Third Servile War

The Third Servile War (73-71 BC), also called the Gladiator War and the War of Spartacus by Plutarch, was the last of a series of unrelated and unsuccessful slave rebellions against the Roman Republic, known collectively as the Roman Servile Wars.

The Third Servile War was the only one to directly threaten the Roman heartland of Italy and was doubly alarming to the Roman people due to the repeated successes of the rapidly growing band of rebel slaves against the Roman army between 73 and 71 BC. The rebellion was finally crushed through the concentrated military effort of a single commander, Marcus Licinius Crassus, although the rebellion continued to have indirect effects on Roman politics for years to come.

Between 73 and 71 BC, a band of escaped slaves—originally a small cadre of about 78 primarly Thracian, Gallic and Germanic escaped gladiators which grew into a band of over 120,000 men, women and children—wandered throughout and raided Italy with relative impunity under the guidance of several leaders, including the famous gladiator-general Spartacus. The able-bodied adults of this band were a surprisingly effective armed force that repeatedly showed they could withstand the Roman military, from the local Campanian patrols, to the Roman militia, and to trained Roman legions under consular command. Plutarch described the actions of the slaves as an attempt by Roman slaves to escape their masters and flee through Cisalpine Gaul, while Appian and Florus depicted the revolt as a civil war in which the slaves waged a campaign to capture the city of Rome itself.

The Roman Senate's growing alarm about the continued military successes of this band, and about their depredations against Roman towns and the countryside, eventually led to Rome's fielding of an army of eight legions under the harsh but effective leadership of Marcus Licinius Crassus. The war ended in 71 BC when the armies of Spartacus, after long and bitter fighting, retreating before the legions of Crassus, and realizing that the legions of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus and Marcus Terentius Varro Lucullus were moving in to entrap them, launched their full strength against Crassus' legions and were utterly destroyed.

The Third Servile War was significant to the broader history of ancient Rome mostly in its effect on the careers of Pompey and Crassus. The two generals used their success in putting down the rebellion to further their political careers, using their public acclaim and the implied threat of their legions to sway the consular elections of 70 BC in their favor. Their actions as Consuls greatly furthered the subversion of Roman political institutions and contributed to the eventual transition of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire.

Fictional accounts—such as Stanley Kubrick's 1960 film Spartacus—sometimes portray the rebelling slaves as ancient Roman freedom fighters, struggling to change a corrupt Roman society and to end the Roman institution of slavery. Although this is not contradicted by classical historians, no historical account mentions that the goal of the rebel slaves was to end slavery in the Republic, nor do any of the actions of rebel leaders, who themselves committed numerious atrocities, seem specifically aimed at ending slavery.