Spartacus' Revolt

• [Ballio, a captious slave owner, is giving orders.]" I order that you clean up the house. You know your business; hurry indoors. smooth the couches. Clean the plate and put in proper order. Take care that when I'm back from the Forum I find things done---all swept, sprinkled, scoured, smoothed, cleaned and set in order." - Platus
•  "...For no respite or pause is granted them in their labours, but compelled beneath blows of the overseers to endure the severity of their plight, they throw away their lives in this wretched manner […]; indeed death in their eyes is more to be desired than life, because of the magnitude of the hardships they must bear. " - Diodorus
• "It was not an external war, nor a war waged with enemies of equal strength, but one waged by an enemy within our own gates. The commonwealth was not merely at stake, but, what is more terrible, the masters were at war with their own slaves." - Florus
• "Crassus... took six thousand of those who had been taken alive, and crucified them along the whole road leading from Capua to Rome. The crosses stood in sight of one another, and the punishment was a warning to any who thought of future revolts." - Plutarch
• "There was no mention of that disaster greater than all the alarms that have ever been in this state—the disaster of the Servile War, when, in the consulship of Marcus Licinius Crassus, a thing that never happened before in the history of Rome occurred—an army of slaves obtained possession of the city of Rome." - Cicero
• One of the most significant slave revolts in Roman history was the Third Servile War, also known as the Spartacus Rebellion (73-71 BCE). Led by Spartacus, a former gladiator and slave, this revolt had a profound impact on the Roman Republic, highlighting social tensions and influencing political and military strategies. Not only a major challenge to Roman authority, but a reflection if underlying tensions and contradictions within the society