Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome (41 page)

convincing, but it is true that the slaves found al ies among the free poor.

When the First Sicilian revolt broke out, “the citizen masses . . . rejoiced

because they were jealous at inequities of wealth and differences in

lifestyle.” Instead of helping suppress the insurgency, “the free masses,

Slave Wars of Greece and Rome 197

because of their jealousy, would go out into the countryside on the pre-

text of attacking the runaways and plunder the property there, and even

burn down the farms.”24
In the Second Sicilian war, says one source,

“Turmoil and an Iliad of woes possessed al Sicily. Not only slaves but

impoverished freemen were guilty of rapine and lawlessness.”25

Ever agile, Spartacus tried both strategies: he attempted to break

out and escape abroad, but also sought allies. His original plan, once

the revolt caught fire, was to march into northern Italy and then have

his men split into separate groups and cross the Alps, where they would

seek their respective homelands. The plan failed, however, because of

division among his men. Spartacus was never able to impose his author-

ity on the ethnically heterogeneous group of rebels who fought with

him. They consisted of large numbers of Celts and Germans as well as

Thracians and other groups, many of whom resisted his commands.

Besides, success spoiled them: their many victories encouraged them

to stay in Italy. A veteran soldier, Spartacus knew better: he understood

that Rome would pull together a trained and experienced army that no

ragtag insurgency could defeat, no matter how long they drilled.

So it happened. Marcus Licinius Crassus gained a special command

and raised a big, new army. Many of the recruits were probably vet-

erans who had fought for Sulla in Rome’s civil wars a decade earlier;

others were brought into line by the iron discipline that Crassus im-

posed. For good measure, the Roman army recalled its legions from

Spain, where Pompey (Caius Pompeius Magnus) had just defeated the

rebels. With the handwriting on the wall, Spartacus convinced his men

to retreat south and to try to cross the Strait of Messina to Sicily. He

hoped to renew his fortunes there, either by starting a third slave war

or perhaps by using the island as a stepping-stone to escape across the

sea. But first he had to cross the strait.

Not having any boats himself, Spartacus tried to hire pirates who,

in those days, used Sicily as a base for raids. It was not his first expe-

rience in alliances with free men. The Thracian gladiator had found

support in the early days of his rebellion from “many runaway slaves

and certain free men from the fields.”26 He may have even gained some

backing from southern Italian elites, either because of their simmering

enmity to Roman rule or because Spartacus had bought them.

198 Strauss

Returning to the pirates: they came from southern Anatolia or

Crete, considered themselves enemies of Rome, and had a history of

alliance with Rome’s main enemy in the east, Mithridates. Hence, they

represented a promising collaborator. After taking Spartacus’s money,

however, the pirates left him and his men on the Italian shore. It was

either a case of simple dishonesty or fear of the Roman governor of

Sicily, Caius Verres. Immortalized by Cicero for his corruption, Verres

in fact seems to have taken energetic action to fortify Sicily’s shoreline

and arrest slave troublemakers around the island. He plausibly also ne-

gotiated with the pirates himself, and may simply have outbid Sparta-

cus. Afterward, the Thracian tried to get across the strait another way,

by having his men build rafts, but they foundered in the winter waves.

It is also possible that Spartacus made contact with Mithridates, as the

Roman rebel Sertorius had done a few years earlier, from Spain. Mith-

ridates later used his knowledge of Spartacus’s rebellion as a rhetorical

device to try to stir up a Celtic invasion of Italy (it didn’t materialize). In

any case, Spartacus found no new allies. The slaves were stuck in Italy.

The endgame differed little in essentials when it came to each of the

two Sicilian slave wars and Spartacus. The rebels of the First Sicilian

Slave War managed to defeat in pitched battle several Roman armies,

whose forces they greatly outnumbered, and to take several cities. Af-

ter Rome’s humiliating defeats, the consul Publius Rupilius laid siege

to the two main rebel cities and each time found a traitor to open the

gates. Then he engaged in mopping-up operations around the island.

After a series of incompetent generals failed to put down the second re-

bellion, the consul Manius Aquilius rose to the occasion. He killed the

rebel king in single combat, which would have won him Rome’s high-

est military honor had his opponent been a free man and not a slave.

Spartacus had defeated nine Roman armies, but he could not stand

up to Crassus’s revitalized forces. First Crassus tried to blockade him in

the mountains of the toe of the Italian boot, in winter 72–71 BC, which

the Romans sealed with a massive project of wal s and trenches. Sparta-

cus fought his way out, but at great cost. Pressed on his march north-

ward by the enemy, Spartacus final y gave battle, probably in the upper

val ey of the Silarus (modern Sele) River, not far from the modern city

of Salerno. The Romans defeated the enemy army and kil ed Spartacus.

Slave Wars of Greece and Rome 199

Contrary to popular legend, Spartacus was not crucified, although

6,000 of his men were. Their bodies hung on crosses lining the road be-

tween the cities of Rome and Capua (near Naples, the cradle of Sparta-

cus’s rebellion). Spartacus’s body, however, was never found. After the

battle of the Silarus, Spartacus’s army ceased to exist as a fighting unit.

It broke up into several groups. The Romans hunted them down spo-

radically, destroying the last of their maroon communities in the hills

of southern Italy only in 60 BC.

Spartacus’s failure marked the end of the great era of ancient slave

revolts. Sporadic uprisings continued, such as the revolt of one Selouros

in Sicily during the lifetime of the writer Strabo (d. after AD 21), a na-

scent slave rebellion in southern Italy in AD 24, and what may have been

a slave revolt under Bulla Felix in Italy in AD 206–7.27 The big uprisings,

however, were over.

Several things caused the change. The Romans engaged in effective

repression. First came the spectacles of punishment following each

failed rebellion. Second, as demonstrated by Verres’s actions in Sicily

while he waited for Spartacus, the Romans finally learned not to take

the threat of rebellion lightly. Another factor was the series of civil

wars from 49 to 30 BC, which provided employment opportunities for

discontented slaves. There was no need to form an army of their own,

for example, when 30,000 fugitive slaves could join the rebel fleet of

Sextus Pompey (son of Pompeius Magnus), who dominated the waters

of Sicily from 43 to 36 BC.28

Perhaps the most important factor was the Pax Romana. The acces-

sion of Augustus as Rome’s first emperor (30 BC–AD 14) brought to an

end the era of Roman expansion. With it came an inevitable decline in

the number of prisoners of war who became slaves. Earlier, in the 60s

BC, Pompey (Pompeius Magnus) had succeeded in driving most of the

pirates from Mediterranean waters, thereby ending another source of

slaves. While the Roman slave trade continued, sources of slaves were no

longer so abundant or so cheap. The upshot was that a higher percent-

age of Roman slaves were house slaves. No longer did a steady source

of ex-soldiers and ex-politicians feed the ranks of potential slave rebels.

More and more slaves probably resigned themselves to their new

homes in Italy and Sicily and looked to manumission, not insurrection,

200 Strauss

as the route to freedom. Greek and Roman slavery always offered man-

umission on far more generous terms than did modern slave societies.

To say so is not to detract from the brutality of ancient slavery, but it

may help explain why men like Spartacus eventually became monsters

to frighten children with rather than real figures of Roman society.

In modern times, Spartacus’s reputation has generally boomed.

Except for Arthur Koestler, the disillusioned ex-communist who saw

Spartacus as a kind of post-revolution Lenin, corrupted by power, most

moderns praise Spartacus. They see him as a liberator or an early social-

ist; the nineteenth century made him into a nationalist like Garibaldi.

If, however, we were to subject Spartacus or Drimacus, Salvius or

Eunus, to the cold light of a military staff-college seminar, a different

picture would emerge. From a military point of view, they demon-

strate the unlikelihood of insurrections defeating regular armies. The

ragtag rebel slaves of Greece and Rome could not match the logistical

advantages and institutional advantages of an established state. They

could march their men in mock legions and defeat frightened local mi-

litia; they could put out feelers for allies overseas. Once the state bore

down on them with all its might, however, they faced ruin.

Nor could slaves attract much voluntary support from local popula-

tions of free people, who could figure out that in the end, most rebels

would end up in chains or hanging from crosses. After their initial

escape, and after making enough raids to get loot and revenge, rebel

slaves were well advised to flee, either to the hills or abroad.

There is a lesson for today. Insurgents can crash onto the scene as

loudly as Spartacus and his rebel gladiators did. They can rally religious

support and terrorize local populations. They can draw other discon-

tented people into their ranks at first. They can even come out of the

hills and try to establish their authority over a city or a province. Once

the state responds in all its armed might, however, the rebels are usu-

ally doomed.

Modern insurgencies will usually face a similar fate. In Iraq, for ex-

ample, once the allied states found the political will and the military

tactics to apply force effectively, they broke the back of the insurgency

(2003–9). Still, success is not completely out of reach for insurgents.

They can change the equation through one of several means, all

Slave Wars of Greece and Rome 201

unlikely but not impossible. For instance, they can buy time and space

to turn themselves from a raiding force into a regular army. Having

an isolated location, far from the center of power, helps this process

greatly. The experience of the Chinese communist Red Army after the

Long March of 1934 is an example. A second possibility is acquiring a

state as an ally. The mujahideen of Afghanistan leveraged support from

such states as China, Iran, Pakistan, and the United States into victory

over the Soviet Red Army in the 1980s.

Today’s insurgents, finally, have one advantage that antiquity’s rebel

slaves did not: they can target domestic opinion in the enemy’s state.

In the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62), for example, the insur-

gents lost the military battle but won the war by wearing out French

public opinion.

The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) was history’s only successful

slave revolt, and it incorporated these various advantages. The rebels

fought a prolonged struggle, far from metropolitan France. The Brit-

ish fleet provided help via a blockade. The French Revolution gave the

rebels the moral high ground. After years of difficult fighting and dis-

ease, the French gave up.

Successful insurgencies are the exception, however. Ancient slave

rebellions remind us that, when it comes to war, states usually hold all

the cards.

Further Reading

An excellent starting point is Brent D. Shaw,
Spartacus and the Slave Wars: A Brief History

with Documents
(Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2001). Theresa Urbainczyk,
Slave Revolts

in Antiquity
(Stocksfield, UK: Acumen Publishing, 2008), offers a very good overview.

For slave rebellions in ancient Greece, see Yvon Garlan,
Slavery in Ancient Greece
, rev.

ed., trans. Janet Lloyd (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), 176–200; for those in

ancient Rome, see Keith Bradley,
Slavery and Rebellion in the Roman World
,
140 b.c.–70 b.c.

(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989).

Important books on ancient slavery include M. I. Finley,
Ancient Slavery and Modern

Ideology
(Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1998); Joseph Vogt,
Ancient Slavery

and the Ideal of Man
, trans. Thomas Wiedemann (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press, 1975); Keith Hopkins,
Conquerors and Slaves
(Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1978); Peter Garnsey,
Ideas of Slavery from Aristotle to Augustine
(Cambridge: Cam-