The Spartacus War Read online

  The showdown between Spartacus and the joint consular army took place in Picenum, in north-central Italy. Once again, details are lacking. But the sources state that this was a pitched battle. Evidently his string of successes gave Spartacus the confidence to fight the Romans on their own terms. A vignette survives from either this or the earlier battle fought by the consul Lentulus; which one is uncertain. The report is as follows: ‘And at the same time Lentulus [left] an elevated position which he had defended with a double battle-line and at the cost of many of his men, when from out of the soldiers’ kit bags, officers’ cloaks began to catch the eye and selected cohorts began to be discernible.’

  That seems to mean that Lentulus took up a defensive position on a hill, where he divided his troops into multiple lines. Caesar would do something similar in Gaul. Although they had to attack uphill, the enemy inflicted heavy casualties on Lentulus’s men. Apparently, Lentulus called for help, but he didn’t ride off until it became clear that the reinforcements were nearby. Or so this fragmentary sentence might be reconstructed.

  The brief sentence speaks volumes about the conditions of ancient battle. Isolated on a hill, Lentulus had to rely on the naked eye to see the legion coming to his aid. The legion didn’t appear all at once but as a patchwork. First, the purple cloaks of the commanders appeared, then a few separate cohorts became visible. The phrase ‘out of the soldiers’ kit bags’ should mean that the reinforcements were marching near where Lentulus’s men had left their baggage.

  The scene shows the insurgents at their best. They isolated an enemy unit. They executed the difficult manoeuvre of attacking uphill, a move in which their lighter armour increased their mobility. Although the rebels did not destroy Lentulus’s men before reinforcements arrived, they inflicted heavy losses. Presumably Lentulus expected the reinforcements to defeat the enemy, but that did not happen. Either the rebels on the hill remained strong enough to turn on the reinforcements and overpower them or Spartacus sent fresh troops against the reinforcements, which would speak well of his command and control of the battlefield.

  The Romans lost the battle and, once again, they ran from the field. Spartacus had reason to be pleased. But he also had cause to re-evaluate the attack on Rome. As one ancient account says: ‘he changed his mind about going to Rome, because his forces were not appropriate for the operation nor was his whole army prepared as soldiers should be (since no city was fighting with him, but only slaves and deserters and the rabble).’

  Rome’s stone walls were over 13 feet thick and in places over 30 feet high. The circuit of walls ran for nearly 7 miles and enclosed 1,000 acres. Spartacus had no siege engines nor experts to man them. He had few if any soldiers with experience of laying siege to a city or taking a city by assault.

  Nor had Spartacus’s experience of battle in 72 BC been entirely encouraging. He had won every engagement, but his colleague Crixus’s army had been destroyed and Crixus was dead, The Romans, meanwhile, refused to accept defeat. No matter how hard Spartacus hit the Romans, they kept coming back. There was no reason to doubt but that they would return. It was far more prudent to prepare for the next battle than to open a new front that was unlikely to bring success. And so the army returned to southern Italy, probably to Thurii.

  There the insurgents had yet another encounter with a Roman army, possibly under the propraetor Manlius. They defeated the Romans and reaped a rich load of booty. It was a happy end to their journey, yet the men had reason to wonder just what they had achieved.

  They had made a punishing trip of about 1,200 miles, which could hardly have taken them less than four or five months, considering the marching rates of ancient armies and the time needed to stop, forage and fight. They had fought four battles, mourned their colleagues’ defeat in a fifth, and amassed loot. They had buried old comrades and attracted new ones.

  They might glory in their status as the dominant army in Italy. It was an astonishing truth that most would have ascribed to the gods and perhaps, above all, to Dionysus. Yet the rebels were only as strong as their ability to beat Rome’s next army. That army was sure to come, even if vain rebels and pessimistic Romans both failed to see it in the distance.

  By summer’s end, Italy had seen two big stories in 72 BC. One was Spartacus’s Long March and the other was Rome’s disgrace. A rabble in arms had defeated a regular army.

  One of the few to have served with distinction was Cato - but he also served with disdain. At the year’s end, Cato’s commander offered him a military honour, such as a crown, a neck ornament, a golden armband or one of the other decorations handed out to Rome’s best legionaries. Cato, however, refused. Family pride might have balked at accepting honours amid military disgrace.

  Cato’s great-grandfather, Cato the Censor, had once sneered at a commander who awarded his soldiers crowns just for digging ditches or sinking wells - prizes, the Censor said, that would have required at least the burning of an enemy’s camp back when Rome had standards. Cato’s uncle Drusus had once rejected honours himself, no doubt aware of the malicious remark that they would have dwarfed the man who wore them. Malice might have come Cato’s way too if he had received honours while his brother did not, and the sources make no mention of honours for Caepio.

  Few Romans could have bemoaned the nation’s defeats more than Cato. Austere, public-spirited and uncompromising, he lived for virtue. Most Roman politicians, including his allies, eventually fell short of Cato’s lofty standards. Cicero, a friend who felt Cato’s sting, once wrote in exasperation that Cato thought he was living in Plato’s Republic instead of the sewer of Romulus. In 72 BC Cato had abundant reasons to be displeased.

  RETREAT

  6

  The Decimator

  In autumn 72 BC a new general took command of the legions. Determined to restore discipline, he revived a brutal and archaic form of punishment. Fifty Roman soldiers who ran away from battle and disgraced the legions were caught, condemned and executed by their own army. Each of them was clubbed to death by nine of his fellow legionaries, men with whom they might have changed places, since the victims were chosen by lot. Five hundred men were caught shirking their duty; one out of every ten was selected for execution, which is why the procedure is called decimation (analogous to our word ‘decimal’, that is, one-tenth). Rome’s new general wanted his men to fear him more than they feared Spartacus. His name was Marcus Licinius Crassus.

  A marble bust survives that is probably a portrait of Crassus; it is revealing. Stare directly and you see the picture of resolve: the skin of his face tightened, lips pursed, jaw clenched, eyebrows drawn down, neck muscles tensed. In profile, however, his jowls, a double chin and the crow’s feet around his eyes are all apparent. Not only vigour but caution and suspicion are etched into his features. The bust was found in Rome, in the family tomb of the Licinii, one of Rome’s most prominent families, but there are other copies, proof that they depict an important person. The style fits the end of the Roman Republic and the scholarly consensus is that the bust is Marcus Licinius Crassus.

  Crassus took command at the order of the Senate and to the applause of the people. Bold politics, the choice made poetic justice. In his own way, Crassus resembled Spartacus. Not that Crassus wanted to overturn Rome: far from it. Like Spartacus, though, Crassus was a maverick. He wanted to rise to the top of Roman politics but he would beat his own path. Unwilling or unable to win the approval of the old nobility, Crassus courted the common people and made deals with new politicians. The optimates, literally, the best men, as Rome’s conservatives called themselves, did not approve. Given a choice, the Senate’s old guard would never have turned to a man like Crassus. Spartacus forced their hands and made Crassus the man of the hour.

  Crassus came from one of Rome’s most eminent families but its lustre was no brighter than a decadent age could produce. Crassus displayed good generalship against other Romans, and great initiative in exploiting the misery of others. He was known as a man of selective vice rathe
r than strict morality. For example, he beat a charge of seducing a Vestal virgin by proving that he was merely greedy and not impious, since he was interested in her property rather than her chastity.

  In his early forties - he was born c. 115 BC - Crassus was one of Italy’s richest but least luxurious men. Frugal and severe, he felt more at home in the Rome of brick than the Rome of marble. With a private fire brigade at his disposal, he pounced on men whose houses were on fire and talked them into selling fast and cheaply before they had nothing left to sell. Yet he wouldn’t treat himself to a holiday home. It wasn’t comfort that Crassus wanted but political power, which was why he amassed wealth in the first place. A good general but no military genius like Pompey (or, later, Caesar), Crassus saw that the path to political success lay in buying votes. He doled out money, giving loans to the rich, handouts to the poor, and favours to the influential. Crassus made himself popular even though he lacked none of the scathing arrogance of the Roman nobility.

  In 72 BC his popularity paid off. As best we can reconstruct it, the Senate and people agreed to award Crassus a special command against Spartacus, with virtually unlimited power (what the Romans called proconsular imperium), even though he was a private citizen. This was a rare distinction, since commands were usually reserved for office-holders. What made things even sweeter was that Pompey held a similar command in Spain against Sertorius. Pompey was Rome’s leading general and its most ambitious politician. Crassus considered Pompey his chief political rival, but now Crassus had matched him. To add to his triumph, the disgraced consuls Lentulus and Gellius were Pompey’s allies.

  Crassus in command would drive his men hard. He was a tough man, but he had not had an easy life. Before his thirtieth birthday, Crassus saw his father’s severed head hanging from the speakers’ platform in the Roman forum. The proud old man had committed suicide rather than surrender to Marius when he took Rome. Crassus himself was too insignificant to be executed but two years later, in 85 BC, danger loomed as the civil war reignited, so he ran for his life.

  Crassus fled all the way back to Spain. Sheltered by a family friend, he spent eight months in hiding from the pro-Marius provincial government, living in a cave. Finally, the news that the leading Marians were dead brought Crassus out and into action.

  He raised an army of 2,500 men. As Crassus later said, a Roman wasn’t really rich unless he could raise his own legion. His men were picked troops, chosen from among friends and family supporters. He requisitioned ships, sailed with the men to North Africa, and tried to join forces with the anti-Marian proconsul there, Quintus Caecilius Metellus, but the two men quarrelled. Undaunted, Crassus voyaged to Greece, where he joined the leader of the anti-Marian forces, Sulla. He returned to Italy in 83 BC with Sulla and his soldiers, possibly including, ironically enough, that Roman auxiliary Spartacus. In spring 82 BC Sulla sent Crassus to raise more troops in central Italy, which Crassus did with great success. He also captured the city of Todi, where he was accused of taking the lion’s share of the spoils for himself; if true, a contrast with Spartacus’s later fairness in dividing the spoils equally.

  Young Crassus had his rendezvous with destiny outside the walls of Rome, in the last of a series of bloody battles up and down the Italian peninsula. Sulla attacked the Marian forces at Rome’s Colline Gate in the north-eastern part of the city walls. The struggle commenced in the late afternoon of 1 November 82 BC and it went on into the night. The Marians pinned Sulla’s centre and left wing against the walls. Only Sulla’s right wing was victorious, but that decided the battle, because it crushed the enemy’s left wing, drove it in flight and pursued it for 2 miles. The commander of Sulla’s right wing was Crassus.

  From what little we know, Sulla was the architect of victory in the Battle of the Colline Gate. Crassus merely executed the plan, but he did so with vigour and guts. It was enough to make his fortune. With Sulla triumphant, Crassus put down his sword for a decade and devoted himself to money-making and politics.

  When Sulla came to power he named about 500 wealthy and prominent supporters of Marius as outlaws. The Romans called this ‘proscription’ because the names were inscribed and posted in a public list. The outlaws were hunted down and killed. Their property was confiscated and men like Crassus gobbled it up at cut-rate prices. By the time of the Spartacus War a decade later, Crassus’s portfolio included estates in the Italian countryside and real estate in the city of Rome; mines, perhaps Spanish silver mines; and large numbers of slaves, some of whom he may have rented out. Born rich, Crassus had become super-rich.

  His moment came in autumn 72 BC, when Rome entrusted Crassus with a special command to fight Spartacus. Why Crassus wanted the command is no mystery. It could have made his career. Up to then, he had advanced more slowly in politics than a man of his ambition would have wished. He had served as praetor at some point, it seems, but he had not held Rome’s top office, the consulship. A special command opened the door to military glory, which would have put political pre-eminence within reach. Defeating Spartacus would have given Crassus a card to play against Pompey. Then too, Crassus had his economic interests at stake. Since he owned large, slave-run estates in southern Italy, he fitted the profile of Spartacus’s victims. Putting down the rebellion would not just bring Crassus glory but save his investments.

  Nor is there any doubt why the Roman people wanted Crassus. He was victorious, popular and filthy rich. Thanks to his wealth, Crassus should have been able to pay at least some of the soldiers out of his own purse, perhaps as a long-term loan to the treasury. Rome’s military budget was already funding armies in Spain, Thrace and Asia Minor, and a navy off Crete.

  Crassus had the proven ability to raise troops. The current emergency demanded a knowledgeable chief of recruitment who could fill the ranks quickly. As a former general for Sulla, moreover, Crassus should have been able to talk some of Sulla’s veterans back into service. Many of them were no longer young, but, unlike raw recruits, experienced soldiers don’t run when the enemy charges. The phrase, ‘Everyone who had a soldier’s heart, even if his body had grown old’, survives in one ancient source about the Spartacus war. We don’t know just what the words refer to, but how intriguing to think of them as Crassus’s recruiting slogan.

  Crassus was no Alexander the Great but he knew how to fight, and had learned about unconventional insurgents in Spain, a land that had resisted Rome fiercely for two centuries.

  When he was around 20 in 93 BC, Crassus had seen his father Publius celebrate a triumph over the Lusitanians (Portuguese), men known as masters of irregular warfare. Publius had spent three or four years (c. 97-93 BC) as governor of Hispania Ulterior, today’s Portugal and western Spain. Young Crassus lived with his father there and he may have served on his father’s staff in that war. The details of Publius’s campaign do not survive. Since he won a triumph, he must have scored one or more successes, but we may doubt whether he matched the enemy’s speed and cunning. Against the Lusitanians the Romans rarely did.

  The Lusitanians had a reputation as raiders and rustlers. Their greatest leader, Viriathus, had bedevilled the Romans with eight years of guerrilla warfare (148-139 BC). Viriathus was too shrewd to fight a pitched battle as the Romans wished. Stymied, the Romans attacked civilians in the towns that supported Viriathus and finally resorted to having him assassinated. The leaderless Lusitanians made peace, but it did not last. Again and again, the Lusitanians revolted, which led to Roman reprisals. In the decade before Publius’s governorship, for example, two Roman generals celebrated triumphs over the Lusitanians. More recently, Lusitanian light infantry and horsemen formed the core of Sertorius’s insurgency on the Spanish peninsula (80-72 BC). Both Viriathus and Sertorius excelled at speed, mobility, deception, ambush, night attacks and the other tricks of the trade of unconventional warfare.

  The Lusitanians imposed slippery and devious warfare on Rome. Around the time that Publius was fighting Viriathus, Rome faced a more static conflict in the neighbouring provin
ce of Nearer Spain, Hispania Citerior. Siegecraft was the main tactic there, and endurance vied in importance with deceit. This war offered lessons in brutality for Crassus.

  Publius’s colleague Titus Didius, governor of Hispania Citerior from 98 to 93 BC, spent nine months besieging a rebellious Spanish town in order to put an end to its people’s banditry. In the end, he talked the town into surrendering in return for a land grant, but once he had them in his power Didius ordered a massacre. He herded the women and children into a canyon along with the men and had them all slaughtered.

  Rome’s greatest siege in Spain had taken place at Numantia. A fortified city, Numantia had fought Rome for the better part of twenty years between 154 and 133 BC. The Numantines inflicted defeat and humiliation on half a dozen Roman commanders. Finally, in 134 BC Rome entrusted the war to Scipio Aemilianus, the man who had conquered Carthage in 146 BC. Scipio first raised a new army and trained it hard. Next he cut off Numantia’s food supply. Then he encircled Numantia with a huge wall, patrolled by Roman troops stationed in seven different forts. Then, Scipio waited. Slowly, the city starved; when it reached the point of cannibalism, Numantia surrendered. Fifty survivors were paraded in Scipio’s triumph, the rest were sold into slavery. Numantia was razed and divided among its neighbours.

  Scipio’s policy was as blunt as it was brutal. It had required 60,000 Roman and allied soldiers to defeat 4,000 defenders of Numantia. Even so, Crassus might have looked back to it as a model as he prepared to fight Spartacus. Like Scipio, Crassus held a special command. Like his father Publius, he faced a quick and shifty foe. To take on Spartacus in battle was to risk being outfoxed like half a dozen Roman commanders before him. Why not lead Spartacus into a trap instead, where the Romans could lay siege to him? Why not outfox the fox? Call it the Numantine solution.