Mithridates, Crassus & Spartacus

A History of Mankind (208)

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The outbreak of the Third Mithridatic War in the East coincided with the largest slave revolt in Roman history, when the Thracian gladiator Spartacus led thousands of war captives in a rampage through Italy, while trying to convince them to head north into freedom instead of putting themselves in the crosshairs of the Roman army.

Spartacus’ uprising was the result of very specific conditions: the number of gladiators in Italy had soared, as the spectacle became popular across the peninsula, often as part of public and private funerals. And it was only the refusal of Gaul and Germans to escape north, since they preferred to stay and plunder, that caused the rebel army to balloon to about 70,000 fighting men, enough to scare Rome into large-scale actions but not enough to survive such actions¹.