Breaching the wall

Spartacus was a Thracian slave and gladiator, born in around 103 B.C.E. in what is now Bulgaria, about whose early years (despite several movies and books giving lots of lurid detail) little is known for certain.  He may have been conscripted into the Roman army -- certainly he knew a great deal about fighting and tactics -- but ultimately ran afoul with the notoriously harsh Roman discipline and was forced into slavery.  His physical prowess made it inevitable he'd be chosen as a gladiator, an occupation that could on occasion win you renown and eventual freedom, but much more frequently ended up with your dying a painful death in front of a large, cheering audience.

Spartacus by sculptor Dénis Foyatier (1830) [Image licensed under the Creative Commons Spartacus statue by Dénis Foyatier, CC BY-SA 3.0]

Spartacus was having none of it, and in 73 B.C.E. he escaped confinement with about seventy other gladiators.  Soon their ranks were joined by an estimated seventy thousand slaves and poor people, which began the Third Servile War, a conflict Voltaire referred to as "the only just war in history."  They held out for two years -- no mean feat -- by this time, swelling their numbers to 120,000, before the inevitable happened.  The Roman army, under Marcus Licinius Crassus, defeated Spartacus's forces at the Battle of Lucania in 73 B.C.E.  Spartacus himself was killed in the battle (although his body was never found, leading to rampant speculation, lo unto this very day, that he somehow escaped).  In a way, even if he was killed during the fighting it was damned lucky for him, because after the battle ended six thousand of his compatriots were crucified along the Appian Way, surely one of the most horrific and cruel means of execution ever devised.

The Death of Spartacus by Hermann Vogel (1882) [Image is in the Public Domain]

For what it's worth, Crassus got what he deserved in the end.  In 53 B.C.E. he died at the disastrous (from the Roman perspective, anyhow) Battle of Carrhae, by one account being held down and having molten gold poured down his throat.

Man, they did know how to come up with some creatively gruesome ideas, back then.

The reason Spartacus comes up is because of a story over at Smithsonian Magazine about an archaeological find in Calabria, the "toe of Italy's boot" -- a three-kilometer-long stone wall running alongside what appears to be a deep military ditch, and nearby, obvious remnants of a battle, such as broken iron sword handles, curved blades, javelin points, and spearheads.  The types of artifacts are consistent with production during the late Republic, which is right about the same time as the Third Servile War occurred.

In fact, Andrea Maria Gennaro, superintendent of archaeology for the Italian Ministry of Culture, who worked at the site, believes that the wall and ditch were built to contain Spartacus and his fellow rebels, but that there is a spot on the wall that shows sign of a breach.  It's known that the rebellious slave army did fight battles against the Roman army in the region -- and more than once succeeded, before finally being overwhelmed and defeated in Lucania, forty kilometers south of Naples.  Gennaro thinks this very spot might have been the site of one of those breaches by the famous rebel.

Part of the stone wall thought to have been part of the defense against Spartacus and the rebels [Image credit: Andrea Maria Gennaro]

"We started studying weapons recovered along the wall, and the closest comparisons are with weapons from the late Republican period," she said.  "We believe we have identified the site of the clash...  The wall is a sort of barrier due to its topographic location and other factors, like the absence of gates.  It divides the entire large flat area into two parts...  When we realized what it was, it was very exciting.  It's not every day you get to experience history first-hand."

I was struck by that palpable sense of history beneath my feet the entire time I was in Italy two months ago.  Mind you, there's history everywhere in the world; right here where I now live, the Seneca and Cayuga Nations and their ancestors thrived for thousands of years.  But there are few places in the world with as many tangible traces of antiquity as in Italy.

And now we have one with a direct connection to one of the most famous figures from the Roman Republic -- someone who is still held up as an inspiration to those fighting against oppression and servitude.  Even though Spartacus and his rebels ultimately failed -- certainly, the practice of slavery in Rome continued unabated afterward -- seeing the wall that they breached over two thousand years ago still acts as a symbol of brave men and women willing to put their lives on the line to be free.

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