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In autumn 72 BC a new general took command of the legions. Determined to restore discipline, he revived a brutal and archaic form of punishment. Fifty Roman soldiers who ran away from battle and disgraced the legions were caught, condemned and executed by their own army. Each of them was clubbed to death by nine of his fellow legionaries, men with whom they might have changed places, since the victims were chosen by lot. Five hundred men were caught shirking their duty; one out of every ten was selected for execution, which is why the procedure is called decimation (analogous to our word ‘decimal’, that is, one-tenth). Rome’s new general wanted his men to fear him more than they feared Spartacus. His name was Marcus Licinius Crassus.
A marble bust survives that is probably a portrait of Crassus; it is revealing. Stare directly and you see the picture of resolve: the skin of his face tightened, lips pursed, jaw clenched, eyebrows drawn down, neck muscles tensed. In profile, however, his jowls, a double chin and the crow’s feet around his eyes are all apparent. Not only vigour but caution and suspicion are etched into his features. The bust was found in Rome, in the family tomb of the Licinii, one of Rome’s most prominent families, but there are other copies, proof that they depict an important person. The style fits the end of the Roman Republic and the scholarly consensus is that the bust is Marcus Licinius Crassus.
Crassus took command at the order of the Senate and to the applause of the people. Bold politics, the choice made poetic justice. In his own way, Crassus resembled Spartacus. Not that Crassus wanted to overturn Rome: far from it. Like Spartacus, though, Crassus was a maverick. He wanted to rise to the top of Roman politics but he would beat his own path. Unwilling or unable to win the approval of the old nobility, Crassus courted the common people and made deals with new politicians. The optimates, literally, the best men, as Rome’s conservatives called themselves, did not approve. Given a choice, the Senate’s old guard would never have turned to a man like Crassus. Spartacus forced their hands and made Crassus the man of the hour.
Crassus came from one of Rome’s most eminent families but its lustre was no brighter than a decadent age could produce. Crassus displayed good generalship against other Romans, and great initiative in exploiting the misery of others. He was known as a man of selective vice rather than strict morality. For example, he beat a charge of seducing a Vestal virgin by proving that he was merely greedy and not impious, since he was interested in her property rather than her chastity.
In his early forties - he was born c. 115 BC - Crassus was one of Italy’s richest but least luxurious men. Frugal and severe, he felt more at home in the Rome of brick than the Rome of marble. With a private fire brigade at his disposal, he pounced on men whose houses were on fire and talked them into selling fast and cheaply before they had nothing left to sell. Yet he wouldn’t treat himself to a holiday home. It wasn’t comfort that Crassus wanted but political power, which was why he amassed wealth in the first place. A good general but no military genius like Pompey (or, later, Caesar), Crassus saw that the path to political success lay in buying votes. He doled out money, giving loans to the rich, handouts to the poor, and favours to the influential. Crassus made himself popular even though he lacked none of the scathing arrogance of the Roman nobility.
In 72 BC his popularity paid off. As best we can reconstruct it, the Senate and people agreed to award Crassus a special command against Spartacus, with virtually unlimited power (what the Romans called proconsular imperium), even though he was a private citizen. This was a rare distinction, since commands were usually reserved for office-holders. What made things even sweeter was that Pompey held a similar command in Spain against Sertorius. Pompey was Rome’s leading general and its most ambitious politician. Crassus considered Pompey his chief political rival, but now Crassus had matched him. To add to his triumph, the disgraced consuls Lentulus and Gellius were Pompey’s allies.
Crassus in command would drive his men hard. He was a tough man, but he had not had an easy life. Before his thirtieth birthday, Crassus saw his father’s severed head hanging from the speakers’ platform in the Roman forum. The proud old man had committed suicide rather than surrender to Marius when he took Rome. Crassus himself was too insignificant to be executed but two years later, in 85 BC, danger loomed as the civil war reignited, so he ran for his life.
Crassus fled all the way back to Spain. Sheltered by a family friend, he spent eight months in hiding from the pro-Marius provincial government, living in a cave. Finally, the news that the leading Marians were dead brought Crassus out and into action.
He raised an army of 2,500 men. As Crassus later said, a Roman wasn’t really rich unless he could raise his own legion. His men were picked troops, chosen from among friends and family supporters. He requisitioned ships, sailed with the men to North Africa, and tried to join forces with the anti-Marian proconsul there, Quintus Caecilius Metellus, but the two men quarrelled. Undaunted, Crassus voyaged to Greece, where he joined the leader of the anti-Marian forces, Sulla. He returned to Italy in 83 BC with Sulla and his soldiers, possibly including, ironically enough, that Roman auxiliary Spartacus. In spring 82 BC Sulla sent Crassus to raise more troops in central Italy, which Crassus did with great success. He also captured the city of Todi, where he was accused of taking the lion’s share of the spoils for himself; if true, a contrast with Spartacus’s later fairness in dividing the spoils equally.
Young Crassus had his rendezvous with destiny outside the walls of Rome, in the last of a series of bloody battles up and down the Italian peninsula. Sulla attacked the Marian forces at Rome’s Colline Gate in the north-eastern part of the city walls. The struggle commenced in the late afternoon of 1 November 82 BC and it went on into the night. The Marians pinned Sulla’s centre and left wing against the walls. Only Sulla’s right wing was victorious, but that decided the battle, because it crushed the enemy’s left wing, drove it in flight and pursued it for 2 miles. The commander of Sulla’s right wing was Crassus.
From what little we know, Sulla was the architect of victory in the Battle of the Colline Gate. Crassus merely executed the plan, but he did so with vigour and guts. It was enough to make his fortune. With Sulla triumphant, Crassus put down his sword for a decade and devoted himself to money-making and politics.
When Sulla came to power he named about 500 wealthy and prominent supporters of Marius as outlaws. The Romans called this ‘proscription’ because the names were inscribed and posted in a public list. The outlaws were hunted down and killed. Their property was confiscated and men like Crassus gobbled it up at cut-rate prices. By the time of the Spartacus War a decade later, Crassus’s portfolio included estates in the Italian countryside and real estate in the city of Rome; mines, perhaps Spanish silver mines; and large numbers of slaves, some of whom he may have rented out. Born rich, Crassus had become super-rich.
His moment came in autumn 72 BC, when Rome entrusted Crassus with a special command to fight Spartacus. Why Crassus wanted the command is no mystery. It could have made his career. Up to then, he had advanced more slowly in politics than a man of his ambition would have wished. He had served as praetor at some point, it seems, but he had not held Rome’s top office, the consulship. A special command opened the door to military glory, which would have put political pre-eminence within reach. Defeating Spartacus would have given Crassus a card to play against Pompey. Then too, Crassus had his economic interests at stake. Since he owned large, slave-run estates in southern Italy, he fitted the profile of Spartacus’s victims. Putting down the rebellion would not just bring Crassus glory but save his investments.
Nor is there any doubt why the Roman people wanted Crassus. He was victorious, popular and filthy rich. Thanks to his wealth, Crassus should have been able to pay at least some of the soldiers out of his own purse, perhaps as a long-term loan to the treasury. Rome’s military budget was already funding armies in Spain, Thrace and Asia Minor, and a navy off Crete.
Crassus had the proven ability to raise troops. The current emergency demanded a knowledgeable chief of recruitment who could fill the ranks quickly. As a former general for Sulla, moreover, Crassus should have been able to talk some of Sulla’s veterans back into service. Many of them were no longer young, but, unlike raw recruits, experienced soldiers don’t run when the enemy charges. The phrase, ‘Everyone who had a soldier’s heart, even if his body had grown old’, survives in one ancient source about the Spartacus war. We don’t know just what the words refer to, but how intriguing to think of them as Crassus’s recruiting slogan.
Crassus was no Alexander the Great but he knew how to fight, and had learned about unconventional insurgents in Spain, a land that had resisted Rome fiercely for two centuries.
When he was around 20 in 93 BC, Crassus had seen his father Publius celebrate a triumph over the Lusitanians (Portuguese), men known as masters of irregular warfare. Publius had spent three or four years (c. 97-93 BC) as governor of Hispania Ulterior, today’s Portugal and western Spain. Young Crassus lived with his father there and he may have served on his father’s staff in that war. The details of Publius’s campaign do not survive. Since he won a triumph, he must have scored one or more successes, but we may doubt whether he matched the enemy’s speed and cunning. Against the Lusitanians the Romans rarely did.
The Lusitanians had a reputation as raiders and rustlers. Their greatest leader, Viriathus, had bedevilled the Romans with eight years of guerrilla warfare (148-139 BC). Viriathus was too shrewd to fight a pitched battle as the Romans wished. Stymied, the Romans attacked civilians in the towns that supported Viriathus and finally resorted to having him assassinated. The leaderless Lusitanians made peace, but it did not last. Again and again, the Lusitanians revolted, which led to Roman reprisals. In the decade before Publius’s governorship, for example, two Roman generals celebrated triumphs over the Lusitanians. More recently, Lusitanian light infantry and horsemen formed the core of Sertorius’s insurgency on the Spanish peninsula (80-72 BC). Both Viriathus and Sertorius excelled at speed, mobility, deception, ambush, night attacks and the other tricks of the trade of unconventional warfare.
The Lusitanians imposed slippery and devious warfare on Rome. Around the time that Publius was fighting Viriathus, Rome faced a more static conflict in the neighbouring province of Nearer Spain, Hispania Citerior. Siegecraft was the main tactic there, and endurance vied in importance with deceit. This war offered lessons in brutality for Crassus.
Publius’s colleague Titus Didius, governor of Hispania Citerior from 98 to 93 BC, spent nine months besieging a rebellious Spanish town in order to put an end to its people’s banditry. In the end, he talked the town into surrendering in return for a land grant, but once he had them in his power Didius ordered a massacre. He herded the women and children into a canyon along with the men and had them all slaughtered.
Rome’s greatest siege in Spain had taken place at Numantia. A fortified city, Numantia had fought Rome for the better part of twenty years between 154 and 133 BC. The Numantines inflicted defeat and humiliation on half a dozen Roman commanders. Finally, in 134 BC Rome entrusted the war to Scipio Aemilianus, the man who had conquered Carthage in 146 BC. Scipio first raised a new army and trained it hard. Next he cut off Numantia’s food supply. Then he encircled Numantia with a huge wall, patrolled by Roman troops stationed in seven different forts. Then, Scipio waited. Slowly, the city starved; when it reached the point of cannibalism, Numantia surrendered. Fifty survivors were paraded in Scipio’s triumph, the rest were sold into slavery. Numantia was razed and divided among its neighbours.
Scipio’s policy was as blunt as it was brutal. It had required 60,000 Roman and allied soldiers to defeat 4,000 defenders of Numantia. Even so, Crassus might have looked back to it as a model as he prepared to fight Spartacus. Like Scipio, Crassus held a special command. Like his father Publius, he faced a quick and shifty foe. To take on Spartacus in battle was to risk being outfoxed like half a dozen Roman commanders before him. Why not lead Spartacus into a trap instead, where the Romans could lay siege to him? Why not outfox the fox? Call it the Numantine solution.
It was also a classic recipe for counter-insurgency: location, isolation and eradication. After finding Spartacus, Crassus had to herd him into a place where the Roman could cut Spartacus off from support and supplies. Then Crassus could kill him.
Executing the plan required thorough knowledge of southern Italy’s terrain. Luckily Crassus possessed just that. In 90 BC his father Publius, back in Italy, had taken on Rome’s rebel allies by fighting a battle in Lucania. In his mid-twenties at the time, Crassus is likely to have fought alongside him. Although Publius lost the battle, Crassus learned about the land. Crassus’s Lucanian connections extended to the city of Heraclea, where his father had granted Roman citizenship to an important resident. South of Lucania lay Bruttium, another province in which Crassus had a hand, since he had grabbed an estate there from a Marian after Sulla’s victory in 82 BC.
Crassus took over command from the consuls Gellius and Lentulus either in late summer or early autumn 72 BC. By November or thereabouts they were back in Rome presiding over Senate meetings. According to one source, an angry Senate had stripped them of their command but not their office. Another possibility is that the consuls made a deal to step down voluntarily in exchange for support from Crassus for their campaign to be chosen censors - in other words, they agreed to be kicked upstairs.
The two consuls proved to be better legislators than generals. They passed a law enabling commanders to reward conspicuous bravery with Roman citizenship. Crassus’s new legionaries were already Roman citizens, but the troops in Cisalpine Gaul were not. The new law gave them an incentive for valour if Spartacus returned.
Crassus raised six new legions: about 30,000 men. He commanded them as well as the remaining troops of the four legions previously commanded by Gellius and Lentulus: perhaps another 16,000 men. Crassus, then, counted around 45,000 legionaries. This was an enormous army, about the same size as the army that Caesar would later use to conquer Gaul. It was more than twice as large as any force that the Romans had sent out yet against Spartacus. If Spartacus had about 60,000 men, then he continued to outnumber the Romans, but that probably did not bother Crassus unduly. Roman military doctrine emphasized quality over quantity, and Romans often went into battle outnumbered, especially against those considered barbarians. Besides, Crassus had no intention of doing battle against Spartacus until he had first worn the Thracian down.
Meanwhile, the appointment of Crassus energized the war effort. Many elite Romans, especially his friends and allies, joined to fight for the hero of the Colline Gate. Crassus drew his supporters from the rank and file of the Senate rather than its leadership. The names of five of his officers in the Spartacus War are known: Quintus Marcius Rufus, Mummius, Caius Pomptinus, Lucius Quinctius and Cnaeus Tremellius Scrofa. L. Quinctius came from a humble background, while Q. Marcius Rufus and C. Pomptinus both belonged to families that, as far as we know, had not held office before. Cn. Tremellius Scrofa came from a just-miss family: it had produced six Roman praetors but no consuls.
Only Mummius had a famous name. One Lucius Mummius Achaicus had been consul in 146 BC and sacker of Corinth; we don’t know, however, if Crassus’s officer Mummius came from the same branch of the family. Even if the blood of Achaicus flowed in the veins of this Mummius, it did not carry the great ancestor’s talent. Mummius embarrassed Crassus with a great mistake at the campaign’s start.
Once again the Roman army marched south. At Eburum (modern Eboli), the Picentini Mountains look like tabletops, rising in an abrupt sweep from the plain. It was here, we might imagine, beside these hills, that Crassus’s men laid out their camp. Eburum lay on the Via Annia, from which Crassus could control the valley of the Silarus River and the passes into Lucania. It was the key to Picentia, which was, in turn, the doorway between Campania and Lucania. Picentia stood at the edge of civilization, as it were. South of it lay Spartacus country, too mountainous and rugged for Crassus’s new army to cross through safely. Picentia made an excellent base because the rich territory between Salernum and Paestum was fertile enough to feed Crassus’s men - today it produces Italy’s most famous mozzarella - and wide enough to allow them to train.
Spartacus, for his part, seems to have moved northwards from Thurii into north-western Lucania, perhaps back into the fertile Campus Atinas, where his men had rampaged a year earlier. It was harvest time again, as it had been during their attack the year before, and food would have drawn Spartacus’s men there. In addition, the Campus Atinas offered other advantages to a shrewd commander like Spartacus: it was a good spot for his army to intimidate Crassus while his scouts inspected the new Roman forces. Crassus, meanwhile, put the pressure on as well. He sent two legions to circle around Spartacus and follow him. Their route, for example, might have taken them north into the valley of the Upper Silarus (modern Sele) River, then eastwards and back south into the territory of Volcei (modern Buccino). This route bypassed the Via Annia while following well-beaten and relatively level paths.
Crassus entrusted command of the two legions to Mummius. According to one source, these were the legions formerly under Gellius and Lentulus, and not the new units raised by Crassus. Crassus gave explicit orders: Mummius was to follow Spartacus closely but not to fight, not even in a skirmish. Evidently, the plan was to pressure Spartacus without risking a defeat against his battle-hardened troops. Unfortunately, instead of obeying orders, Mummius took advantage of the first good chance to join battle. Perhaps he occupied the high ground or perhaps his scouts said that the enemy had its guard down. In any case, Mummius lost. As the sources put it: ‘Many of his men fell, and many saved themselves by dropping their weapons and fleeing.’ In the ancient world, dropping one’s weapons to save one’s life earned a man great shame: it practically defined cowardice. The fugitive soldiers slunk back in disgrace to the Roman camp in Picentia.
If the Romans had stood firm in close order, they would have formed a wall against which the enemy charge might have broken. Instead, the Romans obligingly turned and ran. For the rebels, it was barbarian warfare at its best.
Crassus planned to turn the fiasco into what is nowadays called a teaching moment. No more defeatism: that was the rule of the new imperator. He began by treating Mummius harshly - precisely how is not known. Next, Crassus had new weapons issued to the men who had thrown theirs away, but only on the condition that they formally promised not to lose them again. Then he struck.
Crassus chose the first 500 runaways to have returned to his camp - ‘tremblers’, to use the old Spartan term employed by Plutarch to describe these men. These 500 soldiers perhaps belonged to one legionary cohort (battalion). Crassus divided the 500 men into 50 groups of 10 men each, and had one man chosen by lot from each group. These fifty men were forced to undergo decimation.
Decimation was an ancient Roman military punishment that had fallen out of use, but now Crassus revived it. The tenth of the 500 runaways who had been chosen by lot were clubbed to death by the other nine-tenths. Crassus, it seems, revived decimation with a vengeance. In historical times, the norm for decimation seems to have been five, eight or twenty men; Crassus had chosen fifty.
According to traditional procedure, the executioners survived but were forced to camp outside the defences of the main camp. There they were fed barley instead of wheat like animals. The sources don’t tell us how long Crassus’s men underwent this disgrace. It was a symbolic humiliation but also dangerous, since they were left unprotected and exposed to rebel raids.
Crassus had defined himself in his men’s eyes. As one ancient source says, he had made himself more fearful than the enemy. It was a high standard of military discipline, equal to that set centuries before by a Spartan mercenary general. The act of decimation probably took attention away from Spartacus and focused it on Crassus. Perhaps now someone remembered that Crassus’s grandfather had earned the nickname Agelastus, ‘he who does not laugh’. Stickler or tyrant, Crassus was indisputably in charge.
Perhaps to underline that point, Crassus now took the offensive. He led his men out against the enemy. Spartacus retreated southwards through Lucania. One of our sources implies that Spartacus and his high command reached this decision on their own, without a blow being struck. Apparently they had taken Crassus’s measure and concluded that they could not match him. Better to draw the Romans into the mountains of Lucania than to risk fighting them on the Picentine plain.
But it is hard to imagine Spartacus persuading his huge army simply to give up after their victory over Mummius. Besides, it would have taken nearly supernatural foresight to gauge the change in the Roman army. Surely the rebels had to bleed first before they awakened. That brings us to a different source and a more plausible account, at least more plausible in parts.
In this version, Crassus’s army quickly encountered a detachment of about 10,000 men from Spartacus’s army, camping on their own. Just what the men were doing is unclear; perhaps they had been sent to follow the Romans, perhaps they had gone off in search of supplies, or perhaps they represent yet another factional split in the rebels’ camp. In any case, the Romans attacked them. With their vast numerical superiority, Crassus’s men won a great victory. The sources say that they killed two-thirds of the enemy and took only 900 prisoners. The numbers strain credulity but if they are true, they suggest that the rebels had guts. No one seems to have run away.
It was a big defeat for the insurgency, the biggest since the death of Crixus. Worse still, the Romans now had a commander who could keep up the pressure. Crassus then turned on the main rebel force. We might guess that the two armies met somewhere in northern Lucania. Spartacus commanded the rebels, while Crassus led the Romans. According to the sources, these two great generals met in battle for the first time. High drama, but unfortunately the sources are stingy. After crushing the enemy detachment, Crassus marched on Spartacus ‘with contempt’. Crassus ‘defeated him and pursued him vigourously in flight’. Another source says: ‘Finally . . . Licinius Crassus saved the Romans’ honour; the enemy . . . were beaten by him and fled and sought refuge in the tip of Italy.’
This reads like the stuff of official reports. But no one as cagey as Crassus would have then treated Spartacus with contempt. Furthermore, if Crassus won a splendid victory over Spartacus’s entire army, it is impossible to explain Crassus’s next move, which was to hold back and try to cut off Spartacus’s force, rather than to engage it in battle.
More likely, Crassus and Spartacus fought a skirmish. It did not lead to a major defeat but it was enough to make the point: Crassus had built a new Roman army. What Spartacus had warned his men all along was now coming true. The men had spirit but Spartacus knew the odds. He understood Rome’s overwhelming superiority in pitched battle. Earlier Roman soldiers had turned and fled but Crassus’s men would fight. Against previous Roman commanders there had always been room for ambushes and other tricks. Crassus, however, would not be easily fooled. In addition to the fact of defeat, Spartacus’s scouts might have discovered other evidence of the changes that Crassus had brought. They might have noticed, for instance, that unlike the earlier legions they had scouted, Crassus’s men marched in good order and that they did not dare engage in undisciplined foraging or looting. These Romans knew how to fight. It was better to draw them deeper into the Lucanian hills than to risk a battle on the plains.
Besides, Spartacus, we might imagine, was still looking for a way out. The rise of Crassus offered a golden opportunity. His men had preferred taking their chances against Lentulus and Gellius to undertaking a passage over the Alps. Faced with Crassus, however, they might have been willing to reassess matters.
So Spartacus led his men towards the other exit from the Italian peninsula. He marched them to the sea. Assuming they had enough of a head start on the enemy, they could have taken the Via Annia southwards towards the city of Regium. Down the road they went, past the cities of Atina, Nerulum, Cosentia and Terina until they finally reached the Tyrrhenian Sea.
As it hugs the mountainside near Italy’s southern tip, the road turns a bend and presents the traveller with a sudden panorama below: Sicily, rising majestically in the hazy blue sea. Only the narrow Strait of Messina separates Sicily from the Italian mainland. Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean, yet two of its three sides are visible from this point. An ancient traveller might have stood in wonder at the thought of the wealth and fertility that lay before him on the island.
Sicily was Rome’s first overseas province and remained its most important. Famous in antiquity for its fertile soil, the island provided much of Rome’s grain; it was rich in cattle as well. Lush and abundant, Sicily was a great prize. It fed the legions, and Spartacus might have reasoned that it could also feed his men. Then too, Sicily had long been a goal of Italy’s runaway slaves, who sought refuge there. In addition, the island seemed ripe for subversion. By stirring up the embers of the slave revolts that had convulsed the island a generation before, Spartacus could threaten Rome’s food supply and further shake the pillars of the social order. By transferring his men there from Italy he could save them from Crassus, but perhaps only temporarily. Since it surely occurred to Spartacus that Crassus could follow him across the strait, it might also have crossed his mind that Sicily would serve as just a temporary base. But it might give him a respite to find ships and move on, perhaps to North Africa, which lies only 90 miles southwest of the Sicilian coast.
So Spartacus and his men might have reasoned when they reached the vicinity of Regium in late 72 BC. All they had to do was cross a narrow body of water.