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Spartacus' real origins are unclear as the ancient sources do not agree on where he came from, although he was probably a native of Thrace (now Bulgaria). All this is clearly part of Roman propaganda that aims to present Spartacus as somebody very special, and in this way to try to reduce the sense of shame and humiliation felt by the master class when it had been defeated by farm labourers, kitchen skivvies and gladiators. His wife is said to have been a priestess, and so on and so forth. He is said to be endowed with superhuman attributes. Other Roman historians attempt to make him out to be of royal blood, for exactly the same reason. Only in this way could the Roman commentators begin to come to terms with the fact that “mere slaves” had defeated their invincible legions. A man who defeated one Roman army after another and brought the Republic to its knees had to be possessed of extraordinary qualities. These words by an enemy present Spartacus in a personally favourable light, which requires an explanation. “And seizing upon a defensible place, they chose three captains, of whom Spartacus was chief, a Thracian of one of the nomad tribes, and a man not only of high spirit and valiant, but in understanding, also, and in gentleness superior to his condition, and more of a Grecian than the people of his country usually are.” Through this distorting mirror one can only catch tantalising glimpses of the real Spartacus. Trying to understand Spartacus from these sources is like trying to understand Lenin and Trotsky from the slanderous writings of the bourgeois enemies of the Russian Revolution. History is always written by the victors, and they faithfully reflect the interests, psychology and class bias of the ruling class. There were other leaders of the revolt whose names have come down to us: Crixus, Castus, Gannicus and Oenomaus – gladiators from Gaul and Germania. The surviving historical records are all written by Roman historians and therefore hostile. What little information we have is from accounts written by his mortal enemies. It is always the victors who write history and the voice of the slaves throughout the centuries can be heard only through the accounts of the oppressors.
#WHO WAS SPARTACUS FULL#
In the end the full force of the Roman army was needed to crush the revolt.ĭespite his well-deserved fame as a great revolutionary leader and one of the most outstanding generals of antiquity, not much is known about Spartacus the man. Under his leadership, a tiny band of rebel gladiators grew into a huge revolutionary army, numbering about 100,000. 109 BC-71 BC) was the leader (or possibly one of several leaders) of the massive slave uprising known as the Third Servile War. In the first century BC, a slave named Spartacus threatened the might of Rome.