Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lauren Voldeban. Here in ancient Rome, while the upper class cavorted, feasted and guzzled wine, impoverished commoners seethed with resentment. Then one man became a symbol of an uprising against political corruption and moral callousness, and to this very day he's regarded as a hero. His name was Spartacus. He wasn't born to wealth or power. He was considered part of the
dregs of society. Born in roughly one o nine BCE in the province of Brace, which today makes up parts of Greece and Bulgaria, his life is mostly a mystery of history up until he made himself a thorn in the side of the Roman Empire. What we do know is that Spartacus was sent to a gladiator school far away and Capua A near modern day Naples, where he was trained to fight with various weapons as entertainment for massive crowds and arenas. Discipline in these schools was harsh.
For the article, this episode is based on How Stuff Works. Spoke via email with Aaron Irvin, a history professor at Murray State University. Irvin is a well regarded historian who's also consulted on many TV series about this particular part of history. He explained gladiators were a long standing tradition in Rome, one that was originally related to funerals. Fundamentally, though, gladiators were slaves, and generally they were considered the lowest
of the low, the most worthless and useless. A slave was made a gladiator as a last resort because the owner saw no other feasible way of making money off of them, so he might as well make the slave's death entertaining. Not that all gladiator fights were to the death. Some ended when a fighter drew first blood or drove
his opponent into submission. But in an age where basic hygiene like hand washing was rare and antibiotics didn't exist, even superficial wounds could prove fatal for one or both fighters. A few fortunate gladiators found fame through bloodshed. They won fight after fight, making names for themselves and becoming celebrities. Other enslaved people served them, and a rare few became the most popular figures in their cities, akin to rock
stars or sports heroes. Irvin said gladiator helmets were crafted to specifically hide the face of the gladiators, making the fighters recognizable in their gear but otherwise faceless automata to the crowd. No longer debased slaves, the gladiators became something extraordinary, something beyond mere humans. However, the vast majority of gladiators faced short, desperate lives. That's why Spartacus and seventy of his compatriots made a daring escape from a gladiator school
in seventy three BCE. They then hijacked a caravan carrying a load of gladieater weapons and armor, and suddenly they were the equivalent of a heavily armed gang, with Spartacus as their initial leader. He brought along his wife, a prophetess of Dionysus, who also hailed from Thrace, though her name is no longer known. The men continued to train themselves for combat at a location on Mount Vesuvius, occasionally raiding the countryside below. Eventually they caught the attention of Rome.
A high ranking government official called a praetor by the name of Claudius Glabert, was sent to put Spartacus down. He perhaps erred in relying on local militia. With only a small force of professional soldiers, and the gladiators defeated them soundly. The victory proved monumental in Roman and human history. Before that, enslaved people and the Roman Republic felt so
hopeless that they rarely tried to escape. The republic was so vast, stretching throughout the Mediterranean, that there was nowhere to escape to, no political equivalent of the US's Northern States. People were so resigned to their fates that they often didn't even require supervision. But Spartacus and his men provided the spark of hope that became a wildfire of armed rage. Ervin said, when Spartacus beat a Roman praetor, suddenly there
was another option. There was a group you could flee to that had managed to not just stand against Rome, but it actually managed to defeat a Roman officer on the battlefield. Enslaved people and prisoners of war ran away to join the uprising. People of very different backgrounds, both men and women, saw Spartacas as a way to fight
back against their oppressors. Although records from the time are unreliable, these people may have swelled the rebel army's ranks to ten or even hundreds of thousands, Irvin said, it wasn't so much that Spartacus rallied these men and women to his cause, or that he even saw himself as leading a cause in the first place. If anything, it tells us how desperate and how awful things were in Italy in the period where someone, anyone, even a lowly gladiator,
could attract such a massive following. After the slightest victory against Realme, Spartacus won at least three more military engagements. The rebel leader even triumphed over armies of the Roman councils, the heads of the entire Roman government, and commanders in chief of the armies. As gladiators, these men had nothing
to lose, so they fought with little fear. Some probably believed that ultimately they must bring down the pillars of Roman political power or risk being captured and forced back into bondage. Ervin said what the Roman elite didn't anticipate was the existing anger and resentment among the people of Italy that would attach itself to Spartacus's band. They also didn't understand that their slim grasp on power relied almost
totally on the perception of Roman military might. One chink in that metal armor a few Spartacus victories, and the revolt became real. That's exactly why Rome's leaders knew they needed to find a way to kill Spartacus once and for all. Rome was rattle. Its veteran armies were deployed elsewhere, and the city had only a ragtag force left to oppose any attackers. So frightening had Spartacus become that eventually no leaders could be found to take the reins of
a force against him. Finally, a wealthy praetor named Marcus Crassus agreed to finance and lead an army against the rebels. A vicious general, he led his men with obsense of brutality, randomly killing soldiers and units who ran from battle. He pursued Spartacus across the countryside, slowly but surely, weakening the gladiators and their legions. Infighting amongst the rebels weakened their
resolve and their ability to fight as one. In seventy one BCE, in a final battle, Spartacus and his men made a desperate lunge toward Crassus himself, hoping that perhaps Crassus's death might save the rebellion, but Spartacus was cut down and the rebel army crushed. Some six thousand survivors were hunted down and crucified as a warning to other would be rebels, but Spartacus's body itself was never found. Still, his death and those of his allies weren't in vain.
Ervin explained. In the immediate aftermath of the war against Spartacus, A Crassus and Pompey, the two generals who had brought an end to Spartacus's army, passed a number of reforms that strengthened the voice of the Roman people and the government, and forced the elite to pay life or attention to
the desires and circumstances of Rome's lower classes. These same reforms also paved the way for a new populist politician by the name of Julius Caesar, who would combine his own popularity with military success some twenty five years later to bring down the entirety of the Roman Republic. Spartacus's
contemporaries had a mixed view of him. Some admired his bravery and military tactics, others feared he could have started the collapse of civilized society, and now Irvin said, ultimately a Spartacus means to us today largely what he meant in his own period, A cry of rage and anger and frustration at an unfair, uncaring, unfeeling world. A people who have finally reached a breaking point and will follow someone,
anyone who will give them a chance. Today's sode is based on the article Spartacus was a Real Gladiator and the Baddest rebel leader in Rome on HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by Nathan Chandler. Brain Stuff is production of ByHeart Radio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,