Spartacus

• A celebrated Thracian gladiator, who carried on the war of the gladiators against the Romans, Cic. Har. Resp. 12, 26; Liv. Epit. 95; Sall. H. 3, 67, 12 sq. Dietsch; Flor. 3, 20, 2; Vell. 2, 30, 4; Hor. C. 3, 14, 19; id. Epod. 16, 5 al.—
• II Meton., an epithet of Mark Antony: certamen cum percussore, cum latrone, cum Spartaco, Cic. Phil. 4, 6, 15.

The name of several kings of the Cimmerian Bosporus. (1) Succeeded the dynasty of the Archeanactidae in B.C. 438, and reigned until 431. He was succeeded by his son Seleucus.

(2) Began to reign in B.C. 427, and reigned twenty years. He was succeeded in 407 by his son Satyrus.

(3) Succeeded his father, Leucon , in B.C. 353, and died, leaving his kingdom to his son Parysades in 348.

(4) Son of Eumelus, began to reign in B.C. 304, and reigned twenty years.

A famous fighter, by birth a Thracian, and successively a shepherd, a soldier, and a chief of banditti. On one of his predatory expeditions he was taken prisoner, and sold to a trainer of gladiators. In B.C. 73 he was a member of the gladiatorial company of Lentulus, and was detained in his school at Capus, in readiness for the games at Rome. He persuaded his fellow-prisoners to make an attempt to gain their freedom. About seventy of them broke out of the trainingschool of Lentulus, and took refuge in the crater of Vesuvius. Spartacus was chosen leader, and was soon joined by a number of runaway slaves. These were blockaded by C. Claudius Pulcher at the head of three thousand men, but Spartacus attacked the besiegers and put them to flight. His numbers rapidly increased, and for two years (B.C. 73-71) he defeated one Roman army after another, and laid waste Italy, from the foot of the Alps to the southernmost corner of the peninsula. After both the consuls of the year 72 had been defeated by Spartacus, M. Licinius Crassus, the praetor, was appointed to the command of the war. Crassus carried on the contest with vigour and success; and, after gaining several advantages over the enemy, at length defeated them on the River Silarus in a decisive battle, in which Spartacus was slain. The character of Spartacus has been maligned by the Roman writers. Cicero compares the vilest of his contemporaries to him: Horace speaks of him (Carm. iii. 14, 19) as a common robber; none recognize his greatness, but the terror of his name survived to a late period of the Empire. Accident made Spartacus a shepherd, a freebooter, and a gladiator; nature formed him a hero. The excesses of his followers he could not always repress, and his efforts to restrain them often cost him his popularity. But he was in himself not less mild and just than he was able and valiant.