The Spartacus War (6 page)

Celtic gladiators were probably a harder sell, since they were unmoved by Thrace’s national god. But they too had a score to settle with the Romans; they too could see just how rich in loot the land around them was. And they would have appreciated Spartacus’s authority, both human and divine.

They might have agreed to join Spartacus but it’s not likely that they agreed to take orders from him. The Celts were as sensitive about status as any people in the ancient world. At feasts, for example, Celtic men sat according to rank. When the meal was served, the bravest man got the ‘hero’s portion’ of meat. If someone challenged his right to it, then, according to Celtic legend, the two men had to fight to the death. So the Celts did not challenge Spartacus to a duel but they did choose two leaders of their own, Crixus and Oenomaus.

We know nothing about the two men. Since they were Celts, they were probably proven warriors, possibly from noble families, and likely to be able to guarantee a large number of followers. Some sources make them Spartacus’s equals, others say that he was commander-in-chief of the rebels. The distinction matters little, because in insurgencies formal command structures count less than informal sources of power: charisma, persuasiveness, supporters and a record of success.

Two hundred men decided to join Spartacus - no small achievement on his part. But most of them never managed to escape because the plot was betrayed. Who leaked the information - a free person or a slave - is not known. We can only guess how Vatia or his agent reacted. He may have locked the doors, had the most dangerous gladiators chained, and called in armed reinforcement. Fortunately for the rebels, some of them reacted quickly. They would have to fight their way out. The only weapons in the house were locked up, so they had to make do with what they could get.

They went to the kitchen. The kitchen was rarely a pleasant part of a Roman house. It was usually small, smoky due to poor ventilation, dirty thanks to its packed dirt floor, and called to do double duty as a latrine. From here the gladiators took cleavers and skewers. Roman cleavers were butcher’s big iron knives that could sever a hand. Skewers, also iron, could easily prove fatal if aimed at soft tissue like the neck and, with enough force, could even kill a man through his chest. The guards, it seems, were well armed and in no short supply: of the 200 conspirators, only 74 gladiators escaped, along with at least one woman, Spartacus’s Thracian companion.

Still, the guards seem to have had their hands full with the gladiators left behind, as the rebels were able to stop on the road not far from the ludus. They had come across some carts loaded with gladiatorial weapons heading for another city. The fugitives got rid of the drivers and helped themselves to the arms. These weren’t as battle worthy as the equipment of Roman legions but they were a major step up from kitchen utensils. Perhaps Spartacus now found a sica, the curved Thracian sword that had been denied to him in the arena. According to one ancient source, Spartacus wielded a sica in his battles.

The runaways were now free but freedom wasn’t enough. As one Roman writer put it: ‘Not satisfied with having made their escape, they also wished to avenge themselves.’ The rebels’ itinerary proves the truth of this analysis.

Capua sat at the crossroads. Highways ran south from the city to Puteoli (modern Pozzuoli) and north to the nearby temple of Diana Tifata and then up the Volturnus (modern Volturno) River valley. Italy’s most famous road, the Appian Way, went north from Capua to Rome and south into the Apennine Mountains at Beneventum (modern Benevento) and, 200 miles beyond, the Adriatic Sea at Brundisium (Brindisi). Finally, there was the Via Annia. This road ran south from Capua to Nola and Nuceria (Nocera), then past Salernum (Salerno) and into the mountains of Lucania (modern Basilicata) and Bruttium (modern Calabria), where it finally ended at Regium (modern Reggio di Calabria), 320 miles from Capua. The gladiators chose this road.

The selection says something about their goals. If their purpose had been escape, they would have taken a different road. For example, they might have headed north, on the overland route out of the peninsula. Or they might have gone into the Apennine Mountains to set up a camp of runaways - what in later days was called a community of maroons (from a Spanish word meaning ‘living on mountaintops’). We know of several maroon communities in Greek and Roman times.

They almost certainly would not have gone to Puteoli, about 20 miles south of Capua. That crowded port offered boats and freedom but it was filled with arms of the law. Besides, Thracians, Celts and Germans tended to be landlubbers and probably preferred to avoid the sea.

They likely walked along the Via Annia, keeping to the sand or gravel path at the edge in order to avoid the hard flagstones of the paved way. Dogs, wolves and bandits were common sights on Roman roads, but armed and runaway gladiators were something new. We can imagine many travellers turning and running when they saw Spartacus’s men. Those who held their ground lost their daggers and wooden clubs if not their lives.

Down the Campanian plain the gladiators went, through the neat, chequerboard pattern of subdivisions that the Romans imposed on the lands they ruled. They travelled past groves and shrines, inns and fountains, and some of Italy’s richest farms, many of them belonging to absentee owners, administered by bailiffs, and worked by slaves. They no doubt stopped here and there to grab meat off a tavern’s fire or to drink from a stream, keeping stones at the ready to fight off watchdogs. Maybe already at the dawn of the revolt they were shouting out to the field hands to join them, but few are likely to have answered the call. The seventy-four desperadoes probably looked more like bandits than freedom fighters. And they no doubt really were bandits to any rich person unlikely enough to come across their path. In any case, a slave needed some enticement before risking the long arm of the Roman law by joining a pack of rebels.

In a way, the gladiators did set up a maroon community, but it was a temporary one, because they picked a place where they could not stay long. They chose Vesuvius. Today Vesuvius calls to mind the volcanic eruption that destroyed Pompeii in AD 79. But in 73 BC the volcano had not erupted for centuries. It was an area of fertile, volcanic soil over which towered Vesuvius, the cherry on top of a rich cake.

The runaways would find plenty to eat. Vesuvius’s woods were thick with game. The plain and the lower slopes of the mountain were filled with working farms: large slave-run estates that the Romans called ‘rustic villas’. There was food and drink for the taking: olives, figs and many other fruit or nut trees flourished, but the main product was the grape, either eaten fresh or made into some of Italy’s most famous wine, the Vesuvinum - exported as far away as India. Ironically, Dionysus, Spartacus’s patron and the god of wine, loomed large in the rites of local farm owners. His image appeared in the decoration of their dining rooms, household shrines, wine cellars and even wine jugs. As for the thousands of slaves who did the real work, with a little coaxing, they might have been ready to follow Dionysus’s chosen men into freedom.

If Spartacus was already planning on going to Vesuvius when he was still in the house of Vatia, he must have had good intelligence. Vesuvius is about 20 miles south of Capua as the crow flies, a day’s journey; it is not visible from the city. Perhaps Spartacus had seen the mountain in an earlier year, either fighting for Sulla in 83 BC or while raiding as a bandit - assuming he really did do either of those two things. Or maybe he had merely heard about Vesuvius and its attractions second-hand, possibly from other slaves. Not only was Vesuvius a gateway to wealth but a fortress as well. For Thracians it had the added advantage of being sacred, since they worshipped the gods on mountaintops.

Standing alone and over 4,000 feet high, Vesuvius made a dramatic pirate’s nest. The mountain offers views northwards of the Campanian plain towards Capua and southwards of the valley of the Sarnus (modern Sarno) River and the rugged Lactarii (modern Lattari) Mountains (on today’s Amalfi peninsula). The Apennine Mountains rise in the east and the Mediterranean Sea lies to the west. Cities such as Naples, Nola, Nuceria, Herculaneum and Pompeii were all in reach. Whoever occupied the mountain would be able to see any attackers coming. Meanwhile, even on a sunny day on the plain, the peak of Vesuvius can be cloud-covered, protecting the defenders with a thick mist.

After the heat and noise of Capua, the cool and peace of the mountain might have been welcome. Even in summer, Vesuvian nights can be chilly. The rebels would have to build fires and steal extra clothes.

It was probably not long after coming to Vesuvius that the gladiators faced a group of armed men from Capua, outfitted with proper weapons and armour. If Capua was like the city of Rome at the time, its police force would have been tiny. So the army sent against the gladiators might well have included men hired by Vatia, perhaps veteran Roman soldiers. The gladiators were unimpressed. They drove off the Capuans and seized their weapons. One ancient writer says the rebels were glad to throw away their gladiatorial weapons because they considered them ‘dishonourable and barbaric’. Perhaps, but they might have been equally glad to add spears and breastplates to their stockpile, both of which were absent from a gladiator’s armoury.

It was probably just a small engagement but it might have been a turning point in the young revolt. We might speculate that news of the gladiators’ victory echoed down the mountain, the sign that some were waiting for: the gladiators had the power to achieve something worth risking one’s life for. In any case, it was around this time that local people began to join them.

The sources tell us that while they were camped on Vesuvius, Spartacus and his men accepted new recruits: ‘many runaway slaves and certain free men from the fields’. One source claims that 10,000 fugitives joined the gladiators on Vesuvius, but running away was risky and the mountain was hard to climb, so ‘several thousand’ is a safer estimate. Some of the slaves were probably Thracians or Celts, like the rebel gladiators, but they also included Germans.

The slaves worked on the estates that ringed Vesuvius. They were a hardy lot. Ploughmen were ideally strong and tall; vineyard workers were supposed to be broad, powerfully built and intelligent. Boys and even young girls looked after farm animals, but only the strongest young men were fit to be herdsmen. Leading cattle, sheep and goats up mountainsides was difficult work, requiring strength, stamina, agility and speed. Gauls were considered to be especially good herdsmen, particularly with horses, donkeys and oxen.

Pasturage would have been a waste of the rich soil around Vesuvius: this was farm country. Ranches tended to be located further south. In Campania, large estates or plantations predominated, typically worked by hundreds of slaves. These were the famous Roman latifundia or ‘wide fields’, to use a term invented in the empire. By day the slaves worked in gangs of, ideally, ten labourers or fewer. At night they were kept in barracks, often in chains. In fact, they sometimes worked in chains as well: in vineyards, for example, because viticulture required intelligent slaves - and brains could lead to trouble.

A privileged group of slave stewards managed the plantation. The key person was the vilicus or bailiff. Since most owners were absentee landlords, the vilicus really ran the estate. His purview ran from settling disputes to leading prayers. He took care of the finances, organized the workforce and oversaw its smooth operation. The vilica, a female official, was also essential: not only was she chief housekeeper on the estate but a teacher and truant officer. She was handy enough to lead the senior slaves in making their own clothes. For all their power, the vilicus and vilica were slaves, and so capable of revolting - and of freeing ordinary slaves from their chains. One of the leaders of the Second Sicilian Slave Revolt (104-100 BC), for example, was a runaway vilicus. Tough and hard-working, farm slaves made good rebels, vilici fine leaders and organizers, and vilicae excellent quartermasters.

So much for slaves; what of the ‘certain free men from the fields’ who joined the rebels? As recruits to Spartacus’s cause, free men brought the perspective of Italian subsistence farmers. By the Late Republic (133-131 BC), the small farmers of Italy had been driven off the best land; in their place came latifundia and ranches. It was the great scandal of the Republic that Rome’s greedy elite so mistreated the farmer-soldiers who had won the Roman Empire. But the smallholders didn’t all disappear or move to the city. They stayed in the countryside, where they scraped by through farming marginal and inaccessible land. Around Pompeii, for example, there were many small farms here and there among the manors.

In order to put more food on the table, some small farmers joined the Roman legions. They became the shock troops of the civil wars between Marius and Sulla, and, later, Caesar and Pompey, Antony and Octavian. Some won new land in reward. Sulla, for instance, gave about 100,000 veteran soldiers land in Italy, much of it simply taken from his enemies, the former supporters of Marius, who were evicted. Some of those Marians fled to Spain, to join the rebel Sertorius, but most stayed in Italy. Some worked as tenant-farmers or day labourers for the new owners. Others turned to that classic activity of the Italian countryside - they became bandits, a word that is Italian in origin. So did some of Sulla’s veterans who failed on their new farms because of bad harvests, hostile neighbours or hard-driving creditors.

But few small farmers did anything so dramatic; most survived by doing seasonal and occasional labour for the well-to-do villa owners. They were the Roman equivalent of today’s migrant workers. The Roman elite needed them and frowned on them. They are essential for harvesting grapes and cutting hay, says the Roman writer Varro; but you have to watch them carefully, says the statesman Cato the Elder, or they will steal your firewood.