Spartacus: A Study in Revolutionary History. Francis Ambrose Ridley 1944
The final act in the tremendous drama represented by the Servile War had now opened. It was a fight to the finish between Spartacus and Crassus, between Rome and the revolution. The campaign that raged through the early months of 71 BC was swift, bloody and ruthless. If it ended in the victory of Rome, this was at least as much due to the endemic insubordination characteristic of a slave army composed of many nationalities as it was to the military power of the Roman war machine. Even from our extant fragmentary accounts, it is clear that Spartacus displayed, throughout, military genius of the highest order, coupled with that personal magnanimity in coming to the aid even of deserters, that we have already noted in the case of Crixus. Spartacus’ final campaign, his ‘1814’ so to speak, was as brilliant as was Napoleon’s swan-song in that year. If, similarly, it was a barren masterpiece that ended in final disaster, that also was due to circumstances that lay in the nature of the times.
The first intention of Spartacus in marching north after escaping from the Roman cage in the opening days – as far as we can compute – of 71 BC was to attempt to reach Sicily but by a more circuitous route. He intended to march on the great Adriatic port of Brundusium (Brindisi) and, seizing the shipping in its harbour, sail thence to Sicily, there, from his island stronghold, to wage permanent war against Rome. But this strategically sound plan was frustrated by the arrival of the Governor of Macedonia, Marcus Lucullus, with his army, in obedience to the orders of the Senate. Cut off from the sea by Lucullus, and without siege artillery wherewith to force walled towns, Spartacus and the slaves had now no option but to turn at bay, and, if possible, defeat the pursuing army of Crassus before it could effect a junction with either Lucullus or the formidable Pompey, now on en route from Spain with his veteran legions.
At this precise moment of extreme danger, when it was ‘make or break’ for the slaves, another breakaway took place in their army which destroyed any chance that Spartacus might still have had of defeating the Romans. The causes of this fatal split were similar to those which had, earlier on, characterised the breakaway of Crixus and Oenomaus: that is, jealousy of the superior personality of Spartacus and an overwhelming desire for aimless and indiscriminate plunder. (Jealousy was a vice endemic amongst slaves, whose masters habitually played them off against each other.)
Under two Gauls, Castus and Gannicus, the remaining Celts and Germans who had survived the massacre on Mount Garganus formed a separate camp from that of Spartacus and went off plundering on their own, carrying with them the captured eagles and consular insignia which Spartacus had taken during his earlier victories.
Consequently, when Dives came up from the south, he confronted two separate and uncoordinated armies. Eager to finish off the war before his dreaded rival Pompey returned from Spain, Crassus utilised to the full the old adage to which his countrymen owed so much: ‘Divide and Rule.’ Crassus concentrated on the Gauls as his obvious prey and surprised their camp by a forced march whilst they were encamped near the Lucanian Lake in the course of a plundering raid. The Roman superiority in numbers and equipment was too much for the brave but undisciplined Gauls, and Castus, Gannicus and their men would have shared the fate of their predecessors Crixus and Oenomaus, had not Spartacus come to their rescue and arrived on the scene just in time. With the magnanimity that he had shown in the case of Crixus, Spartacus hurried to the assistance of the deserters. A rapid forced march and a masterly tactical manoeuvre outflanked the attacking Romans, and Crassus, perforce, beat a hasty retreat to escape total destruction.
‘Once bitten, twice shy.’ Unfortunately, Castus and Gannicus remained impervious to this wise proverb. Undeterred by their narrow escape from complete destruction, the Gauls again pitched their camp separately from that of their saviour, Spartacus. We may, perhaps, charitably assume that shortage of food was a factor which compelled the slave army to resort to these suicidal divisions in the face of the enemy. At any rate, whether due to this reason or to sheer ‘cussedness’ on the part of the Gauls, these last soon learnt by bitter experience the truth of that profound epigram of a modern British politician (Lord Melbourne): ‘Let us, at all costs, hang together, gentlemen. Otherwise, we shall hang separately.’
For Crassus, who had every reason a man could have for wanting to finish the war quickly, soon tried again. This time he demonstrated considerable military skill. His cavalry made a feint against the camp of Spartacus, which kept the Thracian busy. Meanwhile, Crassus, with his infantry, made a lightning dash with the object of surprising the Gauls. He would undoubtedly have succeeded had not the Gauls, who were carelessly camped by the River Silarus, been roused by two women who had risen earlier to offer sacrifice to the gods for the safety of their army, and caught sight of the advancing Romans. As it was, the Gauls had just time to form in battle order before the Roman legions arrived.
The resulting battle of the Silarus was desperate to the point of extermination, and it ended in the literal annihilation of the army of Castus and Gannicus. When the battle ended the whole Celtic army, 10,200 in all, lay dead in serried unbroken ranks: only two, out of all this host, having attempted to fly and been cut down from behind! This time there was no Spartacus to save them at the last moment. The Roman losses were, no doubt, proportionately heavy, but their victory was overwhelming from a tactical standpoint. Moreover, the prestige and self-respect of the imperial race were enormously gratified by the recapture of the five legionary eagles (standards) and the consular insignia taken by the slaves after the rout of the consuls in the Apennines. [1]
The end of the Servile War was in sight. The strategic position of Spartacus was now desperate. Faced by the numerically superior army of Crassus, cut off from the sea by Lucullus, and with the formidable Spanish army of Pompey coming by forced marches to Rome, Spartacus retired into the hilly country of Calabria to prolong the now hopeless struggle by guerrilla warfare. Crassus followed him eagerly, sending on his subordinate Scrofas with an advance guard to harass and delay his movements and, if possible, bring him to battle before Pompey and Lucullus arrived to share his glory as the conqueror of the most terrible servile insurrection in classical history.
The Thracian lion, however, was not yet trapped, and had a last spring left. The Roman advance guard, which hung on the rear of the retreating slave army, became too impatient: it came closer and closer. Finally, it came too close, and the lion turned – and leapt! The Romans marched into an ambush, from which the survivors barely rescued their wounded leader, and fled precipitately to the camp of Crassus. Spartacus was invincible! Single-handed, Crassus could not finish him off. Reluctantly he prepared to retreat and await reinforcement by the armies of Pompey and Lucullus before making his final effort.
The victorious ambuscade was, however, the last victory that Spartacus was destined to enjoy before the curtain finally fell on the slave revolution. A tactical success, it proved to be, ultimately, a strategic disaster. For the slaves, flushed with victory and, presumably, desperate for lack of food and shelter, clamoured for battle. Was not Spartacus invincible? And was not vengeance due for the overthrow of the Gauls at the hand of Crassus?
Spartacus appears to have stood out against this suicidal clamour. The odds were now too unequal. But the slaves continued to clamour, and there was, in any case, nothing else but a slow war of exhaustion, with the odds ultimately weighed overwhelmingly against the slaves. Only a miracle could save them. But this had also been the case in Rhegium and the Apennines, and, in both cases, Spartacus had wrought the necessary miracle which had saved an apparently lost army. Might he not do it yet again, and was not Rome on her last legs, as was irrefutably demonstrated by her despairing recall of her frontier armies? One more victory and the tyrant of the world was down! Anyway, better take even a desperate risk than the slow, inglorious man-hunt which was now the sole alternative to giving battle, with the lash and the cross at its inevitable end.
So, no doubt, reasoned the slaves, and, if so, their reasoning was sound; it was ‘do or die’. Spartacus, too, may have come to agree with his battle-drunk followers. There was nothing else to do except to tempt Providence in a final fling. Anyhow, Spartacus had no official authority over the slaves, nor could he stand against their wishes. He was, after all, only general by election and because of his proven merits. If his army must fight, fight it should!
The final battle of the Servile War, which ended the insurrection of the slaves and which witnessed the death of Spartacus and the destruction of his army, took place near Petelia (near Strongoli in Calabria), some time in March 71 BC, in the early spring. [2]
The battle itself seems to have been unpremeditated by either army and to have been due to the reckless impetuosity of the advance-guard of the slaves, who made a sudden attack on the Roman army as it was striking camp for the day’s march. Crassus, eager to end the war, accepted battle, and Spartacus, finding his vanguard heavily engaged without his orders, had either to leave them to their fate, single-handed, against the whole Roman army, or to accept a general engagement. The gladiator-general took the latter course and advanced his whole line.
Before battle was finally joined, Spartacus made a spectacular gesture that showed his realisation that all was at stake and his determination to conquer or die; before ordering the attack, he dismounted from his horse and cut its throat before the whole army. After which he made a brief speech, as was customary in classical armies before engaging the enemy: ‘If we conquer’, he said, ‘we shall have all the horses we desire; if we lose, we shall not need them.’ With these words, Spartacus, on foot, placed himself at the head of the attacking slave columns, and the final battle opened. [3]
The battle of Petelia ended in the rout of the slaves; without cavalry and fresh equipment, such a result was virtually inevitable. No details of this battle are recorded by our authorities, except the end of Spartacus himself. For, finally, when he saw that his last battle was over and lost, Spartacus made a last effort to hew his way through the Roman ranks and to cut down Crassus in a desperate rally. But he could not come to Crassus, though he cut down two centurions who barred his path; and when the rout began and all the rest had fled, he stood his ground, and even when beaten to his knees by an arrow, continued to fight on until he was cut down; dying the death of an epic hero, as even the hostile historian Florus admits, ‘dying, as became a general, fighting most bravely in the front rank’.
So [declares a modern historian] perished the heroic gladiator, who had moulded herdsmen, brigands and outcasts into a victorious army, supplied them with weapons and equipment, contrived during two years to feed them and to keep them together, done all that man could do to protect the innocent from their lust and vengeance, nine times defeated Roman armies, and compelled the Roman government to put forth their whole available power and to commission their most illustrious general to subdue him. [4]
It can, indeed, hardly be questioned that Spartacus, seeing what he did, with what, and against what odds, was a military genius of the first rank. And that, had he fought the battles of the propertied class instead of the despised slaves, official history, instead of ungraciously patronising him, would have celebrated the Thracian gladiator as one of the greatest captains of all times. If one takes into account the overwhelming superiority of their current resources in trained troops, equipment and finance, over Spartacus’ half-armed and improvised hordes of slaves, it is obvious that the military exploits of the greatest generals in history were in no way superior to those of Spartacus. In making historical judgements in a class society, considerations of class frequently carry more weight than those of impartial science!
The ill-luck of the slaves did not end on the battlefield; 5000 fugitives who escaped from the rout were intercepted by the returning legions of Pompey in Etruria and cut to pieces. The Servile War was over, and to the fury of Crassus, the actual victor, his worst fears were realised, and Pompey, who had merely struck the last blow by intercepting the fugitives, was hailed by Rome as the real conqueror of the slaves. Crassus had still eighteen years to live, but he never became Dictator, nor, for that matter, did Pompey either. The young-man-about-town, the prodigal spendthrift, Caius Julius Caesar, who took nothing seriously except his love affairs, eventually carried off the glittering prize and became the first Emperor of Rome!
The great revolution of the slaves was over. The slaves were down, and the Roman plutocracy was determined that, never again, should there be another slave insurrection, or another slave army at the gates of Rome: there should be no second Spartacus! Now it was to be ‘vae victis’ ('woe to the conquered’); 3000 Roman prisoners were found alive in the camp of Spartacus, and there were 6000 slaves who had been made prisoners. The slaves might spare their prisoners: the Roman ‘herrenvolk’ (master-race) had no time for such sentimental nonsense!
There followed upon the victory of Crassus one of those recurring ‘white terrors’ that have periodically stained the pages of ruling-class history, from the days of Crassus to those of ‘the Paris Commune’ and of General Franco. Throughout Italy organised man-hunts of slaves took place. Meanwhile, as Crassus marched up to Rome from the south, he planned a spectacular vengeance. The rules of war did not apply to slaves. For such ‘untouchables’ the cross was the traditional and appropriate punishment. So, outside Rome, Crassus gave his last order as commander-in-chief before handing back his temporary dictatorship to the Senate; outside Rome, on the great Roman highway, the Appian Way, he nailed up alive the whole 6000 survivors of the army of Spartacus on crosses. The slaves had got as far as the gates of Rome, and there they should stop – for ever.
For several days the ghastly mass of putrefying human misery quivered in the spring sunlight. Then with the final expiring groan of the last victim, the Roman slaves took their last farewell of history. Thereafter there were no more slave risings; the entire slave world, with its unutterable fears and aspirations, took refuge in that subterranean world beneath the threshold of (ruling-class) history, in which ‘the ancient lowly’, like the lowly of all ages, dwell in eternal obscurity.
Dives’ act of spectacular vengeance was celebrated in antiquity, and, from the point of view of ‘the Senate and People of Rome’, it served its purpose. If there was another Spartacus in antiquity, he got no chance to rise above the surface of history. It is interesting to note that, as far as we know, no moralist amongst the many in antiquity protested against the human forest of crosses on the Appian Way. This, also, has its modern parallels. In class wars ‘all is permissible'; as long, of course, as it is done by the ruling class, in the sacred names of Law, Order and the Preservation of Civilisation!
It only remains to add that Crassus himself died violently, fighting against the Parthians, the eastern enemies of Rome, in 53 BC. By an ironic act of poetic justice, his severed head was exhibited on the Parthian stage during a performance of the famous Greek drama, the Bacchae of Euripides, the scene of which is Spartacus’ native land, Thrace!
Henceforth, the classical civilisation, unreformed by science and unrenewed by revolution, entered upon an ever-steeper decline as it plunged inexorably downwards towards the final abyss. Until a little Jew from Tarsus brewed a powerful drug of spiritual opium, under whose intoxicating spell, and seeing rapturous visions of another world, the ancient civilisation finally passed away in its sleep.
Note: Why Slave Revolutions Usually Fail: The defeat of the slaves was, as is evident from our authorities’ admissions, largely due to their own inherent weaknesses. Slavery inevitably degrades the slave. Homer expressed what is, unfortunately, a sociological truth when he wrote that ‘the slave loses half his manhood’. In an army composed of slaves, jealousy and insubordination are virtually inevitable, and we have seen already what havoc they played in the case of Spartacus. To keep a slave army together is almost impossible. Only an overwhelming personality and a military genius could have done what Spartacus did.
In point of fact, I can only recall one slave insurrection that was permanently successful, that of Toussaint L'Ouverture and the Negroes in the West Indian island of Haiti at the end of the eighteenth century. And it is no disparagement of that heroic black ‘Spartacus’, himself a man of comparable calibre to the great gladiator, to admit that the circumstances were quite exceptional. Had it not been for the pestilential West Indian climate and for the French lack of maritime power, it is extremely doubtful whether even the genius of Toussaint could have steered the great Negro slave revolution to final victory. I do not recall any other historic example of a permanently successful slave insurrection. [5]
1. See Plutarch, Lives: Life of Crassus (Heinemann, London, 1916); Thomas Rice Edward Holmes, The Roman Republic and the Founder of the Empire (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1928).
2. We do not know the exact date, but games were celebrated in Capua, where the revolt had originally started, in honour of its suppression, on 1 April of that year.
3. From the above remark we may reasonably conjecture that the slaves had no cavalry left and that Spartacus preferred to lead his men on foot as was the usual custom in barbaric warfare, as described by Tacitus and other ancient authors. See Tacitus, Germania (Harper, New York, 1847).
4. Thomas Rice Edward Holmes, The Roman Republic and the Founder of the Empire (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1928).
5. See CLR James, The Black Jacobins (Secker and Warburg, London, 1938).