Spartacus is now one of the most ancient name - thanks to Hollywood , various revolutionary groups and forget a professional cyclist . That that reputation is not undeserved, as the Catherine Salles' monograph 73 av JC, Spartacus et la révolte of GLADIATEUR , a clever, accurate book that is completely free of the otherwise artificially heavy French language of scholars. Salles is characterized on the basis of the few remote sources to the life and work of the famous ancient slave revolutionary. Born around 100 BC in Thrace, from the Romans for military service obligation, deserted, was captured and sold as a slave in Rome, he arrived in the gladiator school of Lentulus Battiatus Capua in Campania . There, he managed to allegedly with the help of his partner, a versed in mystical cults priestess to unite his fellow sufferers to resist and escape from the school. Fast the little groups of 70 gladiators grew through the influx of slaves and poor peasants in a band of pirates by ten thousand men, who, by the well-trained professional fighters led and trained, the Vesuvius area plagued with robberies. They met little resistance at first: the police wanted do not engage properly in an undignified struggle against the (in their eyes) the scum of society, and the lack of police units that were sent to meet her, was able to dominate the already large group of slaves without problems. She grew up in contrast to a regular army of seventy thousand soldiers, well armed, organized and conducted properly taut. It is unclear, their real target: the slaves wanted to return to their homeland? If they wanted to settle permanently in their own state? If they wanted to strengthen their movement in other parts of Italy even further? If any part of the army to the south, the greater part followed with Spartacus at the top of the north, struck several times, the Roman Legions, who opposed him, turned not against Rome, but returned to southern Italy, where Spartacus Thurium vain in the Gulf of Taranto, was trying to set up. After over a year in which he had presented to the Roman troops almost at will, it arose in the person of the wealthy, ambitious and unscrupulous Crassus finally an overpowering opponents. Even though he was played out several times, but finally put the uprising (and its leader) to a bloody end.
During his two-year revolt in Spartacus proved quite obviously a charismatic personality, capable military leader and skillful Tactician. What it also so interesting are the parallels between his and the various other slave revolts in the 2nd and 1 Century BC The main elements meet again and again: the important role of the rousing, often with the gods in particular related leader, or the confederacy of the rebels with other disadvantaged people of their time such as the rural poor and the initial under-estimation by the authorities, which can not struggle through really seriously against the supposed sub-human, that is, with enough troops to act powerful. Thus achieved individual revolts of slaves an amazing life and resistance; in Sicily, built the Syrians Eunous in the years 139-132 BC, even a real kingdom where the slaves lived for years alone. Unifying was also constant every time the hopelessness of rebellion, that - as soon as Rome had once decided seriously to combat it - was brutally and completely. Of special, exemplary cruelty is the triumph and punitive measures of Crassus, who had to beat 6000 The Fellowship of the Spartacus along the 195 kilometers of the Via Appia from Capua to Rome to the cross.
Catherine Salles sees and describes the series of riots as a typical consequence of the slave system the late Roman Republic. Or more precisely, as a consequence of the worsening relationship between masters and slaves. In the last two centuries BC, he enlarged the number of those massive, which were hurt as prisoners of war or as a pirate booty into slavery. The excess supply of slaves enticed to use them in a large scale and with almost no regard for the loss. And these harsh living conditions which had to appear particularly unbearable, the free-born and first became slaves by captivity. The frequency and intensity of slave revolts then subsided as the dried up two sources of wars of conquest and piracy, as the proportion of already Captive-born slaves and rose again at the same time as the brutality of men against their "talking property" returned.
Finally, the revolt of Spartacus, as it also be read as a spotlight on the crisis of the late Republic. The subject deserved a more comprehensive employment (and the relevant literature here is already ready). Salles, however, already provides a precise and lucid analysis of an overpowered by his own successes city-state that is within a few generations, become a world empire, but still performed by the same institutions, governed by the same handful of noble families. Often frightening unable, in the glory of their family history frozen in the trade have become rich by, but politically influential little knights pressed, rubbed on the aristocracy in factional fighting and civil wars. Its decline was the decline of the Roman Republic, and it seems only logical that throughout the first century BC, some "strong men" dominated the fortunes of Rome - a development that culminated in the Augustan Principate, the Empire. The real victims of this century-torn, brutalized slaves and the impoverished small farmers, remain largely mirror nameless. The slave revolt of Spartacus, they moved short, but abruptly the bright stage lights of history.
Technicals: Catherine Salles, 73 av JC, Spartacus et la révolte of GLADIATEUR. Bruxelles, Editions Complexe 1990/2005. ISBN 2-8048-0053-9. (I should here like to have a weblink to the book, but the site is by Editions Complexe follows an angle that I have failed. Or anyone ever saw the midst of a catalog search a link to "cheap dell laptop batteries online? Well or the demise of the printed book seems unstoppable ...)
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