Spartacus
"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...