The Spartacus War (13 page)

The Romans outgeneralled Crixus: they took him by surprise. The rolling hill country beside the Garganus promontory was well stocked with farms, no doubt tempting Crixus to sally out on a plundering raid. Perhaps this is where the Romans caught him. Or perhaps they trapped him in an upland meadow on the promontory itself.

It was typical for a consul’s army to consist of two legions. The ‘paper’ strength of a legion in the first century BC was 6,200 men; the real strength was about 5,000 men. That is, when the legion was newly formed; in time, after losing men in combat or to illness or desertion, a legion’s strength was probably around 4,000 men. When a consul took office and raised an army of two legions, therefore, it probably comprised some 10,000 men. A legion was only as strong as the sub-units into which it was divided. The basic tactical unit of the legion was the cohort. Each legion consisted of ten cohorts, nominally of 480 men each; each cohort comprised six centuries, nominally of 80 men each. Light-armed troops and cavalrymen added to a legion’s numbers.

The commander of each legion was called a legate. Below him stood six junior officers called military tribunes. Cato’s brother Caepio was a military tribune in one of Gellius’s two legions; Cato no doubt served on his staff. The lowest rank of officer was a centurion, commander of a century. The centurions were often the unsung heroes of the legion, because small-group leadership can make or break an army.

These armies consisted almost entirely of infantrymen, with only small groups of cavalry, light-armed or specialist troops. They were inexperienced and far from the best Rome had, but they were much better armed than the insurgents, and they could be far more confident about food and housing.

We know next to nothing about the battle. In the absence of evidence of creativity on the part of Gellius or Arrius, we might expect that they lined up their army by the book. Each legion was deployed in a three-line formation, with four cohorts (a paper strength of 1,920 men) in the front line and three cohorts (a paper strength of 1,440 men) in each of the two rear lines. The insurgents probably had to organize themselves more hastily. Given their reputation as horsemen, the Celts should have possessed a good cavalry, but might have lacked time to deploy it properly, and the Romans might have outnumbered it.

The heart of the Roman army consisted of the heavy infantrymen, that is, the legionaries. Each legionary was protected by body armour, typically a mail coat, and a bronze or iron helmet. He also carried a big, oblong shield (scutum). His weapons were a javelin (pilum) and a short sword (gladius). Some of Spartacus’s men had similar arms and armour, stripped from the enemy dead, but many of the rebels had only primitive weapons and light protection.

Both armies no doubt advanced with war cries to hearten themselves and frighten their opponent. The Roman light-armed infantry usually tried to soften up the enemy by shooting arrows and slings, some of which had an effective range of perhaps 100 yards. After absorbing any losses, the insurgents probably raised the rebel yell and blew their war trumpets. Roman armies typically advanced by banging javelins on shields and shouting war cries. As the legions closed in, at a distance of about 50 feet, they would have begun throwing their javelins. They shouted, accompanied by the ‘threatening rumble’ of the commander’s horn, followed by the strident call of the trumpets. Then, with their banners flying, they charged the enemy at a run.

Sometimes the Romans would make such an intimidating show of discipline and equipment that the enemy would turn and run away. But on this day it would come down to a hard fight. Legionaries would hack and thrust at the enemy with their swords, while the other side would reply with sword or spear.

Ancient battle lives in the imagination as a climax: a collision, followed by dozens of disorderly, individual fights that go on until one side prevails. Real battle was probably episodic. Like boxers, the two sides combined, broke apart, regrouped each in its own corner, and then hit each other again. Finally, one army would collapse and run. Such typical Roman battle lasted two to three hours, but episodes of hand-to-hand fighting probably each lasted only fifteen to twenty minutes before exhaustion set in.

The only detail of the battle of Mount Garganus to survive is the report that the rebels ‘fought extremely fiercely’: a conventional statement but it might just be true. Celtic warriors were known for their ferocity and tenacity in battle. We might imagine the bravest legionaries circling around the enemy’s flank or trying to stab their way into the enemy lines. Eventually they succeeded, but probably at a price. The insurgents perhaps forced the Romans to fight many ‘rounds’ of battle before a decision was reached. It was enough to do the rebels honour but not to avoid a massacre. According to one source, two-thirds of Crixus’s men died. Among the fallen was Crixus himself. This too fits the picture of Celtic warfare. Celtic warriors were supposed to group themselves around their chiefs in battle. It was a disgrace to abandon one’s chief and it was unthinkable for a chief to do anything but fight to the finish. Germans behaved similarly, to judge by the women of the Cimbri tribe who stood in the rear of one battle, mounted on chariots and killed the fleeing warriors with their own hands rather than let them run away.

It was the first defeat after a string of victories for the insurgency. How can such a reversal of fortune be explained? Not by the prowess of Gellius and Arrius. As events later in 72 BC will show, they had not created a victory machine. The cause of defeat probably lay with Crixus. He was Spartacus’s equal in courage, but not in common sense. That Crixus shared Spartacus’s taste for discipline and austerity is doubtful; that he lacked due diligence when it came to scouts and pickets is apparent.

Meanwhile, Spartacus marched northwards. He was somewhere in the Apennine Mountains in north-central Italy. The rebels had marched from a land of olive oil to one of butter, a zone that was cooler, rainier and greener than the south. There was plenty of fresh water and herds of sheep and goats, but there were also wolves and bears. As a landscape, the Apennines are vertical, narrow and difficult, all of which worked in the insurgents’ favour.

Even so the Romans wanted to fight Spartacus. Roman doctrine called for offensives and Crixus’s fate bode well for success. But Spartacus’s army had reason for optimism. The men had fine leadership; past victories should have raised their morale; and their cavalry force should have been better than the Romans’. Their leader shared the men’s risks; he looked heroic and was physically courageous; he was charismatic and had a flair for the bold gesture; he could be inspiring on the battlefield. The insurgents were nimbler and tougher than the enemy, quick and violent enough to shock an inexperienced foe, and superior in numbers.

The Romans, nonetheless, found the enemy and forced him to fight on what looked like auspicious terms. The consul Lentulus, thanks no doubt to good intelligence, was able to block the road ahead. Meanwhile Gellius, conqueror of Crixus, had marched up from Apulia in rapid pursuit of the main rebel army. Spartacus was trapped.

One plausible theory locates the confrontation in a mountain pass in the Apennines north-west of Florence. The little village of Lentula lies at the foot of Mount Calvi (4,200 feet) in a valley that runs northwards towards Modena (the Roman Mutina). Local tradition insists on a direct connection between the village name and the consul Lentulus, just as it points out that Spartacus later made his way to Mutina. The theory is unproven, but the rugged terrain around Lentula would have made a fine site for the battle.

Spartacus now showed what made him a great battlefield commander. It is possible for a good general to rescue his army from encirclement as long as he is decisive, agile and calm. He also has to be sure of complete loyalty and obedience on the part of his troops. Caesar had these very qualities, and he saved his army at the Battle of Ruspina (modern Monastir in Tunisia) in 46 BC. Finding himself surrounded, Caesar arranged his army in two lines, back to back, and had them each push the enemy back. That give him the breathing space to launch two coordinated charges, and he broke through to freedom.

In the Apennines in 72 BC Spartacus achieved even more, and by different tactics. Admittedly, the Thracian’s situation was less desperate than Caesar’s. Spartacus outnumbered the enemy: he had 30,000 men while each consular army had a maximum of about 10,000 men. Gellius’s army might, in fact, have been even smaller, due to losses suffered in the battle with Crixus. Unlike Caesar, Spartacus had time and space to attack each of his enemies in turn. Like Caesar, though, Spartacus could never have succeeded without commanding his men’s trust. We can only imagine what he might have said in a pre-battle speech to rally his troops. But the message was as clear as a bugle: attack!

The mere fact of the attack might have surprised the Romans; they might have expected to see the beleaguered enemy assume a defensive position. Spartacus went after Lentulus’s army first; one source claims that the rebels struck with a sudden rush. A cunning commander like Spartacus might have positioned part of his forces behind hills and then had them pour out to shock the enemy. He probably used his cavalry to good effect. A well-timed cavalry attack could break the enemy’s formation, particularly the light infantry, who wore little protection. The Romans typically counter-attacked against cavalry by means of arrows and slings, but they didn’t always do the job. A quick and sudden cavalry charge, for example, could prevent archers and slingers from inflicting much damage. If the legions held firm, they might have stopped a cavalry charge even so, by massing in a dense formation, almost a shield wall with room for thrusting with their pikes. Horses will not crash into a solid object or what looms like a solid object. The difficulty, however, was standing firm, because the sight of a cavalry charge was enough to terrify inexperienced troops. In a later battle the Romans appear to have taken additional precautions against Spartacus’s cavalry, which suggests bitter experience.

In any case, once he had softened up the enemy with such tactics, Spartacus probably sent in his infantry. They surely struck with all the fury that made Celts, Germans and Thracians famous. We might guess that individual cases of valour paid outsized dividends. Let just a few of the enemy break into the line, or allow a strong cavalryman to gallop by and sweep up an enemy soldier, or have an enemy soldier issue a successful challenge to single combat, and a wavering army might turn and run.

However the rebels attacked, the Romans’ response was to panic and flee, disgracing the tradition of the legions. The insurgents’ attack was no doubt terrifying, but a disciplined army would have held its ground. The Romans usually were disciplined: they had long experience fighting barbarians; they had often defeated much larger armies. But in 72 BC neither their training, their trust nor, apparently, their commander was enough to make the legionaries stand firm. One source says that Spartacus defeated Lentulus’s legates and captured all the army’s baggage. Another says that the Romans abandoned the field in great confusion. Another says that Spartacus ‘thoroughly destroyed’ Lentulus’s army. Then he turned on Gellius’s forces and defeated them too; no details survive.

The captured baggage offered Spartacus tools: mess tins, cooking pots, satchels, baskets, iron hooks, leather thongs, spades, shovels, saws, hatchets, axes, scythes and wheelbarrows. There were weapons too, both what could be taken from prisoners or stripped from the dead and what was carried as baggage: from extra arrows and spears to shield covers and neck guards. Cloaks and sandals were probably precious finds. But the greatest treasure was food, carried in wagons drawn by pack animals.

Under Gellius and Lentulus, Romans ran in disorder from the battlefield. Hannibal had crushed Rome’s soldiers at the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC; in the Apennines in 72 BC Spartacus humiliated them. The Carthaginian killed tens of thousands of Romans. The Thracian caused far fewer casualties but he made his point. He now proceeded to hurt Rome’s pride further.

In a speech delivered fifteen years later, in 57 BC, Cicero still remembered Spartacus’s insult. Nothing, said Cicero, could have been ‘more polluted, deformed, perverted or disturbed’. What Spartacus did was to give gladiatorial games for slaves - a spectacle that Rome usually reserved for the free. Spartacus added a bitter twist by reversing roles: he made the slaves spectators and the Romans gladiators.

The occasion was Crixus’s funeral games. The news of his comrade’s death and defeat had reached Spartacus, perhaps via a messenger, perhaps from the survivors of Crixus’s army. To have a pair of gladiators fight at the grave of a great man was an old Italian custom - barbaric to us but in ancient times a sign of honour and respect. Spartacus did not have merely one pair of gladiators fight: rather, he commemorated the fallen Celt by a spectacular ritual. Spartacus called up 300 (or 400, according to another source) Roman prisoners and had them fight to the death around a pyre - a symbol, at least, of Crixus, assuming that his corpse had not been recovered. This was a gladiatorial offering on the grand scale. It was all but human sacrifice: glorious to the memory of the dead, humiliating to the Romans who were about to die, and ennobling to the reputation of the host.

What a morale boost for the men! By attending a gladiatorial game, they declared their freedom. In Rome, funeral games were reserved for victorious generals and for praetors and consuls. By awarding this honour to Crixus, Spartacus asserted equality. He also laid claim, at least implicitly, to being Roman. He wielded Roman symbols as well as if he had been born in Rome itself.

As a gladiator Spartacus had been a man of the lowest social order. As an impresario, Spartacus reached a high status in Roman eyes. Thus, as a Roman writer says, Spartacus had in effect purged himself of all his prior infamy. Meanwhile, he gave Rome a black eye.