While at the school, Spartacus helped organize a breakout that led to more than 70 gladiators escaping armed with knives, cleavers and other makeshift weapons they got from the kitchen. At some point he was captured, brought to Rome and sold as a slave to a man referred to at times as “Vatia.” This man owned a gladiator school in Capua, about 120 miles (193 kilometers) southeast of Rome. He appears to have served in a Roman auxiliary unit for a time, deserted and became either a bandit or insurgent against the Romans. This is SpartacusĪccording to the surviving sources, Spartacus was from Thrace, an area in southeast Europe that the Romans were often trying to subjugate during the first century B.C. Accounts from only about a dozen ancient writers survive to this day, and none of the surviving reports was written by Spartacus or one of his supporters.
Also, while Spartacus was a real person who has inspired revolutionaries and filmmakers, scholars do not have an abundant amount of information about him. A favorite character in popular fiction, he was not crucified, and there was no “I’m Spartacus!” moment as seen in the famous 1960 Stanley Kubrick film.
