| |
The roar of the crowd was deafening. Spartacus, waiting in the dark, could feel the ground beneath his feet reverberate with the bellowing approval of the Roman crowd. It made his stomach turn. One can imagine that this could have been one of the things he’d hated most about the Roman legionaries who were once his comrades: the thoughtless bloodlust. He could hear the screams out there in the middle of the arena, knew that people were being butchered, people who didn’t ask to fight—people who didn’t ask to die.
Spartacus hefted his short, angled sword. Its keen edge could part muscle and bone; he’d seen it happen before, watched as skin peeled back from gleaming flesh. Killing was nothing new to him. He was a soldier, after all. But back in the war zone, killing hadn’t been accompanied by the roar of the crowd. And the men whose lives he’d taken hadn’t been slaves just like him.
It was time to go. Spartacus took a deep breath, shifting the small, rectangular shield on his arm. Some of the other gladiators tried to hang back, fear in their eyes despite the rigorous training they’d all undergone, training that had left scars on their skin. The trainer and his assistants were ready for them, though: waving red-hot irons and swinging whips, they drove the reluctant slaves toward the arena.
Spartacus was a man of war, and he still had his pride to hold on to. He ignored the trainer and walked into the arena of his own accord. When he stepped into the sunlight, it sparkled on the powerful curves of his shoulders and biceps, the defined lines of his pectorals and abdomen. He wore greaves and padding on his legs, as well as a helmet on his head, the metal catching the sun with a brilliance that made the crowd roar. But his torso and arms were utterly bare. His opponents would be forced to strike there—his chest, ribs, lungs, heart, throat—in order to make things more entertaining for the crowd.
This was no real battle. This was entertainment. Yet it was so much more violent than anything that Spartacus had endured on the battlefield.
There was no time for reflection, though. On the other end of the arena, a heavier champion, this time bearing a massive shield and an arrogant sway, was strutting out on the sand. He was a hoplomachus: a heavily armored mockery of the hoplites that the Thracians had once defeated.
Fittingly, Spartacus was a thraex, or Thracian. Once, real Thracians and real hoplites had clashed on the cold mountainsides of Thrace, and only the scream of the wind in the high peaks had accompanied their battle cries. But now as the hoplomachus hefted his shield and screamed, the whole of Rome screamed with him.
Spartacus didn’t want to fight him. But just like his opponent, just like those who’d left nothing but bloodstains and drag marks in the sand, he didn’t have a choice.
None of them had a choice.
* * * *
There are no records of any of Spartacus’ fights in the gladiatorial arena. While fiction has styled him as one of the best, it is unclear whether he even fought at all, although given his military prowess, it is unlikely that he was a mediocre gladiator. We do know much about the lives of the gladiators in general, however—and for all the glory and honor showered upon them, their lives were far from a bed of roses.
Different classes of gladiators bore different kinds of armor and weapons. The murmillo (also spelled as mirmillo or myrmillo) and the hoplomachus were the most heavily armored, but even they had bare torsos like the thraex. Some, like the retiarius, wore no armor at all and didn’t even get to carry a “real” weapon: instead, they had fishing nets and tridents and were pitted against gladiators wearing fish-shaped helmets. Spartacus was more than likely a thraex, considering that he really was Thracian. These light-footed, lightly armored gladiators had to fight the heavy hitters, such as the murmillo.
The fights became more and more organized over the years, reaching a point where they had long sets of rules during the Roman Empire. But in the early days—even in the late Roman Republic—they were still crazy skirmishes, a bloody mess that usually led to death. Reluctant though some of the gladiators may have been, they had no choice but to fight. It was either fight or die. Sometimes they wouldn’t even fight other humans; instead, caged animals, starved and goaded into crazed ferocity, would be chased into the arena instead. There was no fleeing a boar or a wolf or a bear on the hunt.
It’s uncertain for how long Spartacus was a gladiator. By day, he would have been expected to walk into the arena to the cheers of his adoring fans. If he won, he would be showered in palm leaves and money (which, of course, would go straight to his owner). If he lost, he would be expected to show no fear, even in his dying moment, and to conduct himself always with courageous honor. And by night, he was chained in the dark, kept in a cell, and denied even the right to look up at the stars.
The only bright part of Spartacus’ life in the gladiator school was the alliances he managed to forge with his fellow gladiators. During the day, there was no room to talk; there was just training, hours upon hours of it. But at night, when the doors had been bolted and the shackled slaves were left in the darkness, this group of men (and some women) who had been forced to fight for the entertainment of others sought some spark of human contact.
History does not tell us in detail how Spartacus came to know the other gladiators or what their relationships were really like. But considering what came after, their trust in him must have been enormous. Spartacus’ radiating charisma, so popular in the gladiatorial arena, did more than simply entertain his fellow slaves outside of it: it inspired them, in a life where inspiration was hard to find. He became well known to the slaves that lived closest to him. Two Gallic gladiators, Crixus and Oenomaus, were particularly close to him. Like Spartacus, they had been taken from wild and beautiful lands that they had once loved and forced to fight in a city they hated. And like Spartacus, they had fire in their blood.
With around 78 gladiators now loyal to Spartacus, the Thracian realized that the time was coming to act. It’s uncertain whether Spartacus had plotted a revolt ever since he was first captured or whether life in Capua simply became so unbearable that he saw no other option. Either way, Spartacus made up his mind. He was going to break out of the gladiator school with the help of his 78 comrades. Somehow, he was going to get his freedom back.
In the year 73 BCE, Spartacus and his comrades finally made their move after carefully planning how they were going to escape. They were well-fed, fit, and well-trained fighters, but their weapons were likely kept somewhere inaccessible, probably in a separate building or well-guarded room. Spartacus, though, knew that the armory wasn’t the only place where weapons were to be found. Every day, kitchen slaves brought the gladiators their meals. And there were sharp things in kitchens.
History doesn’t tell us how exactly Spartacus and the others managed to get out of their shackles and cells, but they did, and they made a beeline for the kitchen. The kitchen slaves likely fled at the sight of almost 80 brawny gladiators coming at them, giving Spartacus and his men precious moments in which to grab any sharp object they could find, readying themselves for the onslaught of guards that was undoubtedly heading right for them.
It must have been a heart-pounding few minutes in that kitchen, the burly figures of the gladiators yanking open chests and upturning baskets as they hunted for anything that gleamed like metal. But those few minutes were enough. Kitchen knife in hand, Spartacus was ready when the first guard came rushing in. The guards were used to fighting in full armor for money; the gladiators knew how to fought unarmored for nothing but their lives. It was little contest. The gladiators cut down their captors with brutal efficiency and raw fear, and Spartacus led them out of the gladiator school and into the surrounding countryside.
Wounded, breathless, and fully aware that hundreds of Roman soldiers would descend upon them as soon as Batiatus sounded the alarm, Spartacus and his comrades knew that their escape wasn’t finished when they stepped out of the gladiator school. Seventy-eight half-dressed, muscular slaves, many of whose faces were easily recognizable from their frequent public appearances, and all wielding some kind of a weapon, could hardly have been more conspicuous if they’d tried. They had to flee somewhere inhospitable, somewhere sparsely populated except perhaps by fellow slaves, and somewhere close enough that they could make it. Spartacus had chosen just the right spot for that purpose.
In 73 BCE, almost 2,100 years ago today, the town of Capua lay at the very feet of a majestic mountain that towered its green and rocky head thousands of feet above the surrounding farmland. Its silent peak was still and beautiful, and it was almost totally void of buildings or people. The climb wouldn’t be easy, but Spartacus knew his fit gladiators could do it, and so, they headed for the flanks of the mountain as quickly as they could. Little did they know that a century after they scaled its height, the mountain would erupt in a shower of ash and lava that would bury multiple towns and kill thousands of people. Their new hiding place was none other than Mount Vesuvius.
Spartacus and his comrades may not have known that they were climbing to the peak of an active volcano, but even if they did, perhaps they would have counted it less of a risk than staying in that awful gladiator school where they all had been slowly losing their minds.
One can imagine the thrill that Spartacus felt as he and his gladiators bolted toward the towering peak. Fear nipped at his heels, driving him faster as the threat of pursuing guards chased him on, but there was something else that was exhilarating, too—something as pure and wild as the mountain wind that filled his lungs. It was freedom. He knew then, whether he lived or died or made it to the peak or not, that he would be doing it as a free man.
But he didn’t die on the flank of that volcano. Instead, Spartacus, Crixus, Oenomaus, and their comrades (it is uncertain how many of the original 78 survived the flight from Capua) made it. Despite a brief battle with the pursuing guards, they made it all the way up to the sheltering peak of Mount Vesuvius, where Batiatus and his guards would have difficulty tracking them. In fact, for a moment, it felt as though they had made it to safety, but Spartacus knew better than to let his guard down.
Their escape had only just begun. Spartacus knew that the Romans would be coming, and the same law that had been true in the arena would be true now.
Fight or die.
