The Spartacus War (11 page)

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.