How Spartacus's uprising rocked Rome to its core

[historyextra]

Find the full episode of this podcast at historyextra.com/podcast or search 'HistoryExtra' wherever you listen

[boomslangCA]

The Roman Army, in both pre and post Marian periods actually was not the all winning machine it is usually made out to be but was defeated on many occasions. What it did have was resiliency, being able to rebuild and come back for more until they could finally win.

[zeroswat]

Hard to beat a guy that knows exactly how you are going to react in a situation.

[Somewhat-Evil]

Was Spartacus an actual Thracian or was that his gladiatorial fighting style? He could have learned how to deal with opponents armed with short sword and scutum from facing Samnite gladiators. Battle reenactments were performed in the arena after all.

[jaysonp]

They're much more trained than roman soliders... it's all they did was train. Marian reforms had only been around flr 30 years so it was basically the first wave of roman professional armies.

[mnk]

I mean most slaves were POWs to begin with, especially those who became gladiators, and it's not really a huge jump from a thracian javelin to a pilum, a celtic sword to a gladius, a gallic shield to a scutum or an attic helmet to a galea...
That's like saying "Oh Hans who got captured at Pointe du Hoc must have been in the Marines since he knew how to use a 1911 and on which end to grab the Garand.".

[pasolo]

Spartacus "army" was just in a small part formed by gladiators, most of them were slaves, and they needed to be trained in the use of weapons, what made them"strong" was the fact that they were a huge number and fought against a small number of legions guided by bad commander until Crasso, what was the result of this rebellion ? almost all were killed, so, thinking after this crazyness, was the rebellion worth ?

[markrowland]

Thankyou for lelling of this uprising.

[fazole]

Can gladiators defend against arrows? If they are slaves, I assume they aren't going to have the curved Roman shields that can be used to create the "turtle" defense against a hail of arrows.

[nellyprice]

How many actual gladiators in the uprising vs number of house and field slaves ?

[steinway]

Spartacus was trained to fight by the Romans.

Arminius was a Roman soldier and led the Germanic forces to victory against the Romans at the Battle of the Teutoberg Forest.

Odacer was a Germanic chief who was trained and fought for the Romans, but wound up sacking Rome.

It seems that most of Rome's enemies were themselves.

[juliusraben]

Does history skips parts? I mean, going from soldier to gladiator seems like he was being punished or "he was young and needed the money"😅

[kalhirn]

Spartacus war against slavers was the only just war in history...

[anthonyperno]

Gladiators did not train or fight with Roman equipment.

The weapons were traditional and made with inferior metal and not part of the legions kit.

Nor did gladiators learn to fight in legionary tactics.

[mightyeagle]

Besides all that here’s a funny note my son was doing a report in our local town library and asked for the book on Spartacus and the librarian actually said it was fiction. Can you believe that?

[davidbell]

According to the film.
SPARTACUS was a captured Thracian Soldier.

[J.B.Whiteside]

A lot of poor roman former soldiers also joined Spartacus.

[lukaskaelin]

Well, Spartacus was trained as a gladiator but the majority of Spartacus followers where slaves that where trained as field workers and other labourers...the Gladiator made just a very small percentage of Spartacus followers. The fact that Spartacus was trained as a Gladiator di not matter much.

[jacobwalsh]

Can't have been that effective. He was defeated by Crassus, who had zero military experience.

[IanDuhGlass]

They didn't have flattops in Ancient Rome!