldn’t trust them. It must have been a quite unsettling society in which to live in many ways. There are some statistics which I think are interesting. You have to take all these statistics with a pinch of salt, like the 17 average age of the manual worker slave. We don’t really know, but people have calculated what they think is best. They think that 40% of the population in the years we’re talking about, first century BC, first century AD, 40% of the population was slave, of whom of the 40%, 50% were owned by just 2% of the Roman elite. So 20% of the population was owned by 2% of the population. You say, “Well, what about the other 20%?” Well, they were often what were called, “public slaves.” That is to say, they were slaves of the state and not of an individual, and they could be also in various roles, finance is a very good example, of a slave who was a public slave. About 20% of the entire population was owned by 2% of the Roman elite.
Now in Jon Lewis’ book, which is called, “An Autobiography Of Rome,” it’s simply first firsthand accounts of Rome. I read this, this is an account by a man called Gaius Isidorus, and Gaius lived, wrote a will in eight BCE, eight BC, and he owned an estate, and he wrote in this will, “Gaius Caecilius Claudius Isidorus, in the consulship of Gaius Asinius Gallus, and Gaius Marcius Censorinus, upon the sixth day before the kalends of February, declared by his will, that though he had suffered great losses by the civil wars, he was still able to leave behind 4,116 slaves.” 4,116 slaves. And then because slaves aren’t considered human, “3,600 yoke of oxen, and 257,000 head of other kinds of cattle, besides in ready money 60,000,000 sesterces. Upon his funeral, he ordered 1,100,000 sesterces to be expended.” I may have complained he was poor, but he certainly wasn’t poor, really. He still had a great deal of wealth. And part of that wealth are the 4,000-plus slaves. Every slave, every slave throughout history must dream of freedom, but few achieve it. The most common way to obtain freedom as a slave in ancient Rome was to be freed by your owner. So-called manumission. And those lawyers like me that studied Gaius, know that you have to learn all the words to manumit a slave. And you had to go through the procedure of doing that. This often happened, the manumission, the freedom, this often happened after the death of the owner, because it will be stated in the will. Now, the will I’ve just read, did not state that those slaves were to be free. They would’ve been inherited by his successors, by his son, I imagine. But many men would manumit, which is the phrase, free their slaves on their own death.
The thought being, that if you did this act of kindness as you were dying, you might be received by the gods more easily. This is an account here, which I will read, “Manumission or freedom was a public ceremony that will be presided over by a judge.” You went to a judge, like you would go to a judge for a divorce today, and be heard publicly. “Was a public ceremony that would be presided over by a judge. The declaration was made in front of friends, family, and other slaves,” so that everybody knew that it had taken place. “The declaration made in front of friends, family, and other slaves, and the tradition was often concluded by inviting the newly-freed slave to dine at the table with the family. The most commonly cited reasons in the historical record for this gesture of goodwill involved exemplary deeds of loyalty performed by the slave, friendship between slave and master.” Friendship may have certain connotations. “Between slave and master, or out of mutual respect. Each of these, in turn, suggests that the relationship forged between slaves and their masters were often far richer, more complex than any relationship between a person and an object, which is how such a relationship will be viewed in the eyes of the law.” In other words, if you worked alongside your slave or the slave worked alongside you, you couldn’t go on thinking of them as an object. It’s not humanly possible. And so the human element enters in, by the way, women could own slaves, not just men. The free slave, a bit fascinating, the free slave could do what he wanted. The world is his oyster, or her oyster. So many of them, obviously, needed to get a job.
They got a job, they earned money, and some of them actually bought slaves for themselves. Can you imagine, having escaped slavery, and yet you enslaved others to work for you? It shows how ingrained slavery was as an institution. You would think the last people that would ever own a slave would be an ex-slave. But that is absolutely not true. And children of freed slaves, children of freed slaves, not the freed slaves themselves, children of free slaves were granted full Roman citizenship. “Civis Romanus,” a Roman citizen. And we all remember the famous phrase, “Civis Romanus sum,” I’m a Roman citizen. a very important status. Of course, you might gain freedom not in that official legal way, but by running away. And of course, throughout history, slaves have run away from their masters. If you think about the United States, then we have the famous Underground Railway, for those of you not American, not a railway at all, but a system that was set up to allow slaves who’d run away in the South to escape to the North, to non-slave owning states. And so in Rome, people escaped. Now, they couldn’t escape as in the States, to a non-slave-owning part, but they could “lose” themselves. The bureaucracy, of course, was far less. And there wasn’t this distinction of ethnicity and colour that rather stood out in the United States. And they wore, as in America, collars, metal collars with the name of their owner written on it. So I might have a collar which read, “Trudy Gold.” So if I ran away, you would know who my mistress was, rather like the way that we chip dogs today, so that we can find out who their owners are, if they are a runaway dog. In fact, they’re treated like dogs. Some owners tattooed across the slave’s forehead, the name of the owner. So I might have “Trudy Gold” typed across it. I couldn’t really hide that, could I? I couldn’t hide it. I couldn’t, I might be able to hide a collar, with a scarf or something, but over here, you couldn’t.
They offered rewards for runaways exactly the same as in every slave society. Find William the Slave, and we will pay you 100 sesterces or whatever they thought I was worth, probably a bit less than that. And there were professional slave-catchers, people whose entire earnings came from finding runaway slaves. Now that tells you that there must have been sufficient runaway slaves and they must have been offering sufficient cash for those runaway slaves be brought back, for you just set up in business. But that’s part of the story. The other part of the story is that people couldn’t take anymore. So some people committed suicide, hang themselves rather than go on in the terrible state they found themselves in. And others were prepared to follow leaders like Spartacus in an open revolt, to rise up as a group. And what happened was, as this historian writes, “The Roman slaves began to whisper. Their dissatisfaction grew, and the insurrection poured forth.” But you needed a leader. And Spartacus was that leader. Diodorus Siculus, who was a Greek, writing in the first century BC as well, said this. “The slaves therefore, being in this distress, and violently beaten and scourged beyond all reason, were now resolved not to bear it any longer.” Referring to the Spartacus Revolt, ‘cause although the gladiators began it, other slaves came to it. They saw it as a golden opportunity for freedom, presumably. Sadly, we don’t have a record of what the slaves themselves thought. And you might say, “Well, they would’ve been illiterate.”
Well, not all of them would’ve been illiterate. There might well have been some Greeks there who were perfectly well-educated, but we don’t have that. But we have Roman elite or Greek elite historians and authors, writers telling us. But nevertheless, it’s clear why people would flock to the banners of this man, Spartacus. So let’s turn now to gladiators, of whom Spartacus was one, as we’ve seen, in the gladiatorial training college at Capua. Seneca, the Roman statesman and philosopher, writing in the first century AD or CE, gives an indication of what a gladiatorial show was like. He’s none too impressed, I have to say. And Jon Lewis quotes Seneca in this way, “I happen,” says Seneca in AD 50. “I happen to go to one of these shows at the time of the lunch hour interlude, expecting there to be some light and witty entertainment there, some respite for the purpose of affording people’s eyes a rest from human blood.” So this is, you could spend a whole day, like a cricket match, really. You went and watched the gladiatorial show, but he’s going to have his sandwiches at lunchtime, because he thinks at lunchtime, there won’t be any killing, and he’ll be able to just enjoy the entertainment, perhaps dancing or music, perhaps he had in mind. “Far from it,” he says. “All the earlier contests were charity in comparison. The nonsense is dispensed with now, what we have now is murder, pure and simple. The combatants have nothing to protect them. Their whole bodies are exposed to the blows. Every thrust they launch gets home. A great many spectators prefer this to the ordinary matches, and even to the special popular-demand ones, and quite naturally.”
They were very sophisticated, the others, and with different weapons, and different armour, and so on. He’s a senator, saying here, there was none of that, this is pure murder. So he’s not going to eat his sandwich in peace, is he? “There are no helmets and no shields repelling the weapons. What is the point of armour or of skill? All that sort of thing just makes deaths slower in coming. In the morning, men are thrown to the lions and the bears, but it is the spectators they are thrown to in the lunch hour. The spectators insist that each one killing his man shall be thrown against another to be killed in his turn. And the eventual victor is reserved by them for some other form of butchery. The only exit for the contestants is death. Fire and steel keep the slaughter going.” And all this happens while the arena is virtually empty, 'cause people have gone off to have lunch. Now, that’s not the normal sort of stuff that appears in the Hollywood Films. The reality is they were all going to die, and even in a pretty empty arena, they were going to die. It sounds dreadful. We would use the word barbaric, and this is Rome. This is the Rome of Ovid and Horace, this is the Rome of the legions that conquered the world. And yet, by entertainment, it’s the death of slaves. A butchering. The word used by Seneca is “murder.” Murder. But it does tell us that some people in the elite of Rome were rather appalled by it all. So why do we have it? Because it’s bread and circuses. It’s what the lower classes want. And if the lower classes want it, you give it to them. for fear that the lower classes, and we don’t mean slaves now, would revolt themselves against the state, against the government. It’s like any government in Britain banning football.
You can’t, and for the Americans, soccer. You can’t ban football. You would have riots if you did so. So let them do that, let them have that, and make sure they’ve got enough money to buy bread. Bread and circuses, bread and entertainment. This is not just a society divided between free and slave. It is a society divided by an elite at the top, and the poor and slaves. The poor free, and slaves. Horace has the most elitist line that perhaps has ever been written. Horace wrote, “I hate the common people, and I hold them aloof.” “I hate the common people and I hold them aloof.” Again, telling us of this, this cracking ice that the Roman elite walked on all the time. I said before that Capua is considered to be the second most important gladiatorial school in Italy. The most important was next to the Colosseum in Rome itself, and many of you have been to Rome, the Ludus Magnus. Of course, star gladiators could gain not only fame, but wealth, and even freedom. But that was a rare, rare occasion, and a rare occurrence. The reality of a gladiatorial life was death. After all, you are going to age, and like soccer players, like any sports players, age eventually catches up with you. Your reflexes are less good than they were. Your speed is reduced. And that is, of course, what happened to many. I may have been, in my day, in my prime, a great gladiator, but now I can’t really see so well, and I don’t have the strength anymore, and I can’t move as I move, to jump out of the way, to jump into the attack. Death was the normal outcome. So it’s hardly surprising that in 73, that Spartacus leads this great revolt. 73 BC by the way, BCE. As I said, Spartacus was born in Thrace. As I also said, there are some historians who believe that he’d served in the Roman army.
I think basically, because of his skill in confronting Roman legions, he knew what they were going to do. We think he was sold into slavery because he deserted from the Roman army, but he may have rebelled, and we’d simply don’t know, it’s guesswork. We know he existed, we know about the rebellion, but we don’t know Spartacus’ backstory, he arrived in Capua in 73 BCE, BC. And he escaped with, initially, about 70 other gladiators. And they moved to Mount Vesuvius. I’m sure many of you have been to Mount Vesuvius outside of Naples. And there, he set up camp. And when people heard about it, that is to say, when slaves heard about it, they came to the encampment. So he gained, and gradually, it’s estimated that in the end, he had, well, we don’t know, but tens of thousands of followers, possibly, possibly at the outside, 100,000, and that’s unlikely. But tens of thousands of slaves came to him. He also had a Gaul who was with him. Well, that’s important because he’s Thracian, and if he’s got a Gaul who’s alongside him as a sort of co-leader, then that’s appealing to all the gladiators who were, at that date, in the Capua gladiatorial school. At first, the government in Rome took little notice. “Now I say old boy, do you know that there’s been gladiators revolting in Capua?” “Oh, dear boy, gladiators are always revolting, ha-ha-ha.” And then they began to notice. They sent militias in, first of all. The local militias. Spartacus defeated them. They then sent some legions in, and Spartacus defeated them. And so the situation in Rome has now changed from just saying, “Oh, it’s a little local incident, you know, down in Capua.” Now, it becomes, “My God, they could come to Rome itself.” This is a book called “The Spartacus War” by Barry Strauss.
And he gives an account of what happened in one incident. And he writes in his own words. and this isn’t like I’ve been reading, primary source material, but it gives you a good idea. “Lucius Cossinius was naked, senator, commander, and deputy to the general Publius Varinius, Cossinius usually wore a full suit of armour and a red cloak, fastened with a bronze broach on his right shoulder, but now he was bathing. A bath was a luxury in wartime, but no doubt, hard to resist after leading 2000 men on the march. As he had approached, Cossinius could have seen the pool glistening in the gardens of the villa at Salinae.” “Salinae” means salt works, So this is a salt bath he’s having. “Located on a coastal lagoon near Pompeii.” So he’s advancing from Rome on Spartacus’ army near Mount Vesuvius, near Pompeii. “In the distance, the Vesuvius, still a sleeping volcano in those days, its hills green with pine and beach trees. Its orchards overflowing with apples, and with grapes that made wine good enough for a senator’s table, its soil teeming with hares, dormice,” Dormice was a gastronomic delicacy in Rome. I pass. “And moles that the locals favoured as hors d'oeuvres.”
I really, I really would draw a line at having a mole as an hors d'oeuvre. If any of you have ever, and hares are different, we’d eat hare, but dormice and moles, I can’t imagine eating a mole. “While Cossinius let down his guard,” he’s having a bath. “The enemy prepared to attack. Runaway slaves, gladiators, and barbarians, they were a rabble in arms, but they’d already beaten Rome twice that summer.” “Their leader,” Spartacus, “was as cunning as he was strong, as experienced as he was fresh. And he spoke words to steal the most timid soul, his name, Spartacus. There was probably only a moment’s warning, maybe a centurion sounding the alarm, or the shouts of the men, Cossinius, we might imagine, moved quickly out of his bath and onto his horse before his slave finished rearranging his master’s cloak. Even so, Spartacus’ men burst into the grounds of the villa so fast, that Cossinius barely escaped, not so his supplies, which the enemy captured, and would now go to feed the rebel force.” Well, that’s in modern language. The incident happened. But by reading it in modern language as though it was a news report on television, television evening news, brings an immediacy to that. Rome now felt threatened, and now, it does plays no longer. And it took the initiative, and it took the initiative in this way. And Plutarch, again, tells us exactly how it took the initiative, and Plutarch writes this. “The insurrection of the gladiators and the devastation of Italy, commonly called the War of Spartacus, are began.
One Lentulus Batiates trained up a great many gladiators in Capua, most of them Gauls and Thracians, who, not for any fault by them committed, but simply through the cruelty of their master, were kept in confinement for the object of fighting one with another. Routing those that came out of Capua against them, and thus procuring a quantity of proper soldiers’ arms, they gladly threw away their own as barbarous and dishonourable. After many successful skirmishes with Varinius, the praetor himself, in one of which, Spartacus took his lictors and his horse, he began to be great and terrible, but wisely considering that he was not, but wisely considering that he was not to expect to match the force of the Empire. He marched his army towards the Alps, intending, when he had passed the Alps, that every man should go to his own home, some to Thrace and some to Gaul. But they, grown confident in their numbers and puffed up by their success, will give no obedience to him, but went about and ravaged Italy.” There was that one chance of freedom as he made it to the north, to have gone into Gaul, and simply vanished in the vast expanse of France, or to have gone across the top of Europe to Thrace, but they didn’t. They wanted loot, they wanted revenge. And it’s their undoing, because as Plutarch tells us, “The Senate, in disgust, now sent Crassus against the rebels. Spartacus, however, defeated Mummius, Cassius’ lieutenant, and the general had to restore discipline among demoralised Romans by executing 50 who had begun the flight. Later, he advanced again, but Spartacus retreated towards the sea.”
And he goes down towards the sea separating, the Straits of Messina, separating southern Italy from Sicily. And he was thinking of going to Sicily because there had been earlier slave revolts in Sicily. Well, he thought if he went to Sicily, he could organise more slave revolts there, make his army larger, control the island of Sicily. And maybe he thought he could keep Sicily clear of Roman interference. He went and asked those corsairs, pirate, basically, who were operating from southern Italy, in the Straits of Messina to take him across, he had plenty of money, they’d looted so many places, he offered all this money, they took the money and then left. And he was stranded on the mainland of Italy. And now he’s facing, now he’s facing Crassus’ army. “Crassus tried to blockade him. Spartacus escaped with part of his army, but some of Spartacus’ followers now mutinied and left him, and they were destroyed by Crassus. Spartacus after this, retired to the mountains. But Quintus, one of Crassus’ officers pursued and overtook him. And when Spartacus rallied and faced them, they were utterly routed and fled and had much ado to carry off their commander who was wounded. This success, however, ruins Spartacus, because it encouraged the slaves who now disdained any longer to avoid fighting or to obey their officers.
But as they were upon their march, they came to them with their swords in their hands, and compelled them to lead them back again, against the Romans.” In other words, he’s lost control of the revolt and the slaves are saying, “Lead us forward against Crassus, we’ll have one large battle and we’ll win.” They didn’t, of course. They were defeated. and those that were captured, 6,000 of them were crucified along the Appian Way, the great Roman Road from Capua to Rome itself, 100 or so miles. What was Spartacus’ objects? Freedom for all slaves? I don’t think so. Reform of Roman society? No, no, no. Escape to freedom in northern Europe? Yes, but they didn’t take it. He couldn’t lead them to it. And so they were cornered in southern Italy, between the sea and Crassus’ army. And what were the consequence, I’ve got to stop in a moment. What were the consequences of all of this? Well, strangely, one of the consequences was, that the Roman government began, well, the Roman slave owners, first of all, then followed by the Roman government, decided that they needed to treat slaves better. And as the Republic fell in the beginning of the first century AD, and replaced by the Empire, the emperors who came in introduced legislation to improve the lot of slaves, and thus, prevent a second Spartacus rising. Unlike the American legislation against slavery, this was not an abolition of slavery, it was making slavery, and it sounds awful to say so, it was making slavery, I’m loathe to say it, but more acceptable to the slaves. It was an easier life. And by doing that, they thought of containing it, they didn’t think of freeing them.
But perhaps the greatest consequence of all is the iconic image that Spartacus has left us. I will finish with this historian’s last paragraph. “It speaks pointedly to the character of the mysterious Spartacus that he could inspire such profound loyalty and commitment from such oppressed people, to be able to encourage them to train, to stand against the oncoming tides of the Roman legions, and even to win. Even more so, it speaks volumes at the end of it all, when defeat was imminent, it was known there would be no peaceful laying down of arms. Spartacus stirred those that remained to look death in the eye and die on the battlefield,” which he did, “instead of returning to captivity. The legendary status that Spartacus has obtained as a mythic champion of the common man is well-earned.” Those of you who know your modern German history will remember, in the aftermath of the First World War, we have the Spartacists, the left-wing group of Germans attempting to set up, if you like, a world that Spartacus might have hoped to set up. A world of freedom for the lowest in the land. Spartacus remains today, a symbol of resistance to arbitrary power. He remains today, a symbol of what can be achieved against that arbitrary power given leadership. But there’s also a warning here, and the warning is, that he could not control the men he’d freed to obey his orders, and in doing so, they set up the means of their own defeat and death. I wonder if any of them on those crosses crucified on the road to Rome, ever contemplated for a moment, “Maybe we were wrong to refuse to go north of the Alps, we might be alive today.” Did they? We have no idea. We have no idea whatsoever. So the rebellion comes to nothing, but it stirred the very base of Roman society and as Romans saw themselves. Thanks ever so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed listening as much as I enjoyed preparing the talk. Let’s see if I’ve got any questions. Gosh, I do. Here we go.
Q&A and Comments:
Thanks to those who said, glad I’ve come back. I’m also glad to be back.
Rochelle, I don’t, yes, maybe. Oh, that’s nice. People have been very nice, and I did have a nice holiday, as I said.
Thank you, Carol. According to Jewish lore, L-O-R-E, and religion, slaves were given the choice to be released on the seventh year. Yona, there seemed to be a steady supply of Greek slaves, as it was noted to be, “A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum,” “The Romans raped Thrace twice. Raped Thrace thrice.” Oh dear, I can’t say that. I don’t know whether, Yona, no, I’m sorry. It could be Alfred who had said that. So I don’t know whether everyone knows that “A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum,” it was a television series, which was a comedy series about Rome.
Q: Shelly, “What happened to females taken slaves? Were they mostly taken into prostitution for the Roman army and all their territories?”
A: No, not necessarily. They were taken into prostitution in their homes, think of America, and think of the plantation owners that slept with their female slaves. Yes, some of them would’ve gone into being made prostitutes of the state, and others who sadly lacked the physical attributes perhaps, or the age attributes to be a prostitute, worked as domiciliaries. In other words, think again of the Southern States. They worked as cooks, they worked as cleaners, they worked as ladies’ maids, and some of them would’ve done manual labour as indeed in the Southern States, in Roman times as well. So the answer is quite a range of things. I don’t know whether good looks and becoming a prostitute would’ve been preferable to working in the fields, or whether, I don’t know what the best, you can’t say, it’s just dreadful to be a slave.
“For your information,” says Rose, “I’ve learned that the Colosseum was built by Jewish slaves. Are you aware of this?” Yeah, funnily enough, I was.
Yona, or Alfred again, “The treatment of slaves as you find in the Torah, is very, very different from your description. On the one hand, it sort of breaks your narrative arc, or strengthen it by its contrast.” Yes, it strengthens it by its contrast, to be honest. And I could have done a session about that, but I thought, well, A, you all know about that, and it’s not really the storyline, as you say, it’s not the storyline I wanted to take.
Q: “When Romans were condemned to be slaves, what happened to their families?”
A: Yes, they also became slaves. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. What happened to the captured Thrace and Gauls who were not taken as slaves? Well, they might have been in, they might have been recruited into the Roman army. Or the alternative is death, slavery or death, or the Roman army is probably the only options.
Q: “How were slaves identified? Could they not run away and start a new life?”
A: Well, I think I’ve said that, James, but they had collars on and they could also be tattooed. They were fairly easy to, and the descriptions were the sort of descriptions that were given in America before the days of photographs. A slave who was, and it would give a description of him, whether male or female, what age he was, what his teeth were like, was a giveaway, wasn’t it? So, no, they couldn’t slip, although, as I said, had the Spartacus folks got to Gaul, they could have dispersed in Northern Europe, bureaucracy isn’t as it was in America, and it’s a much bigger area in which to lose yourself in northern Europe. And they could easily have lost themselves in northern Europe and would’ve been free.
Rita, “James Levy says it was a common practise among slave owners to mark them so they could be recognised quickly in the event of escape,” absolutely. “The body was tattooed,” absolutely. “Mutilated to make the scar permanent, and special collars were put on the neck.” That’s America, that was Rome. “After the Jews were defeated,” says Carol, “by the Romans, and sent back to Rome, I believe that after a generation, all of these Jews had gained and bought their freedom,” yes, yes you could buy your freedom, that is absolutely true. But the concept of freedom is to change also during the history of Rome.
Pat, “The fact master freed his slaves after death more to be looked on favourably, it seems that even in BC, they knew slavery was wrong.” Yes, that’s an interesting thing. I think you are right. There are certainly accounts in Latin literature of resistance to the idea of slavery. And the piece I read about gladiators from Seneca gives you a sort of bit of a taste of that.
“You must read,” says Aubrey. Oh, I love it when people say, “You must read!” I don’t think you have any understanding of the pile of books that goes up and up to the ceiling that I’m meant to be reading. “An excellent book, well written and breathtaking. It’s about blacks, some freed, many who had escaped to the north, who owned slaves, and unfortunately, ended up treating their slaves much like their white masters had treated them.” Yes, absolutely, Aubrey, absolutely. The book that Aubrey recommends for those who don’t know it, it is called, “The Known World” by Edward Jones.
Q: “Did the original ethnicity, colour, or religion, place of birth make certain stay more reviled or treated worse?”
A: No, they didn’t have that concept. It’s the other way around. If someone was literate, someone was reading, writing, hence Jews, which have just been mentioned, or Greeks, which I mentioned. Then yes, that was a bonus. But they weren’t saying, they weren’t anti-black, for example, after all, that we have black emperors from Africa. Thank you, Monica.
Francine, “Even though Haiti was freed by revolution from France, the yoke of France remained on them by the money.” The money back, yeah, I’m going to do that. When I get to Haiti in two weeks’ time, Francine, I will undoubtedly be saying what you have said in your message today,
Q: “What were the two arenas of combat? I missed them,” says, David.
A: I’m not sure what you mean by the question. I said there were two training, there were many training schools, but the one in Capua, and then there’s the one next to the Colosseum in Rome, which is the biggest of all. I think that may be what you are referring to.
Jeff, oh, this is wonderful. “Re; dormice and moles, remember that every culture has delicacies and taboos that are revered in other cultures.” Yes, well, everyone to his taste, but is there anyone here who’s eaten mole or dormice? Travellers eat dormice, those we call Gipsies or Romanis, eat dormice, and country people have eaten dormice in Britain. They’re quite rare today. They were brought in by the Romans, incidentally. I’ve never heard of anyone eating a mole.
Bruce, no. Koz, yes, of course, you wouldn’t have wanted to see me in my rather gaudy summer shirt. No, I always put on a tie when I’m teaching you.
No, no. Michael, your question’s been answered by Jeff. I don’t need to answer that, Jeff is absolutely, Jeff and Rita are absolutely right. There’s nothing to do with the Greek city of Sparta. It was in Thrace, he came from. But at least that’s what we have assumed.
Monty says, “I was told that slaves had to wear an earring.” If you’re talking about Roman slaves, no. If you’re talking about American slaves, no. I’m not sure, Monty, you may be right, but I have not heard of that, and I can’t place it.
“One language note, Spartan society was also based on slaves, with Spartan citizens forming the military class. Perhaps the name ‘Spartacus’ itself was created as a on this time.” I don’t think so. I don’t think we should confuse Spartacus with Sparta, or Spartacus with Greek. He was Thracian and not a Greek. Thank you so much for your interesting comments as always, and thank you for being so welcoming. I’ve enjoyed my break, and I’m enjoying being back. Now, next week, I’m looking at something which I don’t think any of you will know about, which is a revolt of African slaves in mediaeval Arabia. And I think it’s important, why? Well, because it emphasises that this isn’t simply a Western problem, but it also indicates a problem we have in society today. That is to say, we have slaves working in Arabia, modern slavery. So thanks for listening, See you all, same time, different day, Monday next week. Okay, we’re finished, if you want to close Zoom down.