Spartacus: Part 3 - The Fall of Spartacus

Here we have Spartacus: runaway gladiator, former Roman soldier, and now a tremendously dangerous revolutionary. We left off with the man at his peak; 70,000 soldiers at his back with a number rising rather than falling, legions of Romans dead in his wake, and now he's marching to Rome itself.

Or so we would think.

He instead chose to go an indirect route, stepping through the revolution-favouring Picenum in hopes of picking up more recruits before hoping to knock off the mud of his sandals on the doormat of Rome. In many ways he followed in the footsteps of Hannibal - possibly able to take the city, but instead delaying, hoping to build up a greater force and attack at a higher level of strength shortly after. This is to some extent a confusing choice, however. He had been denying followers for a short while now (possibly because of a lack of gear, a slightly smaller force being more mobile, requiring less supply, etc.) but was still hoping to build up his army. Tiring of the rural recruits, he hoped for taking cities - the idea was to move from a revolution to a full civil war. Unfortunately, the urban cities just didn't feel it yet for one reason or another.  Perhaps it was too risky, too difficult to disrupt, or the roving band of bandits that had been on the road for so long now were really just too smelly.

In a delightful bit of karma for Crassus'
cruelty, his face will forever be immortalized
on wikipedia immediately beside a man's
genitals. 

The message Spartacus was sending was... almost disappointing, in a sense. We hope for Spartacus following strictly modern, western ideals, sticking to a narrative with a main character that stands up for freedom and justice and, considering where big budget movies come from, all things American. Mel Gibson playing our protagonist in Braveheart 2: Spartacus Hyperdrive in which he periodically yells "FREEDOM!" would probably sell quite well. But Spartacus isn't a movie, and human beings don't typically follow a black-and-white set of motives that make for good television. Spartacus didn't want complete freedom for everyone; in fact, he didn't oppose slavery. He just wanted to uproot the oppressive Roman forces that possessed inhuman levels of brutality. The latter makes for a good film, but it's hard to cheer for someone whom if he had his way would move right back to slavery.

That's if he got his way, of course. Standing in his way was Rome's next champion, Marcus Licinius Crassus. Owner of a tremendous number of slaves, a greater number of land, and so much wealth that Donald Duck would gleefully dive into his pile of coins. He was powerful, well respected, and already with military experience under his belt. Plus, as a side note, he had six new legions to add to the four already out in the field. A no-nonsense tyrant himself, Crassus went to the old-school Roman style (even for then it was old-school) of slaughtering fifty of his own men that returned home unsuccessful. While he was not one to be trifled with, Rome was taking no chances; they were also bringing back another twenty legions of troops from wars they had been fighting overseas. It was a little like being unable to kill an anthill in your backyard, and opting to blow it up with dynamite so you know for darn sure it's gone.

Upon seeing Crassus' army, Spartacus chose to actively retreat in the hopes to lure him further and pressing him to the point of forcing an error. Fortunately for Crassus, Spartacus left too great a gap between forces and dislodged ten thousand from the group, allowing them to be quickly slaughtered without much opposition. It was a morale boost to the Roman soldiers who saw that Spartacus was far from unstoppable, and that these were after all just a group of slave-soldiers who should at the core be no match for the power of a trained and well equipped Roman military machine.

Deciding that the mainland was no longer the place for him as he was unable to find any appreciation from the cities, he had hoped to travel to Sicily to stir rebellion there. Sicily had had issues with rebellions before, and therefore it could be more favourable to his cause. Having cities back him would be critically important to Spartacus' campaign, but there was one key difficulty; he had to travel across too great of a body of water without the help of ships. Further compounding the issue, he wasn't really on great terms with Rome who was able to sell those ships, so much like many young men who cannot or do not wish to purchase things in modern times, he went to a pirate bay for assistance. Offering a large sum of money to give him and his army a safe passage to Sicily, he had hoped to cross the waters and at least temporarily extend the delay of the battle with the large, imposing army of Crassus. Unfortunately for him, the pirates betrayed him and left him stranded without a reasonable way to cross. For this we have no historical reason - possibly a dispute about the payment, possibly because they're pirates and betrayal seems pretty close to their wheelhouse.  Spartacus then decided to create makeshift rafts to cart his equipment and soldiers across the water, but this went just about as well as you would expect. They lost a great amount of supplies and possibly a fair few soldiers to the bottom of the waters. We can only assume they had some variety of pirate curse on them.

All the while they were building rafts and hoping to make an escape across the water, Crassus had men watching over. He was closing in and ready to pounce, but through some clever maneuvering and a few tactical errors by Crassus, Spartacus' group was able to escape and once again go on the run. Eventually, they came to a defensible position. The next major battle had Crassus attacking a once more separated group of 12,000 or so that, similar to the previous time, fell quite quickly while hardly making a dent in the Roman forces. Spartacus was not only on the run, but bleeding badly.

Spoiler: Spartacus doesn't make it. Perhaps he would have
won if he had decided to fight standing up.

Here's another time where the whole "unrelenting freedom fighter" narrative of Spartacus goes a little awry. One would think that a man so hardened against Rome would refuse to give even the slightest sign of weakness, but he actually tried to open negotiations with Crassus and the Romans. Now, it's important to note that this isn't a flat surrender deal; instead, Spartacus had hoped that in doing so it would create a sense of legitimacy for his army rather than just a group of rebels. If they opened negotiations then that meant they were against a rival army - an army that had warranted merit, respect. Regardless of the fact that Crassus denied the negotiations, it still leaves an unsettling taste. Spartacus wasn't a one-hundred percent never-surrender, no-compromise warrior that one may hope when reading of his story. It comes as a little disappointing.

Negotiations shot down, Crassus converged with his 50-60,000 troops, better equipped and with higher morale and with equal numbers to Spartacus' own. He hoped to attack before the other armies of Rome arrived as if they supported him it would be them who took the credit for the fall of Spartacus, as it would appear that they came in to relieve the beleaguered forces of Crassus. Backed in a corner, the revolutionaries had to fight. The battle was an absolute slaughter in favour of the Romans, killing thousands of rebels and rounding up several thousand more. Forever cruel, Crassus lined the road of Capua to Rome with six thousand crucified soldiers of Spartacus. The revolution was a failure, and ultimately nothing seemed to change. You can't help feel a little empty after learning that for the most part it was all for nothing.

Sheesh. This is probably going to be one of the darkest
pictures I post on this blog. 

So what happened to our main man?

Here's where it feels a little more Hollywood. Spartacus, enraged and bloodthirsty, charges into the battle on the front lines. Attempting to make it into a personal battle, he called for Crassus to fight him personally in a duel, flying into the fray in search of his enemy. Defeating two centurions in a two-on-one fight, he continue to yell for the commander to come out and meet his challenge. He reportedly took a javelin to the thigh, threw his shield away and continued to fight off Romans until his death, surrounded by his troops. Apparently (and I'm confused how this happened) his body must have been stolen away by the rebels as it was never found, and thus unable to be desecrated by the Romans who I'm sure would have had a field day with it.

Sigh...

If only he had found Crassus on the battlefield. How cool would that have been?

_________________________

The information from this blog came from Aldo Schiavone's "Spartacus".