the insurgents include women and children.
The safest course is to follow the lowest figure, which gives Spartacus and Crixus about 40,000 men in spring 72 BC and even more by autumn. By ancient standards this was no small sum. It is more men than Hannibal had when he crossed the Alps, for example, and about the size of Caesar’s army when he conquered Gaul. For that matter, the number of 40,000 men roughly equals the size of the largest army that the Romans would ever muster against Spartacus.
Around the time they defeated Varinius - we can’t be sure of the sequence of events - the rebels found themselves at Lucania’s Land’s End. The men who had washed their hands in blood in Capua now dipped their feet in the Ionian Sea. To be precise, they dipped them in a large inlet of the sea known as the Gulf of Tarentum (modern Taranto). The turquoise waters of the gulf, about 90 miles long and wide, wash the ‘arch’ of the Italian ‘boot’. The gulf’s coastline, stretching roughly from Tarentum to Croton, includes some of the most fertile land in Italy. This was once Magna Graecia, ‘Greater Greece’, a region of Greek colonies whose prosperity eventually outstripped that of the mother country. In its prime, Magna Graecia produced great generals, law-givers, doctors, artists and athletes. Pythagoras, one of ancient Greece’s leading philosophers, built his school here. But the conquering Romans ended all that. The gulf coast was still lush and abundant, but power and influence had passed it by.
Because the land was a backwater, it was useful for Spartacus and Crixus. Remote from Rome, the Ionian coast made a perfect base for the insurgents. It had a mild climate and was well stocked with food. Its large slave population made it promising recruiting country. Its farms and towns had furnaces that could be used for melting down slave chains and re-forging them as swords and spearheads. Its ports could attract merchants and pirates. Nearby loomed rugged hills and dense forests to retreat to in case the Romans arrived. It was, in short, a place to build an army.
But it was not about to open its doors to the rebels; they would have to break them down. And so they attacked, inflicting ‘terrible slaughter’, as one source says. They might have been as brutal here as they had been in the Campus Atinas. One of the places the insurgents went after was the city of Metapontum. Indeed, archaeology may show traces of their onslaught. A stoa (portico) in town, used as a warehouse, was destroyed during this period. Some see the hand of the rebels in this, and it certainly isn’t hard to imagine them crossing the moat and breaking through the wooden palisade that was Roman Metapontum’s main defence. Perhaps the citizens had tried to stop them by using the catapult balls that were being manufactured around this time in a nearby villa. But that sounds rather grand for Roman Metapontum, a place whose best days were behind it. Metapontum in 73 BC was more like a small town than the great city it had once been.
In its heyday (c. 600-300 BC) Metapontum had been a success story, one of Greece’s greatest colonies. Its fertile fields made Metapontum a bread-basket, with ears of wheat proudly displayed on its gold coins. But then came Rome and the familiar pattern of oppression, revolt, occupation and punishment. The once grand urban space had shrunk to a small sector.
In Metapontum’s countryside, meanwhile, the many small family farms of the Greek period disappeared. The land had been handed over largely to a few grandees, Romans or their local ‘friends’. Medium- or large-sized villas now dotted the river valleys and the coastal road or dominated the heights. Diversified agriculture was in decline, and pasturage was prevalent, especially of sheep, cattle and horses. In other words, this was in large part ranch country and, therefore, slave country: fertile ground for Spartacus’s recruiters.
One of Roman Metapontum’s few
The safest course is to follow the lowest figure, which gives Spartacus and Crixus about 40,000 men in spring 72 BC and even more by autumn. By ancient standards this was no small sum. It is more men than Hannibal had when he crossed the Alps, for example, and about the size of Caesar’s army when he conquered Gaul. For that matter, the number of 40,000 men roughly equals the size of the largest army that the Romans would ever muster against Spartacus.
Around the time they defeated Varinius - we can’t be sure of the sequence of events - the rebels found themselves at Lucania’s Land’s End. The men who had washed their hands in blood in Capua now dipped their feet in the Ionian Sea. To be precise, they dipped them in a large inlet of the sea known as the Gulf of Tarentum (modern Taranto). The turquoise waters of the gulf, about 90 miles long and wide, wash the ‘arch’ of the Italian ‘boot’. The gulf’s coastline, stretching roughly from Tarentum to Croton, includes some of the most fertile land in Italy. This was once Magna Graecia, ‘Greater Greece’, a region of Greek colonies whose prosperity eventually outstripped that of the mother country. In its prime, Magna Graecia produced great generals, law-givers, doctors, artists and athletes. Pythagoras, one of ancient Greece’s leading philosophers, built his school here. But the conquering Romans ended all that. The gulf coast was still lush and abundant, but power and influence had passed it by.
Because the land was a backwater, it was useful for Spartacus and Crixus. Remote from Rome, the Ionian coast made a perfect base for the insurgents. It had a mild climate and was well stocked with food. Its large slave population made it promising recruiting country. Its farms and towns had furnaces that could be used for melting down slave chains and re-forging them as swords and spearheads. Its ports could attract merchants and pirates. Nearby loomed rugged hills and dense forests to retreat to in case the Romans arrived. It was, in short, a place to build an army.
But it was not about to open its doors to the rebels; they would have to break them down. And so they attacked, inflicting ‘terrible slaughter’, as one source says. They might have been as brutal here as they had been in the Campus Atinas. One of the places the insurgents went after was the city of Metapontum. Indeed, archaeology may show traces of their onslaught. A stoa (portico) in town, used as a warehouse, was destroyed during this period. Some see the hand of the rebels in this, and it certainly isn’t hard to imagine them crossing the moat and breaking through the wooden palisade that was Roman Metapontum’s main defence. Perhaps the citizens had tried to stop them by using the catapult balls that were being manufactured around this time in a nearby villa. But that sounds rather grand for Roman Metapontum, a place whose best days were behind it. Metapontum in 73 BC was more like a small town than the great city it had once been.
In its heyday (c. 600-300 BC) Metapontum had been a success story, one of Greece’s greatest colonies. Its fertile fields made Metapontum a bread-basket, with ears of wheat proudly displayed on its gold coins. But then came Rome and the familiar pattern of oppression, revolt, occupation and punishment. The once grand urban space had shrunk to a small sector.
In Metapontum’s countryside, meanwhile, the many small family farms of the Greek period disappeared. The land had been handed over largely to a few grandees, Romans or their local ‘friends’. Medium- or large-sized villas now dotted the river valleys and the coastal road or dominated the heights. Diversified agriculture was in decline, and pasturage was prevalent, especially of sheep, cattle and horses. In other words, this was in large part ranch country and, therefore, slave country: fertile ground for Spartacus’s recruiters.
One of Roman Metapontum’s few
Similar Books
