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A gladiator’s grand ideals

THE SPARTACUS WAR
By Barry Strauss
288 pp. Simon & Schuster $26

Reviewed by Tony Williams

An historian who tackles the story of the ancient slave revolt most of us know from Stanley Kubrick’s classic epic movie does not lack courage—especially since the written sources about the enigmatic Spartacus are scarce. Moreover, the image of rebel slave leaders has been co-opted for ideological purposes by Ronald Reagan and Communists alike. In The Spartacus War, Barry Strauss presents an historical portrait of Spartacus to a mass audience.

An academic who has popularized the study of ancient history, having written books on the Battle of Salamis and the Trojan War, Strauss combines masterful storytelling with keen professorial ability to assess the written and archaeological record. Wrestling with stories that often lack copious historical sources, he courageously and confidently tackles subjects that might frighten away lesser historians. The deeply satisfying result is Spartacus, which could appeal to anyone who loves to curl up with a fine book—history lover or not.

He begins with the Spartacus slave revolt in 73 B.C., an event hardly remarkable in the Roman world. The difference, the author tells us, is that Spartacus and his small band of compatriots were gladiators: “a group of men who were licensed to kill.” Its leader had also served in a Roman auxiliary unit where he learned its tactics and discipline. This particular revolt might have been brutally crushed like others had Rome not been engaged in a two-front war that diverted its armies and attention.

Wielding kitchen knives, the gladiators made a dramatic prison break, then defeated a local police force, stole weapons, and increased numbers mostly comprised of rural slaves. The growing multiethnic force that assembled on Mount Vesuvius included Thracians, Germans, and Celts, who were renowned for their martial ardor.

But this raises the question of why they revolted in the first place. Strauss is simply not terribly clear. Spartacus was “a man of destiny,” the author tells us. He was a “man of passion, thirsting for freedom.” But the revolt was neither to free slaves generally, nor to escape into freedom far from the clutches of the Roman Republic. If we learn little of the why, Strauss does not fall short on the how of the Spartacus revolt.

The story of Spartacus, Strauss argues, is “a classic study of an insurgency, led by a genius at guerrilla tactics, and of a counterinsurgency, led by a conventional power that slowly and painfully learned how to beat the enemy at his own game.”

The Roman Senate dispatched a praetor to raise what amounted to a militia and defeat an adversary barely worthy of its notice. Time after time, Spartacus prudently refused to meet the Roman army in pitched battle, expertly using guerrilla tactics to rout them soundly, even capturing several battle standards. The rebels’ experience steadily grew, as did their weapon supply, allowing them to defeat larger and larger forces sent against them, primarily in southern Italy.

Spartacus and his rebel army eventually made their way north towards the Alps and permanent freedom. Inexplicably, however, they turned around and headed back into the wolf’s den. What they sought to achieve is hard to fathom. Surely they knew that the idea of assailing Rome itself was fantastical. Surely they understood that they would eventually be defeated and face execution. Strauss tries to reason through their thinking, stating that Spartacus or his men may have been seized by “victory disease” and held a false hope that they might see “Rome in flames.”

The rebel army numbered at least 40,000 (sources conflict wildly), but split over divisions in goals between Spartacus and the Celtic rebel leader, Crixus. The rash Celt engaged the Roman army directly, and paid for his imprudence with his life and that of his men. Moreover, Spartacus faced an even more daunting enemy—his own principles. His rebels had “thrown away their chains; they did not want new ones.” Would they bow to his commands or serve no one but themselves? As Strauss puts it, “Freedom built his army and freedom could destroy it.”

Eventually, it was Marcus Licinius Crassus who defeated Spartacus. Crassus followed the three-fold plan of “location, isolation, and eradication.” He knew the local terrain of southern Italy, and inspired discipline in his men that previous armies had lacked. He was patient, and severely punished those of his own men who prematurely attacked the rebel army.

Spartacus, outmatched, attempted to flee across the Strait of Messina to Sicily. Double-dealing pirates and the treacherous currents that gave rise to the myth of Scylla and Charybdis thwarted him. Crassus funneled Spartacus’ forces into the mountains, forcing them to confront the Romans directly. Spartacus died in battle, though slightly less dramatically than on film. His army was destroyed, and approximately 6,000 prisoners were executed in arguably the ancient world’s largest mass crucifixion.

What all of this meant is less clear. “Spartacus’ defeat was both a failure of the intellect and of the imagination,” the author explains, “But he offered grand ideals nonetheless.” Gladiators were hired guns in the political struggles of the Civil War, and Spartacus’ war influenced Caesar in Gaul. Nevertheless, the significance and effects of the Spartacus war are left a bit vague by the author. Maybe they were to the participants as well.

Strauss’ Spartacus will remain the standard popular history. Those seeking an interpretive history can comb through his bibliography for an obscure scholarly article; those who want to read a well-told reconstruction of a gripping tale shrouded in myth and mystery need look no further.

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Tony Williams is a full-time author and historian who lives in Williamsburg, Virginia, with his wife and children. He is the author of Hurricane of Independence: The Untold Story of the Deadly Storm at the Deciding Moment of the American Revolution (Sourcebooks, 2008), and the forthcoming Franklin and Mather's Pox: The Great Boston Smallpox Epidemic of 1721 and the Fall of Puritanism scheduled for publication by Sourcebooks in October 2009.

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