SPARTACUS, the leader of a formidable insurrection of slaves against Rome in the 1st century b.c., was a Thracian by birth, and perhaps a descendant of the kings of Panticapaeum whose name he bore. He served in the Roman army, but seems to have deserted, for we are told that he was taken prisoner and sold as a slave. Destined for the arena, he, with a band of his fellow-gladiators, broke out of a training-school at Capua and took refuge on Mount Vesuvius (73 b.c.). Here he maintained himself as a captain of brigands, his lieutenants being Crixus and Oenomaus, who like himself had been gladiators. Their numbers soon swelled through the accession of runaway slaves and desperados from the neighbourhood. A hastily-collected force of 3000 men under Claudius endeavoured to besiege and starve out the rebels, but the latter clambered down the precipices and put the Romans to flight. Swarms of hardy and desperate men now joined the rebels, and when the praetor Publius Varinius took the field against them he found them entrenched like a regular army on the plain. But they gave him the slip, and when he advanced to storm their lines he found them deserted. From Campania the rebels marched into Lucania, a country better suited for guerilla warfare. Here, in spite of the commands and entreaties of Spartacus, the slaves committed excesses of lust and cruelty. Varinius followed him, but was defeated in several engagements and narrowly escaped being taken prisoner. Spartacus, whose heart was “where his rude cottage by the Danube lay,” now endeavoured to push northward. His object was to cross the Alps and allow the slaves, who were mostly Thracians, Germans, and Gauls, to disperse to their homes. But intoxicated by success his wild followers refused to listen to him; their thoughts ...