Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 129 - Spartacus Part 2: Return of the Corpse Road

Episode Date: November 16, 2020

The conclusion of the Third Servile War Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys follow us on twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lionsledbydonkeyspod

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities

like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the Legion of the Old Crow today. And now back to the show. We'll see about that. I ain't afraid to stand up to friends. Just ask Spartacus. I'm Spartacus. I'm Spartacus. That guy's Spartacus. Hello, and welcome to part two of that Spartacus podcast of this Lions Led by Donkeys series. I ruined that. It's Lions Led by Donkeys. We're talking about Spartacus part two today.

What's up, Nick? How's it going? It's been alright. Last week we talked about Spartacus and the third Servile War and people had comments.

One of them was actually really interesting and one that you particularly will probably care about. Really? Guy is a Roman reenactor slash cosplayer here. That's a thing. Those are his words. I'm assuming he's been listening to the show for a while. He told me because we made fun of them saying Jupiter's cock on the show Spartacus.

Absolutely. Turns out. Amazing. Normal saying. It was by Jupiter's cock was a real thing in Roman times. It was just a standard way of swearing. Two common ones we use during Roman cosplay is per mentolum martis or by Mars's cock and per colium lovis by Jupiter's balls. A lot of cock region talk going on. it's not that much different i mean like soldiers are time immortal right like oh yeah for sure it's like that uh it's pretty funny they found uh on a roman garrison uh soldiers had carved like dicks in the walls like yep that tracks dingling tracks and uh you asked what other sports Romans were into other than watching people get fucking mauled to death in the Colosseum.

Yeah. Cherry racing. Cherry? Chariot racing. Oh, I thought you said cherry. That would have been interesting, cherry racing. Just throw them out in the dirt. It's like that scene from The Simpsons

where fucking Ralph throws a banana on the ground. Go banana! Yeah, cherry racing was a big deal in rome um i didn't bring it up because i wasn't doing a history of like roman sports but like it was it was a huge deal and it'd be actually become even bigger during the time of the byzantine empire like political parties were aligned to different chariot teams like massive amounts of political violence were committed over chariot racing. Oh.

Yeah, which I wish I could say is dumber than the system we have now, but it's not. I was kind of hoping it would be like a NASCAR thing. The Hicks of the Romans? It's way more popular than NASCAR. 100% more popular. Because nobody really gives a shit about NASCAR in the United States. It has its hardcore fans. I mean, well, the tailgates are pretty awesome. Yeah yeah it's like that but like it was way more important in rome um but i'm pretty sure that's the only thing people really go for really the tailgates the the

for nascar and chariot racing oh both how are those fucking tailgate parties i imagine they're miserable because everybody smelled bad and like there's sewage and stuff. It's really hard to get rid of the dick cheese at the time. Yeah, dude, keg stand, your toga runs up over your fucking head, your balls will just flop out. So we left you last week. Spartacus, Crixus, and what had quickly grown to be thousands of escaped Roman slaves had rampaged through the Roman countryside, birding and looting their way through the Republic's rich and powerful summer homes. Good.

But they killed a lot of people. But like, you know, I'm not going to shed tears for the Roman slave drivers. You do not, in fact, have to hand it to Roman slave owners. The rebels had grown fat and happy,

or the rebels had grown fat and happy, pillaging their way through the area, and their numbers continued to swell. Like we talked about at length during the first episode, even the best case scenario for slaves working in rich people's villas was not great. So watching a bunch of dudes show up, break their change,

and give them a chance at freedom meant that the vast majority of slaves came across them, ended up joining them. It doesn't really say what happens to the slaves if they don't want to join them. I'm going to assume that not good things happens to them. Right. Because, I mean, they're killing most of the people that live in these homes unless they escape. So if you're a slave who doesn't want to join Spartacus and the boys, you probably get the stabby stabby. Spartacus and the boys. Yeah.

Panic at the Rebellion, which I think was a band name that somebody said. I like it. After running around and doing hood rat shit for around a year uh someone in the slave army nobody's entirely sure who as a i think i've pointed out before slaves in the middle of a bloody revolt rarely stopped what they were doing in time to jot down a manifesto of any kind um and also spartacus probably illiterate. Um, so probably wasn't gonna do a lot of writing. Uh, he decided that if they kept fucking around in the open,

it was only a matter of time before they ran across an actual Roman army. Uh, so it was in their best interest to find a place that might be, they might be able to defend instead of just like fucking up, but towns and stuff, which to be fair, they had done a lot. They've rated quite a few towns and villages and it's popped up on uh fucking big roman radar yeah like you're you're ruining their

fucking property values um and like it's it's like now the only way you get any people's attention and power is if you burn things because that like lowers the shareholders value um i don't think i can legally say i agree or disagree with that. But let's just say that these two things track. Because it got the Romans' attention. I should clarify a few things about the slave army, however. Individually, most of them were pretty dependable fighters. The core of the army, several hundred of them, were trained gladiators and who remember were mostly

former soldiers or fighters in some way in some time however they'd picked up a lot of villa and field slaves which were definitely not uh furthermore gladiators were trained in one-on-one combat not war remember we talked about a gladiatorial combat in the last episode for entertainment it wasn't practical you imagine them really in combat and be like, hey, you missed your line. And then they just get stabbed. It's like attempting to fucking bring capoeira into MMA. It looks pretty kind of dumb.

Do you remember the movie that came out? For example. Fuck. There's a capoeira movie? I think they just call that Footloose. I mean, you're not wrong, but... Because all the dancing? There's a movie. And there's an army dude in it. But he retired

as soon as he left the islands. Then he brought Capoeira to the inner city. What is this like fucking gangster's paradise, but Capoeira? I enjoyed the movie. So, like, he was like, he's in the american army because like who the fuck told him capoeira the american army that's i think he did it for lindsey's while he was pcs'd i don't

know i don't like it there's so many holes in the story i stolen stolen capoeira valor and you know that's one of the nice martial arts that if you made it up, you'd hardly be able to tell. So for example, we're going to talk about the Roman army a little bit. The Roman army at the time, especially post-Marion reforms, was something of a weapon of mass destruction of its day. This is because its mandible legions were able to work together as a unit to steamroll their enemy. I'm not really going to go into huge detail how the Roman Legion works

or how it functioned in battle. I think I've pointed this out before, maybe in our Tudorburg Forest episode, that the HBO series Rome did a very good job of showing a legion at war and fighting. God is perfect.

I haven't seen anything better. If you read some of the stuff from like the Marian reforms and say like Crassus lives and stuff like that, it shows exactly how it's supposed to work in the best case scenario where every line of the legion will fight or of a mana pool will fight for only a few minutes before being rotated

out so they don't get tired and like the front rank is the least experienced and then so on and so forth until you get to the most experienced people in the back because by the time you rotate forward the most experienced people will now be at the the time you rotate forward the most experienced

people will now be at the front and the enemy will be tired right so they can completely changes um yeah pretty much yeah um but it required very good discipline uh and teamwork it wasn't like individual roman soldiers were very good soldiers or something it was actually kind of the opposite of that. A good example of what happens when a Legion is unable to fight together as it's trained is Hannibal Barca storming across the Alps and fighting them in irregular war

and ambushing them and forcing them into situations where they couldn't deploy their formations correctly. They got fucking massacred. But that could be said for virtually any army throughout time. You take them out of their comfort zone, they can't fight. Looking at you, Iraq and Afghanistan, or Vietnam, or Afghanistan again for the Soviet Union.

Militaries are trained in a very specific way. And if soldiers can't deploy correctly and fight the way they train, they kind of just turn into panic meat bags that try to save their own lives and not fight, which is how an army loses. But the gladiators were the opposite. They were individually probably better fighters than Roman soldiers, and they almost certainly had more experience. But they made a pretty terrible army. Not all of these guys like because remember one of the theories about spartacus is he's a captured roman soldier um not all of them were so like they weren't trained how to fight together they didn't train as gladiators how to

fight together because they would be fighting one another uh so spartacus or whoever it was coming up with the idea to pull back into a defensible position was the only good idea that they had had so far. Is there like a rank structure that they go off of? Definitely not. No. Oh, this guy, I don't know. His dick cheese is smellier. He's got the more powerful

funk. That means he's in charge. Definitely not. Everybody seems to just default to the fact that Spartacus was in charge. There's actually no evidence of that. It seems like

they rotated through people that may or may not have good ideas at the time. And a small cadre of people, Crixus, Spartacus, and Onialis, who end up getting killed eventually, would kind of come up with ideas too. There's no rank structure.

There's no unit structure. It's not even like a unified force. At various times, chunks of this army are peeling off to raid shit on their own. Nobody's in charge because they're a bunch of rebels and some of them aren't soldiers whatsoever. And every group um like it's a super multinational multi-ethnic group some of them don't speak the same language so there's like a very good chance that like if spartacus came up with a plan someone down the

line had no fucking idea what he was saying um which like is very common uh for armies like this like i think we've talked about this before in different battles. There's no cohesion. The only cohesion is fuck the Romans and fuck bitches get money. They want to loot as many things as possible which they're accumulating a massive amount of wealth

and dishing out an incredible amount of revenge for the people that enslaved them. But as far as an an overarching goal no there's no evidence that the one ever existed um but we'll talk about that in a little bit because i do have to try to explain how i picked some sources um and how i told the story um so the defensive position they decided to pick was mount vesuvius um so they climbed Mount Vesuvius. Um, so they climbed up Mount Vesuvius and camps. Now,

obviously when most people, and probably you think when I bring them out, Susie Mount Vesuvius is like, as the Mount doom that laid waste to Pompeii. Um, and that isn't wrong. It's the same mountain, but this is taking place about a century before that.

I was also thinking of, for some reason, anchorman too. I don't know why either one day like i we've we've known each other for nearly a decade and we've been working on this podcast for almost three years and i still i i still have no idea how your mind works it's a fucking roller coaster uh so like back then uh you know the century before it was the nuclear

bomb of its day um mount vesuvius is pretty lush and green and it was actually covered in like really thick annoying vines that like people know they had to chop through in order to like make their way like create a footpath um but there's also only one crossable trail leading up to the mountain which created one hell of a choke point and made it very easy to defend so it's all good choices made by these uh people who honestly had no idea what they were doing and while they camped there the slow gears of roman uh state craft and bureaucracy began to turn the roman government saw spartacus's actions as little more than an armed crime wave nice still however because it is tearing up the good neighborhood where the senators and their friends own property they

decide to be a good idea to do something about it however this led to a bit of a problem uh commanding an army to go crush some slaves uh was hardly an attractive job for anybody that would want to volunteer for it roman generals were all politicians members of the senate and men of influence these were not lowly soldiers had worked their way up and like pulled themselves by their military bootstraps. Boot sandals? Sandals. Sandalstraps. They commanded armies specifically to win glory and further their political careers

or win riches in foreign lands that they could then feasibly turn around and further their political careers with. So it's a lot like today, but instead of becoming congressmen, you end up working for General Dynamics. It's clout-sharking. And you're not going to all volunteer to command the armies against Spartacus because there's nothing to gain for it.

If I went and crushed Spartacus's bitch ass, I don't win any honor. Nobody's going to throw me a triumph because I just... Yeah, I can't write a fucking memoir about this nobody's gonna care I can't get to the next like because I talked about the last episode like it was a very set like script of climbing the

the ladder of Roman politics one of those is military glory a very important one was military glory so like this doesn't edge me up further up this ladder i'm not gonna fucking do it so absolutely nobody wanted to do it um so the job fell on one gaius claudius globber with that name that's just gotta happen yeah gotta get to the glob it might be glabber. I didn't fucking take glabber. And honestly, I don't care. I'm going with glabber.

Now, glabber is one of eight elected praetors within Rome at the time. Praetors were elected members of the Roman judiciary. And at various times within the Roman Republican history, they could end up controlling the entire government if one of the elected councils of which there is normally two would leave Rome for some Chris Hansen caught him with a name like globber he's like go ahead go ahead today I'm getting that

oh god Roman Pizzagate it's actually where it began I mean that's where peace was invented probably not it's just good oh god Dixon on it my eye is opened um now of the various praetors within rome glober was considered a junior and much less influential uh some of this could have had to do with the fact that he was a common plea by birth and had worked his way up through military action not connections so like he wasn't born any of the rich rich partition or patrician or uh or any powerful family

um and the last military um rank that he held was uh legate or legatus i'm probably pronouncing all of these wrong um it can be considered like a decently ranking general. So he'd be, I don't know, a brigadier general or something. However, he had been promoted to that job and then immediately taken office as a praetor, meaning he'd never actually commanded an army before. Don't need to, turns out. I mean, honestly, in Rome, sometimes you're totally right about that. But because of the dumb processes of Roman government, suddenly it was now his job to march an army into Mount Vesuvius and defeat Spartacus and preserve one of the most powerful homeowners associations of all time. But like I pointed out in the last episode, Rome was still short on well-trained legionnaires or

soldiers uh i'll use that term uh i exchange that term back and forth and it probably pisses some people off i'm sorry um so because there's so many wars and other rebellions popping off all over the place they had nobody left to spare so Glober would have to again scrape an army together out of whatever he could find lying around. And what he found was not great. According to Appian in Civil Wars, Glober's army of around 3,000 men was

picked in haste and at random. For the Romans did not consider this war yet, but a raid. Something of an attack of robbery. Rome's really phoning this one in. Let let's get the legionnaire c team up here like what is what is lower on the totem pole than uh i don't know the reserves like this is below national guard below reserves they're calling up like yeah call it up state guard like the the unarmed positions, like give him a spear. Fuck it. Keeping up that idea, Glober didn't have any grand plans.

He may have wanted to confront the slaves in open battle. Should he have like a legion at his back? But he didn't. He had the Roman version of like the state guard. So he tossed out the idea of like fate squaring off like a mono-e-mono and open battle, and settled on another idea. Globber knew, like most people, that there's only one way up the mountain, and no matter how defensible the entire thing was, it didn't matter if he didn't intend on actually fighting. He would simply camp out on that single path and lay siege and starve out the rebels. I mean, solid. It's a plan. Yeah, it's a long plan, but, mean solid so it's a plan yeah it's a long plan but i mean it's

a plan it's better than like let's let's like an action movie attacking up the hill one at a time or whatever um so that's exactly what they did they marched this newly formed militia directly out into the mountain and plop them down in for a siege daring the slaves to try to break it which to their credit they had no idea how like they they've never been besieged before um whatever plan they were going to do was going to be very weird now the vast majority of the slaves knew they had no chance of like running down the mountain path and squaring up against a roman line even a shitty hand-picked militia version of it they weren't trained for roman war they had no idea idea of how to plop a man up a legion

or a phalanx down. So they decided they just wouldn't fight a Roman war, which, good idea. Spartacus and crew wouldn't be marching down the path, but the rest of the mountain behind them was nothing but sheer cliff faces. So there's no plan B here. So the slaves reach deep into the brain palace and found probably the coolest plan B I've ever found in my life. I'm going to, I'm going to ask you, what would you do in this situation? If you're Spartacus,

like, what would your plan be? Do you like run down the cliff? Do you try to wait out the siege? Like what do you do? With the wealth that I gathered ahead of time, I'd buy Roman uniforms

and go down and be like, yeah, they're still up there. And one at a time and just bring my whole crew down. Just from ye olde Amazon? So, I have to admit, I'm looking at this plan and I don't know what the fuck I would do. And I certainly would not have thought about what the slaves end up doing so they take up their

weapons and begin hacking away at the copious amount of vines that grow over the mountains then they weave them together into improvised ropes they then cast the ropes over the sheer cliff faces and fucking repel. That's right, baby. That's fucking awesome. Meanwhile, Globber and his forces had no idea that they were apparently fighting the only aerosol-qualified slaves

in all of Rome. Now, in the show, I didn't watch all the way through. It's like their parents are downstairs and they're sneaking out the back window. Yeah, with like the fucking sheets tied together or whatever. Now, I looked up how they cover this in this show. Because it's a show that exists and I have no plans of watching all the seasons of it. But they have Spartacus and a couple people roped down to do this.

I need to be very clear here. The entire army repelled down the cliff face this is not like a dozen people this is thousands of people fell it had to be a couple yeah like oh lost another one yeah osha regulations of the slave army relax i don't think they had one i mean i don't like i think I'm using the term repelled incorrectly I believe they just like free climb down you think they had some climber bros you need to chalk up

before we go down yeah the wearing short shorts and weird grippy shoes all of a sudden I do this thing in my van I live in my van just so everybody knows so I could really become one with the rock I swear to god somebody give me my gladius so I could really become one with The Rock. I swear to God, somebody give me my Gladius so I could stab this bitch in the face. Any climbers that follow us?

I don't know. Do we have any? I don't know. Someone's got to. Someone's probably really into bouldering, which as a man that is 6'3 and 240 pounds is a sport, I cannot do. What the fuck is bouldering um it's like really i have a

hard time explaining it watch a youtube video it's really weird like it's they climb uh just like it's not like cliffs it's straight up boulders and they do like free climbing around these giant boulders where like there might be only a couple feet off the ground, but they're like spider-manning that shit. My fingers are already cramping. Yeah, exactly. I do not have the grip strength for it. Now, Globber had no idea that any of this was going on because of course he didn't.

He was so sure of himself and the incompetence of the slaves that he didn't bother in setting up any kind of watch posts or pickets watching his flank. This is what is generally known as a bad idea. Because even if you're putting anybody under siege, you put up guards. But apparently not. So it must have been a pretty big surprise

for everybody in Globber's army's camp when the repelling slave army rounded the mountain and attacked them from behind. The massacre of the Roman militia at the foot of the mountain was so complete, it isn't even noted how, if anybody managed to escape it.

To include Glober himself, he simply falls off from all of written Roman history and isn't even noted if he died. Have you ever been so fucking killed during a battle, you get ethered from all of history? It's like some like Stalin

disappearing photograph shit. Either he was killed or so completely dishonored by being beaten by vine raiding gladiator that Roman history never thought to make a note of him ever again. Which is such a thorough historical

own. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it before. Yes, you got the whole razzle dazzle. I have to assume he died. And then the Romans are the Romans like, oh, lost a praetor. I like the new one. Obviously, this was a huge victory for Spartacus and his army, but they knew that their vine trick would not work twice. So they did what they could

from the thousands of dead romans it could have how quick hide all the bodies they couldn't possibly figure out how we did this or maybe more importantly they'd run up against a general who knew to put fucking guards out like keep someone awake at night do something i don't know. You scouts, maybe? What's important here is when you watch a lot of stuff or read a lot of stuff, it's like, oh, the gladiators are using their sick gladiatorial skills and weapons. At this point, all that shit's gone. They've cast off all their gladiator stuff

and have thousands of sets of Roman equipment and armor at this point because they've killed so many people. Now they could go through with my plan. It's a little late for that, but yes. If anything does happen. Guys, I have an idea. Let's just march like a Roman legion and just walk into Rome.

Boom. By now, word of the slave army that had routed a Roman praetor spread far and wide thousands of slaves began to escape their bondage and join as did as if thousands more free people which is really weird remember some of these slaves that were running away actually had better living conditions and free and unemployed romans because the landowning class had fucked them both in different ways

so they saw no problem joining forces to do some fucking right back and make them pay. A lot of them were like, you know, I don't see anything wrong with slavery, but also fuck those guys. Because the unemployment rate in Rome is incredibly

high because of all the slaves. By this point, Spartacus's forces had grown to the tens of thousands, and they looted more than enough weapons to go around. Shepherds and herdsmen joined his army, and they began to be fielded as scouts, which means he's now smarter

than a praetor. And the slaves began to develop something like a spontaneous army, but there's still no real discipline or command structure here. Now you would think Rome would begin to panic at this point. Like they routed up, like routed and killed a Prater,

uh, but they didn't. Obviously they were probably still a bit embarrassed about that army losing. And like one of their eight Praters being killed probably, uh, by a bunch of slaves. But even if they had lost the entire force of 3000, one of their eight praetors being killed probably by a bunch of slaves. But even if they had lost the entire force of 3000,

which they probably did, at least mostly. And I should point out that Spartacus is not taking prisoners. He's killing everyone, which I get it. Yeah. But I should point out that losing a force of 3000, not that big of a loss.

They were militia, not a legion. So Romans seemed to just shrug off their shoulders and find another praetor for this job. This time it was Publius Varinius. Do you think he was excited to take this job? Probably not. He's like, wait, what happened to the last guy? He doesn't exist anymore. Yeah. You get promoted because somebody died and there's no one else to do the

job gotta love it and i should actually i should rephrase that this is definitely not a promotion um verinius is another man that not much is known about though he seemed to be of higher standing than glober because at one point he was a pro council or someone who's not higher than glober someone glober bottom of the barrel here when it comes to roman bureaucrats now a pro-council is someone that can act on behalf of one of the two roman councils and he would eventually go on to become a governor after this though for some reason the star series randomly changes the name to publius maximus you gotta add the maximus because it's cooler i mean maximus legitimately a much cooler name despite

every primary source clearly naming him correctly as Varinius. It also frames Globber and Varinius as foes and like constantly fucking with each other and stabbing each other in the back. Well Globber got up with a stabby stab on his own.

There's no reason for this. There's no evidence for it either um because they're not fucking each other over for military glory because i need to be clear here they didn't think there's any military glory in here uh any more than any other two politicians in rome who are always fucking each other over um but despite all of these things a decent military commander of renius was not there was no way to, but it seems that he wasn't even as good as a commander as Glober, and he didn't have nearly as much experience. There's no evidence of him rising to any kind of rank within the Roman military, which is a problem.

At least not so much as anybody thought it important enough to write down. at least not so much as anybody thought it important enough to write down. Much like Globber, Vrenius' army would be made up of militia, because they are apparently not quick learners. This force was much larger than Globber's, and was at least equal to that of Spartacus' still-growing force, so like tens of thousands of people.

Unlike Globber, Vrenius split his command with two other sub-commanders, Feruus and Cassinius. This is most likely because it's a much bigger force, you know, span of control and all that. And so that makes sense. But what happens next does not. Instead of organizing and dispersing his force in a way to force Spartacus to confront him in open battle,

which he probably would have won, and by him I mean Vrenius. He allowed his force to be split up under his sub commanders and taken into different directions. Huh? Not a good idea. Again, nobody is sure why this happened. No notes are made of this. It just says like they split up.

Nobody's really sure why. Bad breakups. It just says they split up. Nobody's really sure why. Bad breakups. It seems like Vrenius was just bad at his job, and he thought that each one of his forces was good enough to beat Spartacus, and if they dispersed,

they have a better chance of tracking him down. Spoiler alert. Does not happen. What's more likely is Vrenius was bad at being a commander, and they underestimated the threat that Spartacus posed, still. So, both Cassinius and Ferus forces were picked apart one by one. Yep. Spartacus knew that he didn't want to confront these groups all at once, so he simply ambushed them one at a time.

That fucking sucks. Because, like, Spartacus probably wasn't a military commander in Rome like some people like to believe he was but he wasn't an idiot he knew that their best way to win was clearly to not engage them toe to toe so what would happen is like say Cassini's forces marching from point A to point B

Spartacus's forces would hit and run them all the way there and then kill what was left when they finally got to where they were going. And then once that was done, Spartacus' forces crept so close to the force led by Vrenius that when they finally did ambush him, Vrenius

was bathing in a river and had to run for his life butt-ass naked with gladiators on his heels. He only barely escaped capture while his force behind him was slaughtered his personal horse was captured and run away in victory by spartacus himself is that true it is according to appian uh so probably okay once again the gladiators eluded the thousands of corpses left behind in the aftermath of the battle. Their numbers, again, grew even more as more and more slaves ditched their shitty lives, as well as the aura of, holy shit, these guys are actually doing it.

The word began to spread. And soon, Spartacus's army, which, remember, began with between 10 and 30 people, or maybe 70, was now around 80,000. What's the time period? About a year and a half, two years at this point. If only our podcast could take off like that.

I mean, it kind of has. Yeah. We had to kill significantly less Italians in order to grow. Maybe that's the secret. Edit that out. The gladiators or people with them, because remember, the start is like a core of gladiators, right?

Or at least gladiator adjacent people in training to be gladiators. People who at least looked like they were soldiers or had some soldiering skill. Those people were now vastly outnumbered by every other kind of slave that Rome had to offer, and also some random normal people that weren't slaves. a problem like yeah we have an 80 000 man army but like 90 of these motherfuckers don't know how to fight uh but thankfully there was thousands of proven soldiers within the ranks that you know had become gladiators or various other things so as the season rolled into winter and some like some groups went out and raided roman countrysides like because remember i i i probably already said this a dozen times already but this is not a unified force like at no point is spartacus holding a formation and take accountability of how many fucking people he has like there's a core of people that 100 are behind whatever they're doing

but then there's also like groups of people like i'm gonna go fuck up that town and then they'd all just go yeah like there's there's no command and control here but for a lot of people they stated like during the winter they drilled like they kind of made their own impromptu ludus and like train them in that like kind of how they knew to be soldiers but also how to fight like a gladiator so like some people got some training um not everybody but they everybody had certainly more training than where they started out um and this is where i have to kind of explain how i charted the rest of this story um i have to point out a few things before we get moving on from here on out

the history of the rest of spartacus's war is fucking all over the place. In fact, two of the primary sources I've been using for this series, Appian Civil War and Plutarch, tell completely different stories, though they don't technically contradict one another, but they also have nothing in common. For instance, battles happen in one that simply don't happen in the other. Plutarch makes no attempt to explain

anything that Spartacus does and instead just charges manic movements across Italy without seemingly understanding any of it. That's not a knock against Plutarch at all. It's just he didn't feel like expanding on any of it, which I get, which, like I said, is completely fine. I can tell you from experience that it is normal to not understand why some historical figures do what they do and what their rationale is.

Sometimes people are just unstable, make wild and dumb choices, and you can't always put yourself in their shoes. It's not your job as a historian, actually, is to try to explain why people do things unless there's more evidence, which there's not. But on this show, we like to tell a story as well as maybe educate people about things they didn't previously know about. So rather than just shrugging off and saying, I don't know what happened, I don't, but I will use Appian Civil War as the main source going forward. Technically, this is correct as I'm still using a primary source, which as Futurama has always told me, as I'm still using a primary source, which as Futurama has always told me is the best kind of correct.

Now, if you are someone who fancies yourself a Roman history nut and you prefer Plutarch side of things, that does not mean that either one of us is incorrect. They're both reputable primary sources on everything that we're talking about. Yeah, all those big Plutarch fans out there. Let's pump the brakes a little bit.

Big Plutarch stans. Yeah, Plu stans. Like neither country, it's like, I don't know, it's if you read a book and watched a movie based on that book

and things are different, like they're not necessarily wrong. It's a different story. That may not be the best analogy here. I'm going to move move on i'm not good with analogies okay another side note here sorry um it's become something of a popular nugget of wisdom about these events that crixus and spartacus had a falling out leading to them to split their armies up um this is in the spartacus movie this is in spartacus on stars where they like

crixus is like i'm taking the gulls and i'm fucking off on my own there's no evidence this ever happened um in fact it seems to be something that the movies just kind of made up or people looked at a battle that we're about to explain and said well crixus's army got wiped out and spartacus's didn't so therefore they couldn't possibly have been working together i feel like we're probably applying too much military thought on people who are not commanding real militaries or maybe putting too much personality into something that we don't actually have evidence of it happening um because i highly doubt in my opinion that they would make it this far and then start fighting one another uh they probably would have done it

way long time ago before they're in command of 10 000 or tens of thousands of people um because at this point their lives literally depended on one another um it it seems like if i'm going to use occam's razor here, this did not happen. So the rebels broke camp in the winter and the Romans are finally getting their shit together. They finally realized that this was not a crime wave. They had another fucking war on their hands. So they dispatched two consular legions under the command of Lucius, Gelinius,

and Nias, Cornelius, Lentulius, Cordanius. Fuck theseus, and Gnaeus, Cornelius, Lentulius, Cordanius. Fuck these names. I should point out, that is only two people. You said a concierge legion?

Consular legion. These two men were the councils of Rome, meaning these were their personal legions under the commands of the councils. This meant that they held the highest elected position in all of the Republic. So, like rome is no longer fucking around and then soon these uh these two

men and their legions were dispatched spartacus and crixus knew they wanted absolutely nothing to fucking do with this coming battle uh like they they heard through the grapevine through slaves and their scouts like bro the legions are. These aren't these scrubs that we've been fighting. And Crixus and Spartacus probably look at each other like, fuck this. We need to get the fuck out of here. So they attempted to outmaneuver them. Unfortunately, this was never going to happen. An actual Roman legion was something of a machine.

Not just in killing people like I already talked about, but in movement. The most basic Roman soldier could march 20 to 22 miles a day. Oh, with shitty sandals? With shitty sandals and full pack and food on their backs. Like these guys, like most of their training was marching.

Like, I could never match that. And I am going to assume that I'm much healthier than any Roman soldier who's ever existed. The longest ruck march I ever did was around 20 miles, give or take. I carried probably similar weight to a Roman soldier, maybe a little less. And I was fucking done for days afterwards. I wanted to die. So your issue was you weren't wearing sandals.

And I had modern footwear. Yeah, I had modern footwear. And like, you know, a modern rucksack with back support. These guys are carrying shit in a sack and wearing metal and sandals. In the Italian sun. Like, it's incredible what they could pull off. But the reason why I point that out is a slave army... Is the Italian son different from the normal son?

It's really fucking hot in Italy in the summer. Oh, I thought the Italian son was shaped like the Italian hand. I'm fucking shining it! Now, the reason why I point that out is a slave army made up of mostly half-trained farm slaves and a couple gladiators was never going to be able to outrun this. Even in their wildest dreams, maybe some of the best people could have like gotten away it's like that saying like i don't need to outrun the bear i just need to outrun you um like if they would have marched as hard as they possibly could parts of it maybe would have

been able to escape but um according to Appian, the slaves are maneuvering around Mount Garganis when they split up in order to easily travel. Marching with huge groups of tens of thousands of people on small mountain roads is kind of hard. They split up, taking two

different paths around a mountain, with the idea of meeting up on the other side and continuing to press north out of Italy. Maybe. That's what most people uh subscribe to is that they were attempting to march north out of italy and back into gaul um gillenius forces found this uh found the split forces being led by crixus and there was no way crixus could run so for the first time the slaves came up against a real roman legion, and Crixus was fucking annihilated. His force of nearly 30,000 was

wiped out, and with the prisoners all being killed on the spot. It isn't known how Crixus died, but we know he did not escape the battlefield alive. The reason why they were split is because they simply couldn't meet up. And remember, this is Roman times. You're meet up and remember this is the roman

times you're not gonna like fucking get on the radio like bro i got ambushed like you fucked there's there's no way spartacus knew like spartacus didn't even know this happened um he didn't know until he emerged on the other side of the mountain and there was no fucking legion behind him and not fuck and he had no choice but to march as hard and fast as he possibly could north. With the death of Crixus, tens of thousands of his followers, and tens of thousands of his followers, he probably knew the game was up,

and he had to get the fuck out of Italy. And that's when, like I said, most people think that he was aiming for Gaul to the north of Rome, and his force could dissipate, go back. Most of them are Gaulish. He may be thracian that

everybody could run back home uh like they and a lot of people say like oh he was planning on marching on north on rome itself but he marched right the fuck past rome so that probably wasn't it uh we'll talk a little bit more about that later because there is the idea that it happened again uh so what he did then is he immediately found out there was another legion right in front of him under the command of the other console he knew he was going to yeah if you caught that i did not want to say that name a second time i mean at least you got that one guy he gillette gillette the best the legion can get he knew he was going to have no choice but to fight this Legion

like there's no way around him he knew that he like had a disadvantage like he knew that he had every disadvantage known to man and he had to do something that the Romans could not prepare for like I can't like join my shields

together and march at these guys they'll fucking annihilate me I can't do the my shields together and march at these guys they'll fucking annihilate me uh i can't do the vine trick again what can i do uh so he simply spun his force around and attacked the legion that was coming at him from behind because they probably weren't prepared for them to like turn around and attack him so his forces turn and attack jelenius his forces were caught by surprise, and they couldn't get in formation correctly, so they kind of all retreated in confusion.

Huh. But Spartacus wasn't done. He turned his force around again and launched his attack against the other council, routing them as well after a short battle. After the second battle, Spartacus captured hundreds of Roman soldiers, and apparently they willingly surrendered themselves to him.

Probably assuming, like, hey, if anybody knows what happens after you surrender in a battle, it would be slaves. Like, they're going to enslave us. Not this time. But Spartacus was kind of right in that. He decided he would do the same thing to the Roman soldiers that happened to him. And that is, he turned them into gladiators and made them fight to the death for their entertainment. And what we can assume is the uno reverse card of gladiatorial funeral games for Crixus. He forced 300 Roman soldiers to fight to the death, and in the last one standing, he killed himself.

I mean, that's not much of a prize. Some people refused to take part, and they were also executed. I assume the guy who won probably thought he was going to go free. But Spartacus is like, congratulations, you win! This sword in your chest.

So these surprise attacks so badly rattled the Romans. They couldn't bring their forces together to bring their collective strength against Spartacus and Spartacus use that time to run North. The councils were recalled to Rome where they're both stripped of their title and power by, by the Senate. Now Spartacus originally, at least according to Appian wanted to March on Rome,

but then immediately rethought the plan when his blood rage about his friends dying subsided. Consider it the post-Nut Clarity of war. Because he's like, when you think about it, yeah, I just defeated two consular legions, which is fucking crazy. Should have never happened. But marching on Rome with 80,000 people, people well actually half that now um not gonna work um especially because he's fighting with an army that does not know how to lay siege to anything like these are all pretty big gaps in their plan but to spartacus's credit he's like hold up this is a fucking bad idea uh so now the war has been going on for three years and he reverted back to his old plan which

was get the fuck out of italy which i assume is most people's plan when they find themselves like he's gonna vine out of there swing at a vine all the way to fucking mainland europe i don't mean that italy i love you i've never been there before now in rome it came time for new elections to the office of Praetor. By now, nobody in Rome doubted the threat of Spartacus, and he was no longer being underestimated. You could actually probably say he's being overestimated at this point. However, whoever was elected Praetor would almost certainly be sent out to fight him. And nobody wanted to be the next guy to get dunked on by the local slave rebellion and ruin their political career get killed because like if if you let an army against spartacus and lost you're done you're not going to be able to climb up the political

ladder anymore you're probably going to lose your fortune did they do like a nose goes nobody came forward kind of not really so nobody came forward to stand for election with the exception of one guy. Marcus Linsinius Crassus. Now, if people who are the old heads of Roman history probably recognize that fucking name. Crassus had been formed to incredible wealth and power, only to be forced to flee from Rome to Spain after Consul Sina attempted to order everyone who had sided with Lincinius Cornelius Sulla during his march on Rome. Once Crassus showed himself to be the ruthless bastard

that he was, it kind of charted the rest of his path through his life and what would eventually become the Roman Empire. He recruited a legion with his own money and then threatened local cities and villages in Spain with pillaging if they hand over taxation in exchange for his private army's protection huh you might recognize this as a protection racket uh yeah um more than once he unleashed his forces on towns who are pissed that they were already paying taxes to rome so they shouldn't also have to pay for this guy, who was in Roman exile, and technically an outlaw. He stayed there until Cinna finally died.

Afterwards, he ran and joined Sulla once again for his second civil war. In this war, Crassus proved himself to be a very talented commander, and it was integral to Sulla's eventual victory and ascension to dictator of Rome. So for the first, and I should point out, dictator was a title in Rome.

That didn't just mean that they were a dictator. It means two things moving on. Um, this is not in fact the politics of Rome podcast, even though it's super interesting and weird to me. It's like, it's a lot like trying to understand, uh,

well, like American politics was a long time ago because it's just a whole bunch of rich people trying to kill one another for power um so for the first time spartacus is going to have to square off with a skilled commander with a proven track record and experienced soldiers like not only was uh was crassus's track record of military success but it's certainly a track record of not fucking around. Furthermore, there is some evidence to suggest that after fleeing into exile and returning to Rome, Crassus had actually rebuilt his massive wealth through the slave trade.

So he had some personal interest in ending this shit, too. I know this has nothing to do with the series but i feel like i should point this out because it smacks of modern times another way that crassus rebuilt his wealth was by buying poor people's homes fixing them up with slave labor and then selling them at a huge market houses the dude the dude gentrified rome he also had his own fire brigade as formal fire departments weren't a thing yet and then when they heard someone's building was on fire their home or like apartment complex which is also a thing different name but same thing was on fire he would order them to rush to the house

and then offer to buy it for them at a much lower price and then it was worth and if they refuse they would just let it burn down and pay them nothing and then he would flip them some sometimes he would then fix up this partially burnt down house and offer to lease it back to the original owner at triple the rate that they had originally paid for it before you had this you had this wall right here we took it down open concept you see open concept also if you don't give me money you're homeless i guess what i'm getting at is crassus is a fucking bastard this dude was hustling anyway this dude is a fucking dick and he is and he is he is a main reason as why the republic fell later on he's a real asshole um anyway, Crassus was elected Praetor

mostly by default. He was a cold and calculating politician and knew what he had to do in order to further curry favor for himself. So rather than just offering to lead another legion against Spartacus,

he decided he would recruit his own and pay for it out of pocket for their training and weapons. That's how rich this guy was. I buy my own army fuck you like i i get uh like incredibly wealthy people who buy houses and cars and jet skis and whatever but like i want to buy my own legion that's a true flex do you eric prince knows what i'm talking about. Anyway. Oh, I just had the weirdest. You know how there's that one show on TLC where they're like, move that bus. He had his, but he was like, move that chariot. It's that show.

It's like, move that bus. And they pull out of the way, it's just a fucking Roman Legion. Oh, God. Oh, no. So on top of this, he was given the two legions that had previously been defeated in battle, like the last two. Altogether, he found himself almost immediately

in command of 50,000 Roman legions. That's a lot. Now, there's some contention as to what happens next when Crassus marches off after Spartacus. According to some sources, he fought a small part of Spartacus' forces and some legions ran off away from battle. In Appian's account,

he marched his army out of Rome and then immediately subjected the two consular legions to the practice of decimation. It was as punishment for their previous running from battle as a kind of example to the whole thing. Now, we've talked about decimation before. For those unaware or didn't watch our first or second episode,

I can't remember which, where we talked about Italy's greatest military hero, Luigi Cadorna, a patron saint of this podcast, after the CIA, I assume. Now, decimation is the practice of forcing podcast after the CIA, I assume. Now, decimation is the practice of forcing soldiers to draw lots, and the man

who drew the short straw, normally one out of ten, hence the name decimation, would be murdered via being beat to death by the other nine of that group. It's not fun. That's how Crassus rolls out his change of command ceremony. That seems... Appian points out.

This is a show his soldiers that he was more dangerous to them than Spartacus was, uh, to the surprise of probably nobody. This worked really well. And Crassus, his soldiers suddenly became flushed with motivation as Crassus pushed them to march harder and faster.

So, I mean, that worked. Could you imagine being in that legion and anytime you got the straw, it was automatically just all of them were cut to be short? That'd be your luck. That'd suck. It wouldn't even be like,

this would suck. You pull the straw and it's short and you're going to get stabbed or just hacked in the neck or whatever because you know the people that are beating you to death or that are going to be killing you. But in this practice, you had to be literally beaten to death

with bricks and stones and sometimes bare fists and feet. Oh, fuck. They wouldn't give you the easy way out. You're going to die and it's going to hurt the whole time. Anyway, I have a new hustle. Everybody gets out of the military, junior leaders, sometimes officers or whatever. And they immediately sell themselves to business consultants. So I'm going to start my own business consultant firm. And the only thing I'm going to do is

recommend businesses make all of their CEOs pull straws. Or the board of directors, right? Because the board of directors should actually just be made up of the workers who have a hand in the production and their value. But the actual board of directors is like, all right, kids, this is what we're going to do. I'm Joe. I'm business Baz here. And I'm going to make you guys pull straws. I'm not going to tell them why, right? They're going to pull a straw and like oh mr

bezos you pulled the short one i have a whole warehouse crew out front and they brought bats uh i don't know if i could if any of that could be like the wiffle ball bats they'd absolutely have to be wiffle ball bats the whole time because it letting people like to be wiffle ball bats the whole time because it letting people like anyway this is this is my my team building exercise so i bet the next nine people are way more motivated about doing the right thing uh like uh exxon mobil i hear that you dumped a lot of oil in the ocean i have some straws imagine the next nine people like there's no way he has that many straws nine people are like there's no way he has that many straws do it again i'll be back it's like that meme i'll fucking do it again why do people keep hiring his firm uh so crassus had a bit of a problem keeping up with spartacus not because he was necessarily slower but because crassus was

used to fighting actual soldiers and had like an idea of how actual soldiers would act but because Crassus was used to fighting actual soldiers and had an idea of how actual soldiers would act, both Spartacus and his rebel army marched seemingly at random with no mission or destination. And parts of it would break off and raid towns, so he'd be like, we have reports that this town or this village got taken over. Oh, fuck, they must

be going this way. Nope, guess not. Shit. It was just a small group of them. And every once in a while, small groups of Spartacus's Raiders would get caught and they would be murdered. Yeah. Never had a chance. No. When those situations like,

like you can't really guess what they're going to do next because they don't know what they're going to do next. And, you know, and, and a piecemeal fashion, the two armies did run into each other a few of the legions would be attacked by a detachment of rebels but crassus couldn't get spartacus to

commit his entire force and each of these battles ended in a roman victory losing thousands of people uh or spartacus lost thousands of people and the legionnaires took like virtually no casualties um no numbers aren't really, but they're like single digit. What? Yeah. They're not even the good ones. Some people might... This guy died of being stepped on by too many dudes.

During battle, he tripped and rolled his ankle, and then an arrow fell into the back of his head. Now, some people might object to the idea that spartacus is marching randomly but as the only explanation for what happened next and that is he marched directly into a peninsula effectively trapping himself meant to do that like this is a yeah got him right where i want him all over the place uh like he marched into the peninsula and then just stayed there like maybe he didn't know it was a peninsula i was like oh fuck there's ocean over here because it's not like you're a map quick

quick how many vines do we have these guys most of these guys aren't from rome so like and crassus thought this is such a dumb idea that he kind of was like this must be a trap of some kind so he kind of hesitated on closing in like nobody would do something this dumb on purpose. But it quickly became apparent that nope, he just didn't know what he was doing. So Crassus ordered his men to move in and trap the rebels, again laying siege. His next plan was something straight out

of a Looney Tunes cartoon. He ordered his soldiers to begin digging a massive trench from one side of the peninsula to the other to make sure that the rebels couldn't escape like this or this reminds me of like the bugs bunny skit where he's like sawing florida off but it's just legionnaires digging with shovels and shit like fuck this sucks we just had to march 80 fucking miles or whatever and now we have to dig a trench across an entire peninsula i'm willing to risk getting decimated that's gonna be the shittiest detail on this podcast i've heard digging digging like this is like tens of miles yeah it's got to be

and it has to be deep enough where people can't just like deep and like wide enough where people can't just like casually jump across. So it's deep as fuck. Historians have said it still remains there. You can point it out. Now, Spartacus led small portions of his army out on harassing hit and run attacks on the soldiers as they dug.

Some of them were gathering bundles of sticks together. Spartacus would gather bundles of sticks together uh and so like spark has been would gather bundles of sticks together cover them in tar and then light them on fire and chuck them into the ditch while people were digging burning them alive uh yield napalm uh at one occasion they grabbed a soldier while he was digging, crucified him and hung him up on a part of line where all the Romans can see. Fuck. Now this had two purposes to scare the Romans who, like,

obviously like, Hey, if we capture you, this is what happens. But also it was something of a motive. Like some people opine, it was a motivation technique and Spartacus's part warning his side. This is what would happen to you if the romans

win because the romans like really like to crucify people um like if this happens you they'll kill you really really badly like this like we're doing to this guy jesus christ you yeah well yes but that hasn't happened yet uh despite weeks of work and completing this peninsula-wide trench spartacus and the rebels escaped by filling a small portion of the trench with dirt and trees and running into the night without them realizing what was happening before it's too late because yeah that's how you escape that you can't possibly man this entire line. That's fucking awesome. After that, uh,

uh, Spartacus led his men South towards Sicily is generally believed that he, uh, he accepted that he was never going to escape Italy from the North. Rome had gotten his shit together. And, uh, another legendary military commander Pompey, the great had,

uh, returned from Spain with another 50,000 soldiers, uh, that were now staring down at him from the north. This pissed Crassus off because he saw Pompey coming as a way of trying to steal the glory of his military victory after he had done all the hard

work, which to be clear, that's exactly what Pompey was doing. Now, Spartacus reportedly openly wept after hearing about the news of Pompey was doing. Yeah. Now, Spartacus reportedly openly wept after hearing about the news of Pompey's arrival, understanding that there's a very good chance he and his rebels were all fucked. So his plan changed from escaping into Gaul

to escaping into Sicily, which is like escaping into a dead end because Sicily is an island. Everyone knew about the previous first and second Servile Wars, and he thought if he led his forces into Sicily is an island. Everyone knew about the previous first and second Servile Wars and he thought if he led his forces into Sicily, he could spark another rebellion

and replenish the tens of thousands of people that have died so far. Spartacus made it to the coast where he made contact with some Sicilian pirates who he paid with what remained of his loot to ferry him and about 2,000 of his men to Messina to

continue the war. I assume he didn't tell the people he was leaving behind that he was leaving them behind because he has about 40,000-ish people. He's like, I can only afford 2,000. Bye, y'all. We'll be back.

No, we're turning right back around, I swear. We're not coming back. Now, the pirates agreed and told them, well, we don't have enough boats for 2,000 people, so we have to go back, get more boats, and then we'll come back in a couple days. So instead, they stole all of Spartacus' loot and fucked off and never came back.

Yeah, pirate stuff. Just pirate things. Spartacus knew Sicily was now out of the question, and he also knew Pompeii and other legions were on their way, and he had no way out. And he's not really into Sicilian pizza, from what I heard. You know, I could really kill for some Sicilian pizza. It makes me really hungry.

I'm probably ordering pizza after we record now. Now, Spartacus knew he was fucked. He sent an emissary to Crassus asking for a piece in exchange for safe passage to the north and out of Italy, promising never to return to Rome. Crassus refused immediately because he knew he had them cornered and he was dealing with a whole bunch of slaves. It was around this point Spartacus began to lose what cohesion that he had within his ranks as about 13,000 people of his broke off from the main army and tried to make a break for it.

They were almost immediately cornered and slaughtered by Crassus' legions without much of a fight. I feel like if I were to just leave on my own will, like just me by myself, I'd be fine. Just to like by yourself sneak off in the middle of the night that's probably that that probably happened to a lot of people um like slowly like the palmer simpsons

sinking off into the bush like i mean freed slaves were very common um even though some slaves were branded but you know whatever they think of an excuse on the run. Um, or get the fuck out of Rome. Maybe. Uh, furthermore, uh, the organized surprise attacks that he kind of had been using were all but over small elements broke off and attack the Romans randomly.

Not with like real, no plan. Uh, this was like a probing attack. They were desperate to escape. Uh, I don't know if it's for funsies. I think it's flailing wildly

attempting to save their own lives. Spartacus managed to limp with what remained of his army towards the Solaris River. The Solaris River? One of the two. Where he knew he had no choice but to turn around and throw the full weight of this remaining rebel

army against Crassus. And the off chance any of them were ever going to leave Italy alive. Like he's like, got to put up or shut up. I have to win this battle. Then maybe we can make a break for it. But he knew he was going to have to fight someone. And I guess he picked Crassus.

Crassus was closer. In order to motivate his men, Spartacus ordered that his horse be brought in front of him and when it was he sliced his throat saying that if he'd won he'd have a ton of horses to choose from and if they lost it wouldn't matter because he wouldn't need a horse anymore it was one of those things that like i'm not gonna run now i can't everybody has to stand with me like i'm standing with you until the end which in my head i'd be like fuck my feet really hurt why did i do that i would have traded you for

that horse facing him crassus once again built 37 miles of defensive works consisting of walls and ditches um i mean this is not. Building forts on the go is pretty common for Roman military tactics, like small outposts, walls, trenches, things like that, to slow down their enemies. Again, it hardly mattered because, again, these are all things that you do when you're fighting a cohesive, organized group of men. Spartacus was not any of those things. He led a group of men sneaking up over the walls of the defenders and began to silently attack

the pickets, opening up a gap for the rest of his men to charge through. However, this didn't work because when you're being ambushed, you make noise. Some of the people on the wall were able to give warning to Crestus' main army, which like they should have done at mount vesuvius so uh the

rebel or the the roman army had enough time to form up so the 50 000 rebels slammed into about 40 000 roman soldiers in full battle formation um the slaves slammed into the roman shields and began to get slaughtered. The slaves fought as hard as they could, but simply could not overcome the murder machine of a properly led, properly trained, and properly armed army of legionnaires. During the battle, Spartacus saw Crassus watching the battle from a nearby hill, and he decided, fuck it, if I'm going to die, I'm taking that asshole with me, and he it single handedly he killed two centurions in the process who were like

junior commanders of around 80 men a piece known as the centuria like he kind of slaughtered some company commanders which we can all get behind that during his blood blind rage to get to Crassus he was stabbed through both legs and impaled with a spear

but kept on killing everyone around him. This finally ended when he was overpowered by sheer numbers and killed only a few feet away from Crassus, who by all accounts didn't even bother running away. Sounds like a fucking movie. Kind of was. I mean, again, this is all

secondhand accounts. Crassus didn't say that's what happened, and Crassus was there. But in Crassus Lives, that's what Plutarch said, so I'll take that. The rest of Spartacus's army didn't stand a chance without him and were brutally slaughtered, though several thousand saw the writing on the wall, tossed down their weapons, and surrendered, assuming going back to a lifetime of slavery is is barely being hacked to death in this field. History notes that about 36,000 slaves were killed and only about a thousand Romans.

Yep. Another about 5,000 slaves escaped the battle entirely, but were caught by Pompey's army and killed. Unfortunately for the slaves who were captured during the battle, or after the battle rather, Crassus had no intention of returning them to the bonds of slavery. Crassus had around 6,000 prisoners march down the Appian Way in a single file line. Once there, they found a whole bunch of crosses. And from the road between Capua, where the rebellion began, and Rome, known as the Appian Way, he had them crucified, spaced apart so they'd line the entire highway, a distance of 132 miles. or months, however long it took them to simply rot and fall off. As a warning to any slave that saw

them, what would happen to them should they ever think of pulling a Spartacus ever again. And it worked? There was never a fourth Servile War. There's like nothing good about that. No.

Also, the massive amount of military power that had been gathered by pompey and crassus would go on to bend rome to its will neither side would disband their legions and instead camped outside of rome opposite of one another they then both ran for council despite the fact that pompey wasn't even eligible both men won theship, based mostly entirely on the implied military force had been used against the city, or at each other, if it didn't. Isn't it fun when republics forsake their own rules in order to appease threatening strongmen? Certainly nothing to learn from from that. But this would eventually lead to the fall of the Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire.

The end? I mean... That's the end end didn't see that coming to be honest yeah like the the the crucifixion of the the slaves down the appian way is like one of the more legendary things that's happened um because it's like so cartoonish and it's brutality that you're like, this is like the story of Christians being fed to lions in the Coliseum. It didn't really happen. This shit fucking happened. They crucified 6,000 people over 132 miles so everybody could see. That's fucking insane. Imagine just going about your business like, God, what is that stench?

Oh, it's the highway. It's going down the freeway.ch? Oh, it's the highway. It's the corpse road. We've come full back circle to corpse road. Now, Nick, we do a little thing on this show called Questions from the Legion.

It's been a one whole episode. For people unaware, we wait until the end of a series so we don't ruin the flow from one episode to another not that I'm good at flow sorry I would like to think I am you think I'd be good at it by now you'd be wrong

now this one is a little bit different has to do with history research it's simply like what like how do you find how what do you consider a good primary source yes this is a pretty basic question and I'm glad somebody asked it, actually. Because a lot of people ask how I find sources, and I always say, oh, it's a primary source. And unless you know what the fuck that means, I didn't tell you anything.

So a primary source is, simply put, a raw material of history. a raw material of history, original documents, uh, or eyewitness accounts, uh, of create created by people who witness an event happen. Um, so like,

uh, Appian civil war, Plutarch, those are both considered primary sources of Roman history, depending on what they're writing about. my book, uh, hooligans of Canada are because they're a primary source on the American're writing about. My book, Hooligans of Kandahar, would be considered a primary

source on the American war in Afghanistan. Zinky Boys would be a primary source on the Soviet-Afghan war, of which there is not many. I forgot about that. One of the most grimest books ever written.

So that's why these definitions are pretty important. So like, you know, especially now when we, people say we live in the post-fact era, when you have to try to hunt down sources, if things are considered quality sources. Now that doesn't mean a primary source is necessarily 100% correct.

We ran into that today. But you can take that eyewitness account or original document and cross-check it with secondary and other primary sources and decide if they are a reliable source. There's a lot of primary sources that are bullshit. A good example of that would be, or secondary sources, I should say, that are bullshit. And you can use primary sources to prove them incorrect. A good way of doing that is, for instance, I wrote my graduation thesis on the Armenian genocide. All of that is based on primary sources, and I use those to debunk secondary Turkish sources that say a genocide did not happen. And they will cite their own primary sources for their argument.

And that is how you find out if an argument is bullshit or not. And anyway, that is how I have been kind of doing the Prager, the donkey you episodes on Prager you, but they don't list their sources. So things like that make it harder and you kind of have to deduce what the fuck they're talking about. So it doesn't always work that way but that is primary sources um i yeah so if you are maybe you you haven't gone to

college or you're in high school and you haven't quite figured those out yet i don't remember if they taught primary sources in high school or not i I'm old. Um, yeah, those are definitions that you need to get, uh, get used to. If you look forward to this kind of thing, I use, uh, Joe's brain until it finally rots. I got six to 12 months at best.

That's my, my research. Nick, thank you again, as always for joining me on this, uh, crucifixion filled story that's a good way to put it

yeah thank you everybody for joining us and until next time use decimation later