by Jerry Toner
He was also lucky in that some of the many fantasies he invented happened to come true. His reputation therefore spread and he was widely acclaimed throughout the island. In the end, he got so into his role that he would produce fire and flame from his mouth while in a trance, and would then produce divinely inspired utterances about the future. He managed to do this by means of a trick, whereby he put some fire and fuel inside a walnut in which holes had been drilled. Then he would place the walnut in his mouth without anyone seeing and would produce sparks and flames as he spoke.
Before the revolt started he proclaimed that a Syrian goddess had appeared to him and revealed that he was going to be a king. And once the revolt had taken hold, his prediction did indeed come true and he became leader of tens of thousands of slaves united in their hatred of their vicious masters and bent on destroying them.
But this first slave rebellion was as nothing compared with that great revolt led by Spartacus. These renegades had no desire to set up their own kingdom, but simply wanted to return to their own tribes in the distant north with as much plunder as they could take with them. But as in Sicily it was the excessive brutality of slave owners that provided the spark for the revolt.
The rebellion began when a man called Lentulus Batiatus was keeping some slaves at Capua. Many of them were Celts and Thracians and they were being forced to fight as gladiators, not because they had done anything wrong, but because of the wickedness of their owner. Two hundred of them therefore decided to run away, but someone informed against them. Extra guards were brought in and only seventy-eight managed to escape, by snatching up some axes and spits from a kitchen and forcing their way out of the barracks in which they were imprisoned. Soon after they happened to come across some carts carrying gladiators’ armour and weapons to another city, which they took to arm themselves.
Spartacus emerged as their leader. He was a Thracian from a nomadic tribe, who was not only very brave and physically powerful, but also more intelligent and more humane than one would expect of someone whom fortune had made a slave. You might almost have mistaken him for a Greek. The story goes that when he was first brought to Rome to be sold, a snake appeared and wound itself round his face as he was asleep, and his wife, who came from the same tribe and was a prophetess, stated that it signified that he would achieve great power and success. He led his group of runaways to the top of Mount Vesuvius, from where he launched raiding parties. He gained further popularity with his men because he divided the booty equally and his fame attracted many new recruits from the slave estates in the area.
Their first fight was a minor skirmish with some soldiers sent out from Capua. Easily defeating them, they took their weapons too. As they travelled through the countryside they were joined by more and more slaves who saw a chance to regain their freedom and return home. Their number grew so large that the praetor Clodius was sent out from Rome against them with three thousand men. Catching up with them, he besieged them on a mountain. There was only one narrow and difficult way up this mountain, which Clodius had guarded. Everywhere else there were sheer cliffs which offered no foothold. But the slaves made ladders out of the wild vines that grew at the summit and used these to climb down the steep cliffs. The fugitives were then able to surround the Roman force, which was completely unaware of what had happened. The attack threw the Roman troops into such disorder that they fled in panic.
The second general to be sent out against them was Publius Varinus. Spartacus first defeated his deputy Furius who was accompanied by two thousand soldiers. He then defeated another deputy, Cossinus, inflicting heavy casualties and capturing more equipment. The general himself finally deigned to march against Spartacus but was unable to defeat him in a number of engagements. After each victory, Spartacus burnt any equipment he didn’t need and killed all the prisoners and slaughtered the pack animals so that his army would not be impeded in any way.
But Spartacus was, as I have said, an intelligent man. He did not believe for one moment that he could break the power of the Romans even though his army now numbered seventy thousand. He knew what the outcome must therefore be: defeat and death. His only hope was to escape from Roman territory. So he led his army north towards the Alps, where they planned to cross the mountains, so each could then return to his own homeland, whether Thrace, Gaul or Germany. But his troops were enjoying themselves and their victories too much, and had become intoxicated with booty. Their arrogance and overconfidence had grown with their numbers, and they now thought themselves invincible. They therefore refused to follow their leader and instead marched all over Italy causing great devastation.
The senate was by now less concerned at the humiliation that the revolt represented than with the panic it was causing. They sent out both the consuls, as they would usually only do in a difficult and great war. One of them, Gellius, attacked the German contingent of Spartacus’s army, which had greedily gone off on its own in search of plunder, and completely destroyed it. The other consul, Lentulus, surrounded Spartacus with a large army, but Spartacus again managed to win in battle. Next, Cassius, the governor of Cisalpine Gaul, confronted him with ten thousand men as he was pushing his way forward towards the Alps. Another great battle took place, and another Roman army was defeated.
The senate was now growing angry. At first the Romans had laughed off the war because it was only against gladiators and slaves, but it was now in its third year and causing much damage. They recalled the consuls and appointed Rome’s richest man, Crassus, to take command of the war. He sent his deputy Mummius with two legions to follow Spartacus from a distance, giving him strict instructions not to offer battle. But Mummius could not help himself, since it was only a mass of slaves that was confronting him, and he too suffered the same ignominious defeat as various Romans before him. Casualties were heavy and many legionaries could only save themselves by running away without their weapons. When Crassus rearmed these troops, he made them solemnly swear that they would not lose their weapons again, for it was equipment such as this that was the lifeblood to Spartacus’s revolt. And to restore discipline, he reintroduced the ancient practice of decimation. The first five hundred of the Roman escapees, who had shown the greatest cowardice, were divided into fifty groups of ten and one man from each, who had been chosen by lot, was executed by being clubbed to death by the other nine. The legionaries therefore understood that they had more to fear from Crassus than from a defeat at the hands of the enemy.
With their backbones thus straightened, Crassus led his men against Spartacus. But Spartacus retreated, with the aim of crossing to Sicily where he was confident of gaining great support from the many slaves there. Unable, however, to secure ships to take him, Spartacus was eventually cornered in the toe of Italy. Crassus cut off the end of the toe, as it were, with a wall to prevent Spartacus from either escaping or getting supplies. It was a vast undertaking but in remarkably quick time a three-hundred-stade-long ditch was built right across the peninsula, which was fifteen feet wide and of equal depth. Behind the ditch was erected a high and strong wall.
At first Spartacus was not worried about the wall. But once opportunities for plunder dried up along with his supplies, his slaves became restless and he realised he would have to break out. So he waited for a stormy winter night, when it was snowing, and by secretly filling in the ditch with soil and branches managed to escape with about a third of his force. First, though, he had a Roman prisoner crucified in the area between the two armies to hammer home what would happen to them if they were defeated.
Crassus decided he would first attack those who were now fighting by themselves. He sent six thousand troops into battle, who in the most terrible combat killed over twelve thousand slaves. A sure sign of the toughness of the attack was that only two of the slaves were found with wounds on their backs. The rest had all died facing the Romans. Such was their hatred of their masters and the determination with which they were prepared to fight to the end instead of running away.
Spar
tacus, however, inflicted yet another defeat on one of Crassus’s deputies. But this success was to prove the end of Spartacus. For it made the slaves utterly overconfident. They refused to obey orders, were keen to join battle with the Romans and gave up all thought of escaping from Italy. They forced Spartacus to march towards Crassus. His men started attacking the Roman encampment on their own initiative and, as more and more piled in, a battle grew up of its own accord.
Spartacus saw that he had no option but to bring up his whole army in battle order. He himself pushed through the melee towards Crassus but was unable to get to him. In the end, the men with him turned and fled, and he stood, all alone, surrounded by great numbers of our soldiers. He was killed while resisting arrest. The rest of his army broke ranks, and there was much slaughter. So many were killed that it was impossible to count them. Spartacus’s corpse could not be found. After various mopping-up operations, about six thousand slaves had been captured, the rest having been killed. These were crucified along the length of the road from Capua to Rome. Crassus was unable to request a triumph since to do so would have been dishonourable and demeaning given that he had only defeated a band of slaves.
We can be thankful that our vigorous suppression of these early rebellions has meant that there has not been a recurrence for many decades. Yet we do still suffer the occasional small revolt. Most often these seem to be the work of a charismatic figure who manages to inspire and deceive slaves into following him. Or else it happens that a group of herdsmen get out of control and start to raid local towns and farms. Whatever the cause, it creates a great disturbance among us slave owners, who are unable to rest quite so easily at night for fear that we might come under attack ourselves.
One such uprising took place in Italy during the time of Augustus. A man called Titus Curtisius, who had once served in the praetorian guard, went about inciting the wild country slaves who worked as herdsmen in remote cattle pastures to seize their freedom. He did this first by holding secret meetings at Brundisium and neighbouring towns, then by openly distributing pamphlets to the herdsmen. But, by chance, three ships from our navy happened to put in to port there at the same time that the quaestor, whose responsibility it was to police the cattle trails, was in town. He organised the sailors from the ships and marched against the uprising, and managed to quickly suppress it just as it was about to get going properly. Even though the threat had been dealt with, the emperor sent a large force to bring the leader back to Rome for punishment. This was because Rome was already in a state of terror: the great number of domestic slaves was increasing all the time, while the free population was steadily shrinking, making people very nervous that they were vulnerable to a slave revolt.
On another occasion, in the time of Septimius Severus, Italy was terrorised by a powerful brigand called Bulla Felix. It is not certain whether he was a slave or not. He got together a band of about six hundred men and spent two years raiding and plundering parts of Italy under the very noses of the emperor and his soldiers. Even though many men were sent against him he never seemed to be where he was meant to be, was never found when found, never caught when caught, because he was both clever and bribed generously. He acquired information about everyone that was setting out from Rome and everyone that was putting into port at Brundisium, both who they were and how many they numbered, and what possessions they had with them. With most of these people, Bulla merely took a part of what they had taken with them on their journey and then let them go immediately. He detained artisans for a time so that he could make use of their skills, but would then send them on their way with a reward for their work.
One time, when two of his men had been captured and were about to be thrown to the wild beasts, he visited the keeper of the prison, pretending that he was the governor of his native district. He claimed that he needed some men who had been condemned to carry out some terrible jobs and the jailer handed over Bulla’s two men. Another time he went up to the centurion who was leading the hunt for Bulla while pretending to be somebody else. He promised the centurion that he would show him where Bulla was hiding so long as he followed him. Then, when he agreed, Bulla led him to a remote overgrown valley where his men captured him. Later that day, he dressed up like a magistrate, summoned the centurion, and ordered that his head be shaved. He then said to him, ‘Take this message to your masters: “Feed your slaves and then they won’t have to become bandits.”’
In fact there were a large number of imperial freedmen in Bulla’s group, who were there either because they had been badly paid or not paid at all. You see, even the emperor can behave irresponsibly towards his slaves sometimes. The emperor was furious when he was told about these various events, particularly because he was winning great wars in far-off Britain but was unable to beat a simple bandit at home in Italy. Eventually he sent a military tribune from his own bodyguard and a great many horsemen to deal with Bulla, warning the tribune that dire punishments would await him if he returned empty-handed. So the tribune, after he had found out that the brigand was having an affair with another man’s wife, persuaded her through her husband to help them in return for a promise of immunity from prosecution. As a result, the robber was arrested while he was asleep in a cave. He was brought before the prefect, Papinian, who asked him, ‘Why did you become a robber?’ And Bulla replied: ‘Why are you a prefect?’ Later, he was sentenced to be thrown to the wild beasts in the arena and his band was easily broken up, to such an extent did the strength of the whole six hundred lie in him.
The lesson we can really learn from these, thankfully rare, episodes of slave revolt and insurrection is that it is when we masters fail in our duty of care so that the slave is left starving or brutally treated that the slave has little option but to take active measures to improve his situation. I suspect that many of these failures occurred in the past when our great conquests made slaves as cheap as olives. When no financial input has to be made what incentive is there for an owner to take care of his investment? But now, when slaves are everywhere dear, they become dear to their masters who embrace them as part of their household.
But if the danger of our slaves revolting collectively has diminished, you should still be alert to the risk of being murdered by those whom you own yourself. Let me tell you of the prefect of Rome, Pedanius Secundus, a powerful man who nonetheless was murdered by a mere slave. It is unclear why the slave was bent on revenge. It was either because Pedanius had reneged on a deal to free him or because the slave had fallen in love with one of his master’s young boys and could not bear to share his lover with him. Whatever the reason, kill him he did. So according to the ancient law, all of Pedanius’s household slaves were condemned to death because they had failed to save him. For surely one of them must have known something, or suspected it, or could have intervened to prevent it from happening?
Pedanius was a wealthy man and owned four hundred domestic slaves. As this great procession was being led to their execution, the Roman people thronged the streets trying to prevent it from taking place. They went so far as to besiege the senate house. Even some senators were against the mass execution because they felt it was too harsh. But most senators argued that no change in ancient practice should be permitted. If a man of Pedanius’s standing could be killed by the treason of a slave then what safety could there be for anyone unless it was made painfully clear to all slaves that their own lives were at risk if they did not protect their masters’? No doubt many innocent lives would be lost. But all great examples are marked with something of injustice about them. But it is an injustice that is compensated for by the benefit the example brings to the whole community.
Many senators still refused to agree, saying that so many of the slaves were young and female that it was inhumane to kill them all. But sense prevailed and those advocating execution won. The crowd, though, were outraged and prevented the decision from being carried out. In the end, the emperor had to line the road with troops along which the condemned slaves were marched to their
deaths. One particularly conservative senator suggested that even Pedanius’s freedmen who had been present under the same roof should be deported from Italy. But the emperor vetoed this measure, in case excessive cruelty aggravated a primitive custom which mercy had failed to soften.
Another case of master-murder that you should bear in mind was that of the former praetor, Larcius Macedo. He suffered a horrible fate at the hands of his slaves. Admittedly, he was an arrogant and brutal master, perhaps in part because his own father had been a slave and he wished to stamp out the stigma from his memory. One day he was having a bath in his villa when suddenly a group of his slaves surrounded him. One of them grabbed him by the throat, another hit him in the face, another in the chest and stomach, another – would you believe it – in the groin. When they saw that he had lost consciousness, they threw him onto the boiling-hot bath-floor to see if he was still alive. He lay there without moving but it’s unclear whether he had passed out or was pretending to have done so. Either way, they thought he was dead.
So they carried him out of the bathhouse as if they had found him after he had fainted as a result of the heat. Some of his more faithful slaves and his mistresses took over, and there was a great deal of crying and wailing because they thought he had died. But the effect of all this noise was that it brought him round, helped no doubt by the fact that he was now out of the bathhouse and in the fresh air. His eyes flickered and his limbs moved so everyone could clearly see that he was alive. At this, the slaves who had attacked him fled, as they realised that the truth of what they had done would come out. Most of them were arrested and Macedo himself was kept alive with great difficulty for a few days but then died. He did at least have the consolation that all the slaves who had been involved and captured were tortured and then executed.