Spartacus is the most famous gladiator—and probably the most famous slave—in history, and yet in many ways we really know very little about him. From 73 to 71 B.C. he led a slave revolt in Italy, shaking the Roman Republic by trouncing army after army until he was finally defeated and killed. The fear he inspired was reflected by the spectacular cruelty of the punishment that followed: 6,000 survivors of the rebel army (which had numbered in the tens of thousands) were crucified along the Appian Way from Rome to Capua, some 130 miles away. This ghastly reprisal was one of the reasons that the Romans never again faced a serious slave rebellion.
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