4
In autumn 73 BC when Spartacus and Crixus struck their deal, the army turned south. Aiming to avoid Varinius, they doubtless avoided the Roman road, which could be easily guarded. Instead, they probably headed for the hills. They likely travelled on byroads along mountain ridges, on the timeless paths of muleteers seated with their baskets, on trails beaten through the woods by herds migrating to the mountains in summer and back to the plain before winter. Heavy-armed legionaries and their supply wagons could not take that route, but light-armed rebels could.
However, the rebels could not find their way on their own. They needed pathfinders, whether willing or coerced. Without local intelligence to point the way and to indicate food supplies, the fugitives would have been lost. Grizzled farmers, shaggy mountain men, young girls on the way to draw water from a spring, slaves barely free from their chains, fat landowners too slow to run from the rebels: these would have been Spartacus’s eyes and ears in the Italian countryside.
The first example in our sources of one of Spartacus’s guides is a prisoner. He came from the region known as the Agri Picentini, the fertile plains south of the city of Salernum (modern Salerno). But he could hardly have been the first local guide for the rebels, because they had already travelled over rough country. After leaving the vicinity of Nuceria, they had headed inland and passed by Abella (modern Avella), a small city about 5 miles north-east of Nola. Abella sits at the foot of the thickly wooded Partenio Mountains (modern name), in the upper valley of the Clanis (Clanio) River. It lies in green, well-watered farm country, famous for its hazelnuts and its high winds. Rainy and snowy in the winter, Abella was isolated and rural, its cool, fresh air worlds away from the urban heat of Capua. But Abella had seen its share of history. An Italian city, it forged close ties with Rome. Roman roads, Roman land surveying, and Late Republican rustic villas have all been found in Abella’s farmlands. Abella stayed loyal to Rome during the Social War (91-88 BC) and, as a reward, was probably honoured with the status of ‘colony’ by Sulla. Now, as the sources say, Spartacus’s men ‘happened upon the farmers of Abella who were watching over their fields’. (The word for ‘farm ers’ can also mean ‘colonists’.) Their meeting with the rebels was probably not a happy one for them.
Spartacus and his men now made for the southern Picentini Mountains, about 30 miles away as the crow flies. Assuming they went through the back country, they would have crossed the hills of Irpinia and climbed into the Picentini Mountains, always heading south and east. They would have made their way through forests of oak and chestnut, past nearly 6,000-foot-high mountains, through gorges and over torrents. It was neither an easy route nor a rich one; the fertile plains below around the Via Annia were visible here and there in the distance, but they were in the Romans’ hands. No one could have eaten much on this march.
After leaving the Picentini Mountains, the rebels’ next goal was the Silarus (modern Sele) River, about 20 miles south-east of the city of Salerno (the Roman Salernum). In ancient times, the Silarus marked the regional boundary. Once they crossed it, Spartacus and his army would have left Campania for Lucania. About 8 miles further would bring them to a pass in the hills. As soon as they went over that, they would begin a new phase of their revolt.
They would now be in the heart of Lucania, where they would be sailing on a vast inland sea: green waves of hills broken by upland plains, thick forests, remote towns and craggy mountain peaks. Lucania’s rugged terrain stretched southwards as far as the eye could see until the ‘heel’ of the Italian ‘boot’, where it dropped off into a fertile, coastal strip bounded by the Ionian Sea.
Lucania was a land of woods, pastures and slaves, a guerrilla’s favourite landscape. Like Sicily, it was populated by slave shepherds and slave field hands. They were a rebel recruiter’s dream. This was Spartacus Country.
All that lay before them, but first Spartacus, Crixus and their followers had to slip past the Romans. Surely the Romans had posted guards on the bridge where the Via Annia crosses the Silarus? Enter the Picentine guide. A Roman writer describes the situation concisely: ‘and having hastily found a suitable guide from among the Picentine prisoners, he [Spartacus] made his way hidden in the Eburian Hills to Nares Lucanae and from there at first light he reached Forum Annii.’
This puts Spartacus’s tactics in a nutshell. He made a quick decision that gave his men the advantage of local knowledge. And the result was a nimble, gutsy and effective manoeuvre.
The Picentine was a man who knew the hills of the southern Picentini Mountains, north of the town of Eburum (Eboli). He might have been a herdsman or, more likely, a ranch owner, since he was a prisoner and not a recruit; a herdsman would probably have joined Spartacus voluntarily. It should not have been difficult to intimidate him into cooperating, given the dangers of captivity. Both Celts and Germans had a reputation for sacrificing prisoners of war as a way of honouring the gods. Reports of gruesome practices survive, such as cutting open a corpse to inspect the entrails, ripping foetuses out of their mothers’ wombs, and drinking blood from dead people’s skulls.
In any case, the Picentine took the rebels over the Eburine (modern Eboli) Hills perhaps as far as the valley of the Middle Silarus River, where they could have crossed via an ancient ford. Then they swung south towards the town of Nares Lucanae. The Romans had no idea where the rebels were. Spartacus had run rings around Varinius, and he owed it all to his Picentine prisoner.
Was that unwilling rebel rewarded with a drink at Nares Lucanae? There was plenty of water there; the name of the place may mean ‘Lucanian Springs’, and springs have been found at its site in the foothills of the Alburni Mountains. The finger-like peaks of those mountains rise across the valley south-east of the Picentini Mountains. There was good pasture land between both sets of mountains and the sea, so the insurgents may have picked up some supporters from the vicinity.
At Nares Lucanae the rebels’ route rejoined the main Roman road to Regium, the Via Annia. They travelled at night, no doubt to avoid detection. It was first light when Spartacus’s men reached the little town of Forum Annii. The distance between Nares Lucanae and Forum Annii is about 15 miles, which is a long way for even a light-armed force to cover in one night, especially if the group included women and children. But it was autumn, and the nights were getting longer; the chilly air might have hurried the fastest of them on to the prize ahead. Above all, they were determined to seize the offensive and achieve surprise. They did.
Spartacus and his men arrived at Forum Annii ‘unbeknownst to the farmers’. Forum Annii was a farming community at the northern end of the Campus Atinas (modern Vallo di Diano). The Campus is a long, narrow, upland plain, green and fertile, watered by the Tanager (modern Tanagro) River running through it. It is closed in by hills, creating a constant play of light and shadow; in the west, the mountains roll in waves, sometimes ripples, sometimes breakers. An ancient area of settlement, the valley was very rich, with farms and villas spread over the lowlands and hills flowing with pastures. In a hill town north of the valley even today, the census lists 1,300 humans and 6,000 sheep; and some of the latter are brought down from the hills and paraded around a chapel by their shepherds in an annual festival each June.
The population was probably made up mainly of Roman settlers and their slaves. There were native Lucanians too, but they had been forced to make room for many Romans over the centuries, as punishment for choosing the losing side - something the hard-luck Lucanians had a knack for, from Hannibal to Marius to the Italian Confederacy of the Social War. The Roman settlers included both masters of large estates, primarily ranches, and small farmers. Some Late Republican tombstones depict the managers who ran the estates for their masters: men with a signet ring on a finger of their left hand and a pen and writing tablets clenched in their fist.
One autumn morning in 73 BC the fresh air of the valley was full of screams. Spartacus and his men had arrived. They immediately went on a rampage against his orders, raping young girls and married women. Anyone who tried to resist was killed, sometimes in the act of running away. Some of the rebels threw flaming torches onto the roofs of houses. Others followed local slaves to drag their masters or their treasures from their hiding places. ‘Nothing was too holy or too heinous for the anger of the barbarians or their servile natures,’ says one Roman writer. And no help was forthcoming from Varinius’s army; it was nowhere to be seen.
Spartacus opposed the atrocities, either out of chivalry or a calculation that if farmers were well treated, some might favour the insurgents, and tried repeatedly to restrain his men, but it was a losing battle. Crixus’s stance is unrecorded. Later events show that he wanted to loot Italy, but he also wanted to fight Varinius, and indiscipline would weaken the army.
And then there were the local slaves, of various national origins. Some of them had not waited to bring the rebels to their masters’ hideouts but, instead, they had pulled out their quivering overlords themselves. It was a kind of offering to the insurgents and perhaps the local slaves were just trying to curry their favour. Or perhaps they were remembering the whips, chains, canes, stones, broken bones, gouged-out eyes, kicks, tongue-lashings, executions or other punishments that Roman slaves are known to have suffered. Or maybe they were thinking of minor humiliations, like having their forehead tattooed with the master’s symbol or having to pay the master for the privilege of having sex with another slave. Or maybe they recalled some friend or relative among the slaves who had been sold off because they were sick or aged.
The rebels stayed at Forum Annii for that day and the following night. For the local masters, it was twenty-four hours of savagery and slaughter. For the slaves, it was liberation day. They surely poured in from the surrounding area, because Forum Annii was not a big place but, by daybreak, Spartacus and Crixus had doubled the number of fugitive slaves in their group. Some of the new recruits would have been farmers but, if Spartacus had judged his prospects correctly, most of them would have been herdsmen. By autumn, they would have come down with their herds from the mountains to graze lower pastures, so they could have learned the news from Forum Annii.
At first light, the rebels broke camp again and made for a ‘very wide field’, which sounds like somewhere in the middle of the Campus Atinas. There they could see the farmers coming out of their houses, off to the autumn harvest. Those farmers never reached their fields. Along the way they ran into a column of refugees from Forum Annii. The farmers hurried off to safety, perhaps into the hills. The autumn harvest was left for Spartacus and his hungry army.
They had outmanoeuvred the Roman army, terrorized the master class, filled their ranks with new recruits and their bellies with fresh produce, but the insurgents were still far from victory. On the contrary, they had opened the door to defeat. Like all military activities, foraging and pillaging require discipline. Excessive looting breeds just the opposite, a breakdown in discipline. The Romans knew that soldiers who disobey commands while foraging would disobey commands while fighting. Besides, looters were subject to sudden enemy counter-attack. Ever cautious, the Romans insisted on discipline even for the simple acts of getting food and water.
Spartacus knew what a terrible precedent his men had now set. He understood, as well, that wars are not won by raids. In his vain attempt to stop the massacre, Spartacus had told the men to be quick. Varinius, after all, would be coming.
After their success in the Campus Atinas, the insurgents had to keep moving, to evade the Romans, and to find new sources of food. The new recruits had to be outfitted with weapons - probably makeshift weapons. They had to take whatever rushed advice about fighting that they could get while the army was on the move.
They blazed the trail well, it seems, because by the time they reached the Ionian Sea, the insurgents had finished off Varinius. We don’t know where or when. By the accident of survival, the sources cast a spotlight on Spartacus’s movements from the Picentini Mountains to the Campus Atinas. Unfortunately, they grow dim again for the six or so months following. The insurgents stormed through Lucania; that much is clear, as is the outcome of the duel between Spartacus and Varinius. Otherwise, the narrative is mainly a matter of educated guesswork.
The land drew the rebels ever southwards. Not just the Campus Atinas but most of Lucania was good to plunder. It was rich in pastures, grain fields, vineyards and woods, with large numbers of sheep, goats and game animals. Lucanian horses were supposed to be small and ugly but strong - not perfect cavalry mounts, but they would do.
But where would the insurgents go and how would they get there? A look at the map can be misleading. It appears that Spartacus and Crixus had no choice in mountainous Lucania other than following the Via Annia, which ran southwards through the Campus Atinas and down to Bruttium (modern Calabria). But in fact they had other options. A series of roads along Lucania’s mountain ridges pre-dated the Romans: most of them have been called ‘winding, narrow, and cramped’ but the insurgents had seen worse.
After sacking the Campus Atinas, Spartacus’s men could have, for example, followed the pass between the Magdalene Mountains (Monti della Maddelena) and the Pope’s Mountain (Monte del Papa), as they are known today, to the Roman colony of Grumentum. (Today, Italy’s Highway 103 follows that route.) There in the high valley of the Aciris (modern Agri) River, they would have found a shepherd’s paradise - and a recruiter’s delight. Heading eastwards, they then could have followed one of several routes to the Ionian coast and the cities of Metapontum (Metaponto) and Heraclea. From there, a coastal road led south to Bruttium and the city of Thurii.
For what it is worth, modern folklore has Spartacus travelling widely in Lucania. For example, the towns of Oliveto Citra, Roccadaspide and Genzano di Lucania all claim to have been the site of one of Spartacus’s battles. Castelcivita‘ has a cave of Spartacus and a bridge of Spartacus. Caggiano, Colliano and Polla all boast that Spartacus passed through on his travels. But none of this is surprising, since southern Italy historically has been the land of brigands and Spartacus is the granddaddy of all outlaws. Nor do these claims prove that the insurgents passed through in autumn 73 BC rather than, say, a year later - if at all.
Also, for what it is worth, the ancient evidence for the months following the rebels’ stay in the Campus Atinas refers twice to local guides. ‘They were very knowledgeable about the area,’ says one source about some of the insurgents. One local stood out for his pathfinding scouting skills. His name was Publipor.
All that survives about Publipor is one line in a lost history book. Yet of all the bit parts in Spartacus’s saga, his might be the most intriguing. Among the insurgents’ various pathfinders, Publipor was probably the best. ‘Of all the men in the region of Lucania, he was the only one with knowledge of the place.’
Publipor means ‘Publius’s Boy’. He was a slave, the property of one Publius. Publipor was a common slave name, shared, for instance, by the great Latin playwright Terence, a freedman who had been called Publipor as a slave. Publipor was probably not a boy, since the Romans often applied the word ‘boy’ to adult slaves. He was most likely an adult and, given his expertise in Lucania’s terrain, Publipor may well have been a shepherd.
Tens of thousands of slaves fought with Spartacus, but aside from the gladiators, Publipor is the only one whose name survives. We don’t know why his local knowledge was important, but it surely was, since our source singles him out. Could it be that he did the insurgents the great service of showing them a spot where they could lie in wait for Varinius? Maybe Publipor helped Spartacus stage one of greatest coups yet.
The details of the fighting aren’t known. But it is a good guess that the insurgents avoided pitched battle, preferring instead ambushes, traps and hit-and-run attacks. Pitched battle was too dangerous because even if they outnumbered the Romans, the rebels could not match their equipment. They still had to rely on do-it-yourself arms and armour, as one source makes clear: ‘they were used to weaving rustic baskets out of branches. Because of a lack of shields then, they each used this same art to arm himself with small round shields like those used by cavalrymen.’ They stretched hides over the branches to cover the shields.
The insurgents captured standards from Roman centurions. Better yet, they took control of Varinius’s lictors with their bundles of rods and axes - their fasces - that symbolized the praetor’s power. And they also grabbed Varinius’s horse; according to one source, they snatched it from under him, making his capture a very close call. Varinius escaped. But the real and immediate winner was the man to whom the standards and fasces were brought in triumph: Spartacus. It was now, it seems, that he really became ‘great and frightening’, as Plutarch describes him.
The standards, the fasces and the horse were better recruiting tools than a praetor’s head on a pike (although the Celts, who were headhunters, might have disagreed). The standards were totems whose loss was immeasurable. The fasces was a sacred symbol, like a royal sceptre or a bishop’s crook. The horse was sacred to Celts, Germans and Thracians. In the glow of these icons Spartacus was more than an adventurer: he became almost a king.
‘After this,’ says one source, ‘even more men, many more, came running to Spartacus.’ ‘In a short time they collected huge numbers of troops,’ says another. The recruits came pouring in, usually barefoot, in coarse woollen cloaks, sometimes carrying their chains.
Numbers are difficult. The ancient sources vary greatly, ranging from estimates of 40,000 to 120,000 insurgents. To make matters worse, good ancient ‘statistics’ tend to be approximations, bad ancient ‘statistics’ tend to be wild exaggerations. For example, the number 120,000 - the high estimate for Spartacus’s troops - appears often enough in ancient sources about this or that war to demonstrate that it was just a rhetorical maximum, the equivalent of ‘a huge number’. To complicate things further, it is unclear whether ancient statistics about the insurgents include women and children.
The safest course is to follow the lowest figure, which gives Spartacus and Crixus about 40,000 men in spring 72 BC and even more by autumn. By ancient standards this was no small sum. It is more men than Hannibal had when he crossed the Alps, for example, and about the size of Caesar’s army when he conquered Gaul. For that matter, the number of 40,000 men roughly equals the size of the largest army that the Romans would ever muster against Spartacus.
Around the time they defeated Varinius - we can’t be sure of the sequence of events - the rebels found themselves at Lucania’s Land’s End. The men who had washed their hands in blood in Capua now dipped their feet in the Ionian Sea. To be precise, they dipped them in a large inlet of the sea known as the Gulf of Tarentum (modern Taranto). The turquoise waters of the gulf, about 90 miles long and wide, wash the ‘arch’ of the Italian ‘boot’. The gulf’s coastline, stretching roughly from Tarentum to Croton, includes some of the most fertile land in Italy. This was once Magna Graecia, ‘Greater Greece’, a region of Greek colonies whose prosperity eventually outstripped that of the mother country. In its prime, Magna Graecia produced great generals, law-givers, doctors, artists and athletes. Pythagoras, one of ancient Greece’s leading philosophers, built his school here. But the conquering Romans ended all that. The gulf coast was still lush and abundant, but power and influence had passed it by.
Because the land was a backwater, it was useful for Spartacus and Crixus. Remote from Rome, the Ionian coast made a perfect base for the insurgents. It had a mild climate and was well stocked with food. Its large slave population made it promising recruiting country. Its farms and towns had furnaces that could be used for melting down slave chains and re-forging them as swords and spearheads. Its ports could attract merchants and pirates. Nearby loomed rugged hills and dense forests to retreat to in case the Romans arrived. It was, in short, a place to build an army.
But it was not about to open its doors to the rebels; they would have to break them down. And so they attacked, inflicting ‘terrible slaughter’, as one source says. They might have been as brutal here as they had been in the Campus Atinas. One of the places the insurgents went after was the city of Metapontum. Indeed, archaeology may show traces of their onslaught. A stoa (portico) in town, used as a warehouse, was destroyed during this period. Some see the hand of the rebels in this, and it certainly isn’t hard to imagine them crossing the moat and breaking through the wooden palisade that was Roman Metapontum’s main defence. Perhaps the citizens had tried to stop them by using the catapult balls that were being manufactured around this time in a nearby villa. But that sounds rather grand for Roman Metapontum, a place whose best days were behind it. Metapontum in 73 BC was more like a small town than the great city it had once been.
In its heyday (c. 600-300 BC) Metapontum had been a success story, one of Greece’s greatest colonies. Its fertile fields made Metapontum a bread-basket, with ears of wheat proudly displayed on its gold coins. But then came Rome and the familiar pattern of oppression, revolt, occupation and punishment. The once grand urban space had shrunk to a small sector.
In Metapontum’s countryside, meanwhile, the many small family farms of the Greek period disappeared. The land had been handed over largely to a few grandees, Romans or their local ‘friends’. Medium- or large-sized villas now dotted the river valleys and the coastal road or dominated the heights. Diversified agriculture was in decline, and pasturage was prevalent, especially of sheep, cattle and horses. In other words, this was in large part ranch country and, therefore, slave country: fertile ground for Spartacus’s recruiters.
One of Roman Metapontum’s few urban renewal projects was the temple of Apollo, which was revived and expanded. In the form he was worshipped here, Apollo was, for practical purposes, equivalent to Dionysus, and the religion was very popular in the city and its countryside. The message of the Thracian woman, therefore, might have fallen on willing ears at Metapontum.
About 12 miles south of Metapontum lay Heraclea, in the rich soil between the valleys of the Siris (modern Sinni) and Aciris Rivers. It was a centre of agriculture and crafts and a well-known market town. Unlike Metapontum, Heraclea had played its cards well with Rome. Over the centuries it maintained its autonomy - and on such favourable terms that it even hesitated to accept Roman citizenship when it was offered after the Social War. We hear nothing about Spartacus going to Heraclea, which may reflect the reception he expected to get there. But the people of Heraclea couldn’t be sure that Spartacus wasn’t coming and they therefore took precautions.
Or so we might conclude from a small, grey vase that had been buried under a private house in Heraclea. The vase was filled with a gold necklace and over 500 coins, all of them Roman silver. The necklace is decorated with garnets and glass beads, with delicate gold terminals in the shape of antelope heads. The coins date from c. 200 to 70 BC; most of them come from a twenty-year period, 100-80 BC. Nearly half of the coins are small change, which is odd, considering the value of the necklace: one scholar takes this as a sign of haste, as if whoever filled and buried the vase had no time to separate good money from bad. Were these objects interred in a hurry at a sign of Spartacus on the horizon? Or perhaps it was their own slaves whom the Heracleots feared. The city was a centre of the Dionysus cult.
South of Heraclea the coastal plain narrows sharply between the sea and the foothills of the Pollino Mountains (modern name). This range marked the southern boundary of Lucania. Beyond lies the southernmost region of Italy: Bruttium. Like Lucania, Bruttium is mountainous, and its people were similarly tough. Bruttium was destined to play a big part in Spartacus’s revolt. That role began here, just beyond the last foothill of the Pollino massif along the coast. A vast plain opens up here, wider, greener and lusher than even the country of Metapontum or Heraclea.
This is the Plain of Sybaris, almost a world unto itself. About 200 miles square, the plain is cut off on the north and west by the peaks of the Pollino, towering and snowcapped for most of the year; on the south by the steep twisting hills of the Sila Greca; and to the east by the sea. The grand sweep of its fertile soil lies under the hot sun, watered by the Crathis (modern Crati) and Sybaris (modern Coscile) Rivers. The climate was mild enough to make the place famous for an oak tree that didn’t lose its leaves in winter.
The golden plain was the California of antiquity, and its San Francisco was a Greek colony planted there c. 700 BC: Sybaris. The city’s luxury was so legendary that even today sybarite is still a byword for hedonist. Gastronomy was the preferred vice, and why not, when the land was so bountiful that the Sybarites supposedly ran wine rather than water through their clay pipes! In addition to its wine, Sybaris was famous for its olive oil and its wool. Grain was cultivated on the plain, while fig and hazelnut trees were grown on the hillsides. Wood and pitch were brought down from the thick forests of the Sila Mountains. The sea teemed with fish, including the much prized eel. Sybaris’s bustling seaport attracted traders from a wide variety of Mediterranean ports.
Sybaris had been totally destroyed in a war with its neighbours in 510 BC, but the plain was too fertile to leave fallow. In 444 BC a new Greek city, Thurii, was founded in its place. In 194 BC it was Rome’s turn. The Romans founded a colony at Thurii and renamed it Copia, ‘Abundance’. But most people continued to call it Thurii. Supposedly there was so much good land here that the Romans had trouble finding takers for all the lots. But nature abhors a vacuum. By 73 BC the valleys of the Crathis and Sybaris Rivers contained a number of Roman villas, some large, but most mid-sized. Roman senators and knights, and a veteran of Sulla are among those known to have owned property here. While herding took place, agriculture remained a major activity in this fertile country.
Another of Thurii’s resources was a cadre of discontented slaves. Around 70 BC a property-holder in these parts armed his slaves and sent them to loot and murder on his neighbour’s farm in an attempt to take over the property himself. About ten years later slave insurgents were active in the area. In 48 BC the Roman thug Milo was sent to Thurii to raise a revolt among the shepherds in the vicinity.
But the people of Bruttium were famous for waging guerrilla warfare: it was ‘their natural disposition’, says one Roman writer. In addition, Thurii had been a centre of Orphic religion for centuries, a cult with Dionysiac overtones, which offered a natural opening to the Thracian woman and her prophecies. It was, in short, promising recruiting ground for the insurgency. No wonder Spartacus and Crixus looked with wide eyes at Thurii in late 73 BC.
Once they crossed into Bruttium, the insurgents fanned out into the hills. No doubt they went after Roman farms. Then, when they had found food and recruits, they turned on the city of Thurii itself. Until now, Spartacus and Crixus had damaged the territory of various cities but they had not conquered and occupied any urban spaces. Their supporters consisted of ‘slaves, deserters and the rabble’, as one ancient writer puts it. ‘Rural people, mainly slaves but also some free’, would be a more impartial description.
At Thurii they finally conquered a city. If not a big city, Thurii was walled. The insurgents were making wicker shields, not siege engines, and they could hardly have stormed the town. It is unclear whether they had the patience and discipline to surround the city for months until they starved it out. The most likely explanation of their success is an inside job. Someone within the city, maybe a group of slaves, opened the gates and let the men of Spartacus and Crixus in. The result was probably a slaughter.
Perhaps it was around this time that the insurgents raided the city of Consentia (modern Cosenza), the capital of the Bruttii, an inland town located on the Via Annia, about 50 miles south of Thurii. Cosentia sat in a rich territory of farms and pastures with the prospect of additional supplies and supporters.
From Metapontum to Thurii and perhaps beyond, the insurgents had brought fire, death and freedom. Yet they were also building an army. At Thurii, they could finally settle down to train. Among their urgent needs were weapons and discipline. Spartacus addressed both necessities by laying down the law: whatever merchants might offer, his people could not buy gold and silver; only iron and bronze for weapons were allowed. Crixus presumably backed up Spartacus. Another source of arms-grade metal was the runaway slaves’ own chains, which were melted down and re-forged into weapons. It is hard to say which is more striking, Spartacus’s strictness or the traders’ willingness to take a chance on dealing with the fierce insurgents. Were these ‘mer chants’ really pirates, as some suggest, or were they simply gamblers who saw big profits in risky business?
Arms don’t make an army. The newcomers needed training. By winter 73/72 BC, the summer’s raw recruits had become old hands, and they no doubt passed on practical experience. Still, there was no substitute for a professional. Ex-gladiators and veterans, whether of Roman or other armies, played the most important role as drill instructors, we might guess.
Spartacus must have known that building an army takes a first-rate management team. We might imagine him carefully choosing his battalion and company commanders. Any prior military experience was surely invaluable. Veterans of Marius or former soldiers captured in Rome’s border wars probably shot to the front of the pack. But organizational skill is a necessity in a commander, and slave foremen had that skill in spades. Nor can the moral factor in leadership be discounted. As an astute judge of character, Spartacus might have chosen some men without prior military experience to lead units of his army.
And although Spartacus hated Rome, he didn’t hesitate to borrow from it. He modelled his army on the legions, at least in some respects. ‘They attained a certain level of skill and discipline that they had learned from us,’ said Caesar of the insurgents. Like the renegade Vettius, a Roman who led the slave rebellion in Capua in 104 BC, Spartacus might have organized his soldiers in centuries, eighty-men units that were the companies of the legions.
The insurgents designated their units by Roman insignia. The victorious rebels had captured Roman battle flags, silver eagles and fasces. The eagle was the symbol of a legion, while the flags stood for cohorts (480 men each) and centuries. The fasces were the insignia of a Roman praetor, consul, general or governor.
We might imagine the insurgents proudly carrying Roman flags and eagles into battle to taunt the enemy. As for the fasces, Spartacus accepted them as symbols of his own office, presumably to be carried by his bodyguard. It was a sign of the world turned upside down, but it was also a symbol of discipline. The fasces represented the power to punish. An effective commander must be not merely inspirational but stern. No soldiers enjoy punishment, but most accept it as the price of victory. Punishment builds discipline; discipline wins wars.
Perhaps St Augustine had Thurii in mind when he wrote, centuries later, ‘from a small and contemptible start in petty crime, they [the insurgents] attained a kingdom.’ The language is imprecise, because although he held sway in a corner of Italy, Spartacus was not a king. The leaders of the earlier Sicilian slave revolts took royal titles but Spartacus did not. He had the favour of Dionysus, as the Thracian lady announced; he probably inspired religious awe in some of his followers. But he had no throne.
A paradox lay at the heart of Spartacus’s enterprise. His men had just thrown away their chains; they did not want new ones. They were herdsmen used to independence, field hands drunk on newly found freedom, and gladiators trained to kill each other. They barely shared a common language, Latin, and it belonged to their enemy. With women and no doubt children present among them, they resembled a caravan as much as an army. Most men probably felt closer ties to their family than to their fellow soldiers. No one knew if they would bow to Spartacus’s commands. Freedom built his army and freedom could destroy it.
All he could do was try to make things work. And so, tens of thousands of marching feet now echoed on the Plain of Sybaris, as we might imagine. They meant something shameful for the Romans, honourable for the men: slave legions. As one Roman writer put it, even a slave is a human being, and if a slave takes up arms, he may become as free as a Roman citizen. But, as he adds, for a Roman to have to fight such a man is to add insult to injury.
As improbable as the slave legions were, even more improbable was the group of mounted knights riding beside them. In Germany as well, fighting on horseback brought a warrior high status. During their travels the rebels had captured wild horses that roamed the southern Italian countryside. To their good fortune, they were in horse country. Even today, wild horses are seen in the mountains of south-eastern Campania, in Lucania’s high valley of the Agri (ancient Aciris) River and in the Pollino Mountains on the border between Lucania and Bruttium. Celts, Germans and Thracians were good enough tamers to train them. And so was born the insurgents’ cavalry.
They would need it. The Romans had not forgotten them. Neither the beatings they had suffered at the rebels’ hands nor the ruined farms and lost investments in slaves had escaped their attention. So the Romans chose new commanders for the new year, with more soldiers at their disposal to break up the rebellion.
The mountains ringing Sybaris are covered with snow in the winter. When it melted, in spring 72 BC, torrents of water would run down into the riverbeds of the plain. The yellow flowers of the broom plant would set the hillsides on fire. Rome’s legions would march south on the peninsula’s paved roads; the insurgents would slip through the hills in an attempt to fight on terms of their own choosing. And all Italy would hold its breath.