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  Adopted from the earlier Etruscans, perhaps by way of Campania, gladiatorial games ( munera ) originated in the rites of sacrifice due the spirits of the dead and the need to propitiate them with offerings of blood. They were introduced to Rome in 264 BC, when the sons of Junius Brutus honored their father by matching three pairs of gladiators. Traditionally,  munera  were the obligatory funerary offerings owed aristocratic men at their death, although the games did not have to be presented then. Elected  aedile  in 65 BC, Julius Caesar commemorated his father, who had died twenty years before, with a display of 320 pairs of gladiators in silvered armor (Pliny,  Natural History , XXXIII.53: Plutarch,  Life of Julius Caesar , V.9). Still mindful of the rebellion of Spartacus, a nervous Senate limited the number of gladiators allowed in Rome (Suetonius,  Life of Julius Caesar , X.2). In 46 BC, after recent victories in Gaul and Egypt, Caesar again...

"possessed not only of great courage and strength, but also in sagacity and culture superior to his fortune..." Plutarch, (VIII.2) A Thracian by birth who had been sold as a slave to a gladiatorial school in Capua, Spartacus was one of seventy-eight men who escaped and took refuge in the caldera of Mt. Vesuvius (Plutarch,  Life of Crassus ,   VIII.2). By 72 BC, as other fugitive slaves and freedmen joined, they grew to an army of seventy thousand (Appian,  Civil Wars , I.116). Defeating the legions sent against them, Spartacus and his men fought their way to Cisapline Gaul, from where they intended to disperse to their homelands. But then, inexplicitly, they marched south again for more plunder. The Senate, which had dismissed the threat as no more than the brigandage of gladiators and slaves, appointed Marcus Licinius Crassus (reputedly the richest man in Rome and later, a member of the First Triumvirate) to put down what was regarded as an insurrection that now had last...

  Alessandro13   In 84 AD, the Roman legions, commanded by the governor of Britain Gnaeus Julius Agricola, marched towards the north of the island to put an end once and for all to the resistance of the Caledonians The Romans, followed by the fleet, arrived near the “Mons Graupius” (located in Scotland) where the enemy awaited them. Tacitus tells us that the rebels were led by Calgacus, “the most distinguished for valor and nobility among the various leaders,” who launched into a speech full of pathos to encourage his men: “Whenever I think of the situation in which we find ourselves, I nourish the great hope that this day will be the beginning of freedom for all of Britain. For for all of you who are here and who do not know what servitude means, there is no other land beyond this and not even the sea is safe, since the Roman fleet looms over us. But after us there are no more tribes, but only rocks and waves and an even worse scourge, the Romans, against whose arrogance not ...

by Moya K. Mason Since the dawn of civilization there were always those who exercised control and power over other people; in other words, in some form or another slavery has been a condition of our history. Even the highly admired and influential civilization of the Ancient Romans did not escape the practise, which eventually came to play an integral role in how their society was run. How did a culture which began as a small farming community on the banks of the Tiber River come to have the numbers of slaves that they did in seemingly such a short period of time? What conditions in their society gave them the opportunities and power to acquire large numbers of slaves? And what were the effects of large-scale slavery on the people of Rome: both rich and poor? What types of work were slaves used for and were there economic repercussions for the people of Rome and Italy? Can it be said that the introduction of slaves into Roman society was interwoven with the building of an empire, and i...