May 5, 2020 • 52 mins
Spartacus was a real dude. He led a slave revolt, and was pretty successful to boot. I'm Spartacus. You're Spartacus. We are all Spartacus.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryan over there.
It's just the two of us. So that's okay because
you're here, dear listener insert your first name after that,
(00:23):
and this is stuff you should Know. That's right. Uh,
Stanley kuber condition m sort of. I went to go,
um watch that last night? Oh yeah, and then I
was like, wait, I think that's really long. So I
looked up the run time. I was like, I'm not
watching that, so have yet to see it. Yeah, watch
Pazz of Glory instead. What was that? Is that? The
(00:46):
one about Barry Lyndon? Now that was Barry Lindon. That's
great too, But if you're gunning for early Kubrick, I
would say, uh, Killer's Kiss if you want to go
super early. And then as of Glory, which is the
other one he did with Kirk Douglas, the World War
One trench warfare film. That's great, okay. And Barry Lyndon,
(01:07):
which is just a masterpiece, wasn't that Ryan O'Neill, Yeah, boy,
it's good. Yeah, he's in one of my favorite movies
of all time Paper movie. That's right, and one of
my favorite movies. The main event? What was that? It
was a rom com? He did as he played a
boxer opposite Barbra Streisand was she a boxer? No? It was.
(01:30):
It was not great. I mean it was fine. It
was one of the seventies rom coms, but not one
of my favorite movies by any stretch. Speaking of rom coms,
but minus the rom part and just the calm, heavy
on the calm. Have you seen Eliza this Lessengers sketch
show on Netflix? No, it was very good that How
do I know that name? She's She's gotten pretty big
(01:52):
as a stand up in the last couple of years. Um.
She If you haven't discovered her yet, you're welcome. She's
really great. I'm looking her up now, which is something
I don't normally do. I don't think I recognize her. Okay, well,
she's got some stand up specials that are definitely worth watching.
And then she just debuted a season of a sketch
comedy show that's pretty good, definitely worth seeing. I have
(02:16):
to check that out. Ryan O'Neil's not in it yet,
but like I said, it's just one season. Uh, we're
on a shout out Live Science. By the way, we
used how Stuff Works article on Spartacus and this great
Live Science article on Spartacus, the real Spartacus, not Kirk Douglas.
I also read an article from a guy named Um
(02:38):
Kenneth Spartacus Kenneth P check c z e c H
like check the Czech Republic. I guess maybe that's where
his family is from. Who knows, but he wrote an
article back in the nineties about Um Spartacus that was
very exhaustive, that was helpful. And then there's also a
historian named Barry Strauss who I read some like interviews
(03:00):
articles from him too. He's a bit of a specialist
on Spartacus, so shout out to those cats as well. Yeah.
So the story of Spartacus, if you've watched this the
Kubrick film, it is not Um. I mean, there are
bits of truth in there, but it's definitely not some
real truthful biopic of his life. Good movie, but we're
(03:21):
going to give you the real story of spartacus life,
which is that of a and the leader of an
uprising of slaves who said Rome We're not going to
take it anymore. Um, no, we ain't gonna take it.
That's right, We're not going to take it. And it's
(03:42):
the original title, I think. Um, and we we met
that guy. Oh, actually we passed that guy backstage on's
members right? What show was that? Whatever? I think it
was Jeff Brokes, wasn't it? No? No, no, it was
the whatever show? With? Was it with? Was that Martha
Stewart's daughter? Yea, she has a first name, Alexis, Alexis
and Jennifer, right, Jennifer and Alexis. Wow. Yes, remember when
(04:07):
we were on TV every now and then, Yeah, we'd
be on that. We were on Jeff Probes. Do you
remember the Jeff Probes Show. He was interviewing us and
he zoned out so hard I almost said, like, Jeff,
are you okay while we were talking. Yeah, and we
used to occasionally we'd be on CNN. They would have
us on to do like talking head stuff, and then, uh,
(04:27):
everyone just sort of stopped caring about us. We got
really well, we got really popular podcasting, and they just
all said, huh, well, whatever, we don't need those guys.
That's okay, Now, I don't want to be on CNN
or any news network. Well, yeah, we were on the
soul A Deed O'Brien show. We were interviewed by Christine Roman.
(04:51):
She's she's like super legit journalist. It was pretty so
was Jeff Probest right. The tribe has spoken and they
who else? And that what he said, the tribe is spoken? Yeah,
and then he that candle. He'd kick you in the
seat of your pants on the way out, and you
would thank God, because what a relief to be kicked
(05:11):
off that garbage show man. It was good the first
season or two. I think. I think I did watch
the first couple of seasons. Um, but you know, I'm
not gonna yunk someone's army. There's probably still Survivor shows
going on. Oh no, there are they. I think the
most recent season they brought together like past champions or
(05:32):
past people who got kicked off one of the two
and said who's going to win this time? Yeah? I don't.
The only one I do like that is Top Chef,
which is still maintained its integrity after all these years
and never became dumb. And then for a little while
I did that. Discovery had a show I cannot remember
the name of it where it was like a post
(05:52):
apocalyptic scenario where they would put people in this area
and like a ocasionally they would send in these mad
Max type people to mess with them and take their stuff,
and they had to build things and defend themselves. God,
what was that called? It was really awful. And where
the people naked? Because I can tell you the name
of the show if they were naked. I have watched
(06:15):
more than one episode of Naked and Afraid I haven't.
Did they just like like blur out there there, um
the parts of their bathing suit covers. No, they're completely
naked and it's just shows dong out the whole time
that like goyage Golden Record is blurred out. And the
kind of the first thing that the ladies do is
(06:37):
fashion some sort of uh eve like covering on her
on her bits. And the men either do that or
they're just like, hey, whatever. He's the guy at the
gym that has a towel like over his shoulder but
not around his waist. Oh yeah, that guy, that guy
wearing tennis shoes with no socks. Yes a k A.
(06:58):
Men who were proud of their generals dong out. So
I'm guessing Spartacus is probably dong out. He was, um,
are we back to Spartacus now you think, okay, So
Spartacus was this guy who everyone knows the name of. Uh.
And you may even know that he was a gladiator.
Maybe you know that he led a slave revolt. But
(07:22):
this guy was really nuanced, really detailed, and actually even
after a couple of thousand years of history analysis, you know,
falling in and out of favor of different cultures that
come and go, he he stands the test of time
pretty well, even after being draped in you know, a
(07:43):
lot of people's hang ups and like, you know, held
up as a prime example of the ideals of whatever
group are revering him. Like, even after you strip all
that stuff away and look at the historical figure, he
was still a pretty pretty interesting and and kind to
upstanding guy as far as leaders of slave revolts go.
(08:06):
That's right, and that's a good way to put it. Uh.
He was a Thracian, which means he is from Thrace.
We don't know a ton about his early life because
they just didn't bother recording the history of of nobody's
slaves in ancient Rome. Why would they. It took him
to do remarkable things for historians to take notice with
(08:27):
their their quill and paper, and the Romans at the time,
this was an area the Thrace was in southeast Europe
where they're always trying to subjugate this area of Europe
and first century BC, and it was just it was
just not a good scene if you weren't sort of
(08:47):
upper echelon Roman at the time. No, and Thrace was UM.
I get the impression that it was not really want
to live under Roman yoke, but I think I also
have the impression that they were, um, they were in
league with the Romans, but it was kind of like
one of those you know, we can either we can
(09:08):
either be an ally of yours or you can conquer
us kind of thing, and so I think there was
a bit of a tense truce and there was a U.
I don't I don't think any contemporary text about um
Sparta Kisses still around today. Most of the earliest stuff
we know about him comes from at the earliest the
(09:28):
first century CE, and he was living in the last
century or the first century BC. UM, so people were
writing about him a hundred two hundred years later. But
one of the one of those old texts says that
he wasn't born a slave, and that he actually was
a Thracian soldier who was an ally who who worked
(09:51):
in the auxiliary or fought in the auxiliary for Rome.
So he was a soldier under Roman command at some point,
and they think that that he was drummed out of
the army for some reason unjustly, this ancient author says,
and that that kind of led on this path to
him becoming a bandit and a criminal. Yeah, he was
(10:13):
like the guy in the new Star Wars movies, which
one which one, the guy that that was a stormtrooper
and then said, you know what, I'm not a stormtrooper anymore.
I want to kill stormtroopers. Okay, I haven't I've seen
the Last Jedi one. Yeah, that's one. Okay, So but
(10:33):
that was a that was like a side story, right,
that wasn't one of the actual cannon. No, So the
Last Jedi was they made three main ones, a part
of the cannon, and then a Star Wars fans, you
have words for all these things. Rogue one was the
one that was outside, and then the Han solo movie
was outside and not outside cannon, just not part of
(10:54):
the whatever that those movies. So Rogue one is the
one I'm thinking of that was really good. Yeah. I
enjoyed that one quite a bit. The other ones, I
don't think I've been able to make it through a
single one yet. Oh yeah, I like them, but they're
Star Wars movies. I don't I don't expect greatness. I
just think they're kind of fun. Yeah, I mean I
love the first three. Yeah, sure, but not the first
(11:15):
three seal you know, the first three that were released.
Ever you liked one through three sequentially or not? Yeah,
I'm talking about a fan of Menace. Yeah. It is
the best of the bunch, all right. So he's like
the stormtrooper guy in these new movies that is no
longer a stormtrooper and wants to kill stormtroopers. Uh. He
(11:36):
gets captured at one point, and he gets sold into
slavery in Rome. And then there was this man that
I love. This article says a man referred to at
times as Vacca. I guess that's his name, or maybe
he just had a bunch of names. But the upshot
is this guy had a gladiator school in Capua, about
(11:56):
a hundred and twenty miles southeast of Rome, and that's
where Spartacus was sent to train to be a gladiatory
in Hawaii, right, and I feel like we should take
a break and get our Star Wars facts straight and
come back. Goodness, Okay, all right, we'll be right back, Chuck, Chuck.
(12:41):
So when we left off, Chuck um Boba fett Head
left the army. You know, I'm not even going to
do that to us. Have you watched Mandalorian? No, huh,
it's good, the one with Amy Sadaris. Uh. Yeah, she
is the Mandalorian. She is in it, though she gets
to like hang out with baby Yoda. I think, no,
(13:03):
it's she isn't and it's a you know, I love
seeing her in anything, but it does taking me out
of the moment just a bit. But it's a fun show.
It's kind of like the A Team. You'd like it,
Oh well, yeah, I probably would like it. Then it's
like a week adventure of the Week type of thing. Okay, cool,
Yeah I might. I might actually check that out. I've
been looking for something new. I started Ozark and I'm like, man,
this is really dark. Yeah, where are you now? Fifth episode?
(13:27):
I think of season one? Okay, burned through season one
or anything. No, I've been taking it slow. I don't
like that. Yeah. I mean you've been taken in small
doses here there. Yeah, I think I'm through like the
first four of the latest season. And by the way, correction,
I think I said it was like Heartwell, it is
like Alatuna. Okay, that makes way more sense because I
(13:51):
was thinking, is that Ala Tuna? Yeah? Alatuna is you
know where Alatuna is for damn is? Yeah? Ala Tuna
or heart wells up near South Carolina. It's not at
the same lake, yeah, because I have friends, We have
friends who um have a place on Heartwell. And I
was like, I don't recognize it. But then I thought
I probably wouldn't recognize this about any lake, so I
(14:14):
just kind of went with Heartwell. It was fine. Or
from what I learned, there was no such thing as
a natural lake in the state of Georgia. It's right
there all and most of them are from the Georgia
Power Company. Yeah. It's so creepy to me sometimes too,
when you're swimming in a lake, if you start thinking
about what's beneath your feet, um, it makes you want
(14:36):
to get back on the boat. Sometimes you mean like
a former town, yeah town or the woods or something. Yeah.
Car Oh well, oh man, how do we get so
off track? Okay, so we're talking about Sparta because who
has Um he left or was drummed out of the army,
became a bandit is captured and when he's captured, he's
(14:57):
taken to that gladiator school that you talked about by
a man sometimes called this call, sometimes referred to as Vodia.
And the thing about gladiators is thanks to movies like
Gladiator or UM, I don't know other movies about gladiators, Airplane,
the original Airplane, UM. You we have this conception of
(15:21):
gladiators is kind of like this awesome thing. But if
you were living in in Rome around the turn of
the last two millennia ago, you did not think of
gladiators very highly. There were some that rose to incredible prominence,
like the rock stars, sports heroes all mixed together of today.
(15:43):
Gladiator could rise to that level, but it was incredibly rare.
For the most part, they were criminals, prisoners of war,
um slaves, and they were considered the lowliest of the
low where the the owner their owner in this case Bodia,
who owned Um Sparta kiss It basically said the only
(16:03):
way for me to make money off of you is
to make you fight for these gladiator battles. Um and
and either bet on you or license you or something
like that, and that was it. But you were like
as far as the even the cast of slaves went,
you were at the bottom. If you were a gladiator. Yeah,
(16:24):
and you know gladiators, if you've seen the movies, it's
almost always depicted as a fight to the death. That's
not necessarily the case. You could kind of tap out
or if they drew blood, sometimes that would be the end.
But if they drew blood that might also be the
end of view pre antibiotics. Um. Either way, you might
end up dead. But it wasn't necessarily always a fight
(16:44):
to the death. Uh. And like you said, sometimes they
would if you were a great gladiator and a great warrior. Um.
They didn't know what your face look like, but you
had this cool mask that you were identified by, kind
of like wrestling or something like that. Or I guess
the Luca Libre are the ones who always had the mask.
But I can't believe we did an episode on that.
It's so funny. It was a good one too. Um.
(17:05):
But you could be if you want a lot and
you had a cool helmet you could be a pretty
big deal to the point where, um, you might have
slaves taking care of you, and you might lead a
bit of the better life, but you're still owned by
someone else. Yeah, you were a slave, you were a
prisoner of war, you were a criminal um. And but
(17:27):
when you were taken to gladiator school, it wasn't like
you're just kept there and then you were thrown into
the to the ring to fight like you were trained.
You were put on a diet um, you were you
were basically put through boot camp and and you were
introduced to the specifics of certain types of gladiatorial combat.
(17:48):
And apparently there were a handful of different types, and
one type of gladiator only fought one or two other
types of gladiators. And the type that Spartacus was was
a murmillo, which meant that he fought with a helmet,
a very long um tall shield kind of like the
Roman centurions were used, and then a short sword called
(18:09):
the gladius um, and that's what he would have fought with.
But there were other kinds of gladiators too. I ran
across the super cool one, the ready ready, ready arius,
and they would have a trident and a net and
a dagger, So you know, like those gladiators that that
like fought with a net. I think it might have
(18:30):
been a mad Max or something like that. Yeah, that's
based on an actual type of gladiator that used to
fight back in the day, and again here in the
twenty one century. We can sit there and think like, wow,
this is really interesting stuff, but you have to stop
for a second and think these people were being forced
against their will into fights to the death, sometimes in
(18:54):
front of spectators, for the sheer blood lust of the crowds.
That was it, and you can't really forget that because
it really puts you in the mind of somebody like Spartacus,
who has been captured as prisoner, potentially unjustly according to
an ancient text, and being forced into this life of fighting,
(19:16):
sometimes to the death, for the for the joy of
the wealthy crowds who came out to see everybody. That's right,
And that's why Spartacus looked around one day and said, guys,
we're here at Gladiator's University, right, And I know that
sounds super cool, but I see where the end is
(19:37):
for all of us, and that is dying for the
entertainment value of rich romans, and what do you say
we get a group of us together, like maybe seventy
of us, we get the heck out of here, and
let's let's do it, guys. And they all said, that's
a great idea. I don't want to go die in
a ring. So they got together. In seventy three b c.
(19:58):
They hijacked a caravan that just happened to have a
bunch of gladiator weapons and armor, and they said, hey,
you know what we are, We're a little army troop.
All of a sudden, think about the luck that that took.
Like they broke out. They overpowered their guards with meat
cleavers that they stole from the kitchen, and um broke out.
And as they were breaking out, they ran across a
(20:19):
supply truck of gladiator armor and weapons. I feeling that
was targeted. That was not the case. No, it happened
to be coming in as they were leaving, and they
were like, oh, we'll take this or else. They encountered
it on the road headed to the gladiator school, and
the timing was really fortunate. Well, at any rate, they
got all this gear and all of a sudden they
(20:40):
were kidded up. And I think one of the people
he was with with with his wife, This lady sounds
very interesting. Um, Like we said, we don't know a
lot about the actual historical record. We don't know her
actual name. But Plutarch was a writer who wrote that
Spartacus is why it was a prophetess who was possessed
(21:02):
by ecstatic frenzies that were part of the worship of
the god Dionysus, which you know, you know what that means.
She she liked a party. She did. That was the
party cult for sure, and she apparently was one of
the priestesses of this cult in Thrace. She was thracy
and as well ecstatic frenzies. Yeah, all though that was cool. Um,
(21:27):
But she her name apparently is just totally lost. No
one has any idea what her name is or what
became of her. They assumed that she probably died alongside
with Sparta kissed. But um, she being a prophetess, a priestess,
apparently foretold his rise to power even while he was
(21:47):
a slave in the gladiator camp, like she lived with
him there. Um, I guess while he was sleeping one
one night or day or whatever, a snake coiled itself
around his head. And she was like, well, that doesn't
happen every day, and I'm pretty sure that Dionysus has
something to do with this. So my husband's going to
be pretty important at some point, but he's also going
(22:08):
to have a very unfortunate end too that the snake
for tells. And it turns out she was right, that's right.
And then she said, so I'm gonna go have an
orgy with all these people and drink some wine with
some goat goat fellas. So, uh, these these dudes, this
little kind of for lack of a better term, battalion,
all of a sudden they start to train for combat.
(22:31):
They're near Mount Vesuvius, which don't don't be afraid of
the volcano everyone. This is about a hundred years before
that happened. Isn't that creepy though? To think, like this
historic thing took place and they were tramping all over
Vesuvius to have they had no idea what was coming,
just like a century from then. Mhm, I I don't know.
I think it's amazing, but not Vesuvius at this time.
(22:54):
What we're saying is it was lovely and it was lush,
and that was you could farm there. It was very fertile,
was covered with vines, and they were down their training.
And eventually Rome takes a little bit of notice, although
they weren't seriously worried yet. Uh. They were hiding out
and they were training. And one of his co leaders,
(23:15):
this guy Crixus, who kind of factors in as one
of his big co heads of state. I guess, and uh,
oh an a mouse as No, I think you had
it the first time. There was like an extra syllable
in there. Really, Yeah, but the the way you said
at the second time sounds better. Well, we'll just stick
to that. Uh. They would go around and raid uh
(23:40):
for supplies. They would recruit slaves eventually, and we'll see later.
They got so popular that they could even get non
slaves to join up in the rebellion. And Rome was
not super worried yet. They kind of heard about what
was going on, but they were busy. They were fighting
in Spain, they were fighting Crete, they were fighting in
Southeast Europe, and this little ragtime group of former slaves
(24:02):
wasn't that big of a deal. No. Less so the
fact that they were fighting elsewhere like Spain and Crete,
that meant that their greatest military leaders and those military leaders,
armies were away, they weren't in Italy, and like you
said at the time, they weren't taking Spartacus in his
his runaway slave band seriously at all. But they did,
(24:23):
you know, take enough notice that they sent a praetor there.
And a prator is like a very high up elected
official right under council, which is I think the highest
elected official in ancient Rome. So they were really super
high up. And actually they might have been laterals to
the council's I'm not sure, but it was a very
important person, but I get the impression that he was
(24:46):
a very um kind of low on the scale of
important people, because they sent him with a few a
few Roman soldiers and said, hey, when you get to Vesuvius,
just recruit some nicals to to go fight this this
band of runaway slaves and be back by dinner time. Please. Yeah.
(25:07):
It was you know, I love the National Guard, not
knocking them, but it kind of reminded me of, you know,
sort of sending in the National Guard to take care
of something rather than the Marines storming the beach. It's
basically the story of John Rambo in First Blood. I
trust me, I thought of that more than what R
I P. Brian Dennehy. By the way, when like last week, what,
(25:31):
how did I not hear that? I think it's just
sort of been under the radar with everything going on.
Was it from coronavirus? No, just I think he was
like in his early eighties and just just passed away.
R I P. For sure he was good, But I definitely,
I definitely thought of Rambo a lot while I was
reading this. The difference is was that Spartacus had a
team um to aid in his uprising, and Rambo was
(25:56):
of course a one man army in a team if
you will. But at any rate, they didn't send the
best of the best because they're all busy. Glabor's little army.
They they said, you know what, We're not even gonna
attack Spartacus. We'll just block off the route up to Vesuvius.
We're gonna pitch our tents, we're gonna hang out and
get drunk, and he's gonna starve to death and that's
(26:19):
kind of gonna be the end of it. So we think, yeah,
you said, Glabor glabors that praytor um. His name was
Claudius Glaber. He sounds like an inept kind of person
that you would send to take care of. I'll send
Glabor exactly. His name is just too close to Glaban,
I think so so Um Glaber said, he yeah, it's
(26:41):
exactly what you said. He posted a couple of guys
on the road to Vesuvius, the only road in or
out up the mountain. Um. And then the rest of
the group is at camp, and so um Spartacus in
his band are. They know that they can't get down
this road, but they're also not about to starve at
the hands of a guy named Glaber. So they actually
fashioned rope and rope ladder out of the vines that
(27:03):
are growing up on Vesuvius, and they climbed down the
mountain to a different spot, and they come up behind them.
The guys who are guarding the road, kill them, sneak
into the Roman camp, kill all of them while they're
bathing and sleeping, and have done two things. They just
wiped out the soldiers of a praetor a very high
(27:26):
elected official, and they just captured a Roman camp with
all of its supplies, all of its weapons, all of
its armory um. And these were really two really big
first strikes of fuel allow that and I will not.
(27:47):
And it was a really big deal because you know,
word gets around and for the first time slaves in
Italy we're thinking, Wow, there's actually someplace we could go.
It's not it's not like the in America where there
were slaves in the south mainly and they could escape
to the north. It was just like that all over Italy.
(28:08):
So they had no uh, they had nowhere to go.
They had no safe harbor, no quarter. If I'm allowed,
I will allow that as well. And they said, wow,
we got a place we can go. We can go
join up with this guy Spartacus. Um he's out there
sneaking up on on glabers and killing them while he's
taking a bath. And then like that sounds pretty good
(28:31):
to me. I want to get in on the fun. Yeah. Um.
I don't know if it was this historian Irwin from
um Murray State or if it was part of the article,
but somebody says at some point um that and I'm sorry,
not Irwin, Aaron Irvine is the name of the historian,
but somebody says at some point that those slaves because
they had nowhere to go, like you were saying, but
(28:53):
also because of the way that slave uprisings were brutally
dealt with that they very frequently didn't even require supervision.
That they would Um that there were whole rural areas
and towns that Spartacus was moving around to um where
the slaves vastly outnumbered the freed people. And Um they
(29:17):
were able to sustain that disproportionate um population distribution because
the slaves in Rome had such little hope of any
different life than what they had. And so yeah, like
you're saying, Spartacus provided hope and something different, and Um,
all of a sudden, his little ragtag band of slaves
(29:38):
and their slave uprising suddenly became a very large slave uprising.
And in a really short time they attracted something like
forty thousand slaves from these rural areas up around Vesuvius
and in northern Italy I think northeastern Italy. Um that
they would just run away and now they had a
place to go, I e. Spartacusses camp and they would
(30:00):
join up there and show up with like kitchen knives
and farm tools and stuff like that, and they would
be trained in combat. And now all of a sudden,
it goes from this ragtag band of gladiator slaves who
had escaped to something that looked a lot like a
actual rebellion. And that's what Rome started to think that
maybe they're dealing with. Yeah, and I get the ideas
(30:21):
around this time that sparka spartacus becomes kind of an
idea um, even more so than an actual human being,
because you know, when the word is getting around, it's
not like the newspaper's head front page headlines or anything.
You get these whispers and you get these stories and uh,
the spark of hope among the slaves, and this idea
(30:42):
that there is this rebellion and he's a great boss.
He splits everything right down the middle, and he's not
some awful leader. He divides all the spoils equally, and
he's getting non slaves to join up. Because even if
you're like a you know, you might not be a slave,
but if you're a very poor farmhand or something, uh,
(31:03):
it might look appealing all of a sudden because you're
not part of the elite Roman kind of upper echelon class. Yeah,
so the idea that he was splitting the spoils with
people like that's huge, and apparently that stands up that um.
Basically all of the ancient sources agree like this guy
took all his plunder and distributed. He didn't keep it
(31:24):
fro himself. He didn't turn himself into a king UM.
And he was running around freeing slaves. And that you know,
that's one of the reasons why he he did, like
you said, become a hero or an idea, and a
hero that's still to the state group's kind of latch onto.
So he's attracting more and more people. UM. One of
the things, one of the ugly truths about this is
(31:44):
that when they were going around to these small towns,
in these rural areas, freeing slaves, getting them to join
their ranks. UM, there was also a lot of plundering
going on, and they were not merciful with the slave
owners who own these big enormous um estates that they
were plundering. They would um engage in rape, they would
(32:08):
engage in torture, um, they would engage in murder. And
from what I saw, it wasn't Spartacus that was doing that,
that he actually commanded against that, but that his army
had a mind of its own in a lot of cases,
and that they would they would be pretty merciless and
brutal with them the freed people. Who who's stuff they
(32:32):
were taking? Yeah, I mean I'm sure they were like, no,
you're rape in pillage. That's what you do, right, That's
what That's how it is right now. Um, even in
the movie, Spartacus he uh he refuses to take part
in that. So there are a few things you know
that that Kubrick Um he didn't write the screenplay. That
was actually Dalton Trumbo, but he uh he he had
(32:55):
that in the movie. So there were bits of truth
throughout for sure. So, oh this is going on. Rome
finally is like, all right, we gotta really deal with
this guy. Can someone can someone please go kill Spartacus
for me? Right? Slabor glabor sucked so bad, you guys.
We gotta get a non glabor in there to take
care of business. And they did. They sent um Publius Varennius,
(33:19):
and he was another prator. So they're sending like pretty
important guys um along with their soldiers, and um Varennius.
He was almost nearly captured, which would have been enormous.
He was so close to being captured that I believe
Spartacus himself he stole the guy's horse. He got his
(33:40):
his horse and Varennius Publius, Publius, Varennius um. And that
was a huge black eye to Rome that like not
only as as this you know, band of runaway slaves.
You know it will like able to engage Rome in battle,
(34:01):
but he stole your horse and you're insignia and and
almost got your guy. That was a big deal. And
so all these these victories. With each victory, spartacus legend
just grows, and he's able to attract more and more people. Um.
I think within a year that UM historian Kenneth Check
says within a year, maybe a little more than a year,
(34:24):
there was as many, possibly as a hundred and twenty
five thousand freed slaves or slaves, escaped slaves and commoders
um who had joined spartacus army. A hundred and twenty
five thousand. And he started with seventy gladiators the year before. Yeah, seventy,
not seventy, just to reiterate, yeah, no, that's worth saying.
(34:48):
So spring of seventy two, b c uh, Spartacus has
these troops. Some of them stay in the south with
his buddy Crixus, And then he said the rest of
you come with me. We're the head towards the Alps
because it's lovely this time of year. And I think
at the time, who would they These guys have great names. Uh,
(35:10):
Rome sent armies led by Lucius Gellius public Publicola and
Neus Cornelius Lentulus Claudianus. Those are great names. Wow. Those
guys were councils, so they were the highest elected officials
(35:31):
in Rome. Yell of as many as like twenty guys
put together like this is serious business at that at
this time to go take care of Spartacus. Yeah. I
think when he almost captured Varennius, that was that really
caught Rome's attention for the first time. Um. Unfortunately, these
two councils what were their names again, Chuck, let's just
(35:54):
call him public Coola and claude Anius. Okay, fine, Um,
they were no better equipped to fight uh Spartacus either.
I think by this time he had he hadn't come
close to people yet, but he was up to forty
thou and both of um, both of the yeah, peaches
(36:17):
in herb nice Um. They underestimated how many troops he'd had.
They also were unaware that he had wintered UM in
the I think the north of Italy and had spent
the winter stealing horses and building up a cavalry unit,
which they had no idea. He had this UM and
one other thing he put to good use. So remember
(36:38):
this guy's potentially a Roman army veteran from Thrace, which
means he's familiar with guerrilla warfare that the Thracians practiced
and conventional warfare which the Romans practiced. And he's like
commanding tens of thousands of troops to to great effect
built a cavalry. And he also so like some of
those commoners who joined up who weren't slaves, but they
(37:01):
were not well off and they wanted to fight the
fight the power, so they joined UM. They were usually
like herdsman or shepherds or something like that from local
areas who knew the areas really well. So he used
them as scouts and um peaches and herb had no
idea that this, again, this band of runaways slaves had
(37:22):
turned into an actual like legit army under the command
of somebody who knew what they were doing, and he
ate both of them alive. Yeah, well it actually was, UM.
It was kind of tough. Because Peaches went down there
to the south where Crixus was and killed him with
a lot of the rebels. And then Herb came in
(37:43):
from the north of Spartacus, where he was headed toward
the Alps. Uh came you know, he was ahead of him,
so he came south from the north and he came in,
and Spartacus was basically trapped between these two armies that
had better equipment, better weaponry, better armor, more munitions and
food and water and everything and wine. And they had
(38:06):
no idea that this cavalry was waiting for him, that
he had been working on. It was kind of his
little Uh, kind of his little trojan horse in a way,
and they had never seen anything like it. And he
beat Peaches, I think, or was that Herb. Now am
all confused? He beat Herb. Okay, he beat Herb and
got all of the supplies that Herb's army had, and
(38:29):
then it was it was on in a big, big way.
So I misspoke. By this time, yes, he probably had
close to people in his army, but they had split
off because Crixus, who was one of the gladiators that
you just mentioned, one of the original gladiators, he broke
out of gladiator school with and who basically co operated
(38:52):
the army with him. Um. He apparently wanted to split
off and take it straight to Rome, wanted to attack Rome.
Him and Sparta Kisses whole thing was like, no, no, no,
let's go north to Thrace, out of Italy. We can
be we can build our army up even better there
and either just hang out in Thrace and be great
(39:12):
or maybe then we can come back to Italy. And
they had a disagreement, they had a falling out, um,
and they split up, and crix Has took thirty thousand men.
And like you said, I don't remember if it was
Peaches or Herb who got him, but the Crixus and
his men were killed, but simultaneously, even though Sparta kiss
later beat that both of those guys, he had just
(39:34):
lost thirty thousand of his troops, which is a pretty
pretty big troop reduction, especially basically overnight. Yeah, but he's
still won in the end. In that battle, he uh,
he fought very bravely. He rushed either Peaches or Herb,
broke them down, captured their supplies, and then we don't
know for sure if he defeated Herb or not. Or
(39:57):
if they just retreated, but at any rate, that was
sort of the end of them, and they were allowed
to go onto the Alps. Right, So you want to
take another break, Yeah, let's take our last break and
we'll we'll wind it up here with the last stand. Okay,
(40:29):
change to Chuck. So Sparta Kiss is not only now
beaten prators that the Romans sent, he's beaten councils in
their armies, and Rome is full lipped out. I don't
(40:51):
know if they knew that Crixus, who by the way,
was a celt which I find immensely interesting, but Crixus Um,
I don't know if they knew that he was coming
toward Rome and that they just narrowly avoided being attacked
by that contingent. But it was definitely on their mind
that Rome was left unprotected because remember, the best generals
(41:12):
and the best their best armies were in Spain and
Crete Um, and there was a really really angry group
of um impoverished and escaped slaves who were who had
assembled themselves into a pretty respectable army UM possibly coming
toward Rome. Yeah, and Rome was on thin ice at
(41:35):
this point. I mean, they were still super powerful, obviously,
but um, they make a good point in this article
that they kind of relied on the fact that everyone
thought they were great and was super scared of them,
and they had these big, scary armies. And once they
started getting these defeats, and once they started getting defeats,
especially at the hands of a former slave who was
(41:55):
leading this kind of rag tag team that was revolting
against them, there's a little chink in that armor. And
Spartacus is about they're winning battles, and everyone hears about this,
and that's a big big deal to Rome. All of
a sudden, they seem like they're defeatable. Yeah, which if
you are, if your society includes slaves and the slaves
(42:16):
are kept in line by the idea that you were undefeatable,
that's right. And so they're there. They seem like they're defeatable.
Now they're best armies in generals are away and they
couldn't really find anyone to really take care of Spartacus
until this guy stepped up. He was a wealthy prater
named Marcus Crassis, and he said, you know what, I've
(42:38):
got the dough and I'm a pretty brutal leader in
my own right. Maybe you've heard of me, and so
I'm gonna finance this army and I'm gonna go kill
that guy. And so if there's a villain in this story,
it is Crassis. He was a terrible, terrible person, possibly
the richest person Rome has ever seen. Um. I read
somewhere that he he would go to places that had
(43:00):
caught fire with his own personal fire brigade and would
negotiate with the owner of the house or whatever um
to buy it. And if the if they would negotiate
at just an extremely cheap rate to sell their house
that was on fire, then Crassies or Crassis would have
his fire brigade put it out. If they didn't negotiate
(43:22):
or sell, then he would just leave with his fire
brigade and let it burn. Here's that kind of guys
is like, hey man, this place is on fire, and
I'm offering to buy it from you. Right, it's a
fire sale. You should you should take this. Yeah. But
if they wouldn't, if they'd be like, no, this is
completely unacceptable and immoral, he'd be like, all right, see
you later, and his fire brigae would leave. That's just
(43:42):
not good stuff. That's the kind of thing that if
you do that people continue to talk about it in
a negative like two thousand years later on some dumb podcasts.
So Crassis, you also might recognize his name. He was
part of the first triumvirate with Um, Pompey and Caesar.
He was the third guy. Remember that name, so Um.
(44:02):
So Crassus steps up and he says, you know what,
my father got a triumph, which is basically like a
military parade for a great military victory. And I've always
been envious. I want mine. I'm gonna make mine the
defeat of Spartacus. I'm gonna go get them. I'm gonna
finance this army. I'm gonna go pick up some of
the other armies that have been defeated and kind of
(44:23):
left scattered around Italy and reassemble them. And there was
one in particular, I think it was um, the army
of the Praetor, who was almost captured Verennius. Some of
his people ran away, and Crassus got them together, I
believe five hundred people who had been accused of desertion
and running away during battle. And he brought out of
(44:47):
the old steamer trunk, an old technique for keeping your
troops in line. Called decimation chuck, which is a word
that we've misused for years on this podcast. But this
is the real deal that he was doing. Yeah, and
I don't think we've been missusing it for years. I
think it's now part of a popular terminology, just not
(45:07):
necessarily reduced by ten. Okay, fair enough. But what he
did was he said, okay, all of you five break
up into fifty groups of ten, and in every group,
all ten of you draw lots. Whoever draws the shortest
lot gets executed. And he executed fifty out of five
hundred deserters in front of his troops to basically say, hey,
(45:28):
let's get that moral up everybody. This is what happens
to you if you don't fight valiantly. And that was
the kind of leader that he was. So he's a
real jerk in business, in a real jerk on the
battlefield too, even with his own troops, and a very
selfish lover from what I hear he really was. He'd
be like, well that's it for me, good luck to yourself.
So he had a real be in his bonnet to
(45:49):
get that victory parade. He goes and chases Spartacus all
over Italy and there was some infighting going on, which
is what can happen a lot of times in a rebellion,
and if you don't keep everyone's spirits up. So that
kind of weakened his army a little bit. And so
in a last ditch effort, Spartacus said, you know what
we need to do is we need to go kill
Crassis in front of everybody. And that's that'll do the trick.
(46:13):
If everyone seas Crassis has gone, you cut off that head,
maybe another one will not grow up in its place. Uh.
And that didn't work out for Spartacus. He was actually
cut down in battle. His army was finally defeated. Uh.
They hunted down all six thousand of the survivors of
the army and crucified them. Uh. He was not himself
(46:33):
crucified like in the movie Spartacus. And there was never
that great moment in the movie that I'm Spartacus moment
that never really happened in real life. Unfortunately, Um, they
never found his body, which is sort of a a
sad end to this. Um to a leader who did
some pretty great things for a little while, but not
really though, because I read he was last seen he
(46:56):
was really close to Crassis. He was headed to Crasses
to kill him himself, and he I think killed two
centurions in hand to hand combat on his way to
Crasses before he was swarmed on like Hollywood style and
cut down by like just a mob of dudes who
overwhelmed them. Which is, it's not a sad end. No,
(47:18):
if you're living by the sword and dying by the sword,
that's the way to go for sure. Okay, I bet
you he would have preferred to kill Crasses. I'll give
you that. But if he was never faded to kill Crasses,
if that snake coiled on his head and fore told
that he would never kill Crasses, that's the way to go. Well.
In the end, Uh, he has gone. His rebellion is squashed,
(47:38):
but some good comes out of it. Rome kind of says,
you know what, this taught us a great lesson, which
is maybe we should listen to the lower class a
little bit more. It wasn't some huge sweeping reform change
or anything like that. I don't want to like sugarcoat it,
but there were a number of reforms that were passed
(48:00):
that did strengthen the voice of the people as a whole,
and they had a little bit more say, in their
government because they didn't want another Spartacus to come along. Yeah.
And then over the years, like many thousands of years later,
like I said, he was kind of held up as
like this hero, this ideal, so like the abolitionist movement
in the United States held him up as a hero
because he was known to free slaves. That was how
(48:22):
he assembled his army. And he wasn't necessarily freeing slaves
for the ideal of ending slavery. He was freeing slaves
to help build up his army. Um, but I'm sure
there was a certain amount of like this is a
good thing that these slaves are no longer slaves when
they're you know with me that he must have entertained
at least. And then later on, like you said, Dalton
(48:43):
Trumbo wrote the script for Um, the nineteen sixty movie
directed by Kubrick on Spartacus, and Dalton Trumbo was blacklisted
from Hollywood because he was a communist or he wouldn't
name names I can't remember. And Dalton Trumbo wrote that
script based on a novel written by a guy named
Howard Fast who had written the novel in jail. Because
(49:04):
he wouldn't name names on the McCarthy hearings. UM, and
so Spartaca's kind of became like a hero of Marxists
because he freed slates. He overthrew the oppressors, but he
also took the oppressor's wealth and redistributed it among you know,
the lower classes, which Marxists are just bonkers for pretty
(49:26):
interesting stuff. Uh, there's plenty more about sparta kiss, gladiators,
all that stuff. This is really thick stuff, and this
is stuff you should know. It's not what we do.
We've just kind of given overview. So if this floated
your boat at all, go look up Spartaca's start reading
on him and you will be fascinated. And since I
said that it's time for listener mail, I'm gonna call
(49:50):
this wastewater operator or a former now retired wastewater operators. Hey, guys,
just finished listening to the episode on wastewater treatment with
a critical ear. Having worked for over twenty years, is
both a w W lab analysts and operator. While I
understand you were aiming for the least knowledgeable common denominator
in your audience, I feel like you did a disservice
(50:12):
to all wastewater treatment plants and their employees by failing
to mention that every treatment plant in America must abide
by strict regulatory permits issued under the Clean Water Act
tailored to the needs of the of these specific facilities. Influent,
your words make it sound like we and operations made
our own decisions as to how clean the water, Uh,
(50:32):
how how clean is clean enough? And that cannot be
further from the truth. UM. I want to stop here
because I don't feel like we did that, did we?
We certainly didn't mean to. I don't think that we
were just like you know, it's up to text who's
running the levers to decide what's clean enough. If we did, Sorry,
we definitely don't think that. No, we didn't think that
at all. Uh. In my position as analysts, I perform
(50:54):
an average performed in average of thirty thousand standard laboratory
tests per year to maintain permit compliance and support operations.
That number increased dramatically when there are operational upsets, process changes,
influence variations, etcetera. In addition, operators collect and analyzed process
control samples several times per shift for the same reason. Um,
(51:14):
I think we knew that stuff was going on, right, Yeah,
I don't want to sound defensive, but do this person
listen or just say, oh, I see this title. Here's
all the things are going to get wrong. Now I
think they listened. I wish to thank you for attempting
to educate the public on the vital role clean water
and sewage treatment play and the health and prosperity of
the United States. I firmly believe this is what truly
(51:36):
makes America great. You don't hear people saying they need
vaccinations and antibiotics to fend off water borne illness when
visiting the United States. Uh. Sorry to rant On, I
appreciate your time, Thanks for reading, and please put out
a big thank you to all wastewater treatment operators about
whom nobody is paying attention, but whom everyone needs. And
that is from uh. Anne Danielson, retired operator and analyst.
(52:00):
Thanks a lot, and that's good stuff. And yes, agreed.
If everyone doesn't know that we need waste water treatment
people and they're not paying attention, so hats rop to
you and your colleagues from us. Agreed. Yes, I know
that there's a lot of work and analysis and testing,
and if we didn't hammer that home enough, then we
are now yeah, Well, if we missed the mark on something,
(52:23):
or you just wanted to add something, or just want
to say, hey, you guys nailed it, nailed it. We
love that You can get in touch with this via email,
Wrap it up, spanking on the bottom, and send it
off to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff
you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radios. How
Stuff works from More podcasts for my heart Radio is
(52:44):
at the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryan over there.
It's just the two of us. So that's okay because
you're here, dear listener insert your first name after that,
(00:23):
and this is stuff you should Know. That's right. Uh,
Stanley kuber condition m sort of. I went to go,
um watch that last night? Oh yeah, and then I
was like, wait, I think that's really long. So I
looked up the run time. I was like, I'm not
watching that, so have yet to see it. Yeah, watch
Pazz of Glory instead. What was that? Is that? The
(00:46):
one about Barry Lyndon? Now that was Barry Lindon. That's
great too, But if you're gunning for early Kubrick, I
would say, uh, Killer's Kiss if you want to go
super early. And then as of Glory, which is the
other one he did with Kirk Douglas, the World War
One trench warfare film. That's great, okay. And Barry Lyndon,
(01:07):
which is just a masterpiece, wasn't that Ryan O'Neill, Yeah, boy,
it's good. Yeah, he's in one of my favorite movies
of all time Paper movie. That's right, and one of
my favorite movies. The main event? What was that? It
was a rom com? He did as he played a
boxer opposite Barbra Streisand was she a boxer? No? It was.
(01:30):
It was not great. I mean it was fine. It
was one of the seventies rom coms, but not one
of my favorite movies by any stretch. Speaking of rom coms,
but minus the rom part and just the calm, heavy
on the calm. Have you seen Eliza this Lessengers sketch
show on Netflix? No, it was very good that How
do I know that name? She's She's gotten pretty big
(01:52):
as a stand up in the last couple of years. Um.
She If you haven't discovered her yet, you're welcome. She's
really great. I'm looking her up now, which is something
I don't normally do. I don't think I recognize her. Okay, well,
she's got some stand up specials that are definitely worth watching.
And then she just debuted a season of a sketch
comedy show that's pretty good, definitely worth seeing. I have
(02:16):
to check that out. Ryan O'Neil's not in it yet,
but like I said, it's just one season. Uh, we're
on a shout out Live Science. By the way, we
used how Stuff Works article on Spartacus and this great
Live Science article on Spartacus, the real Spartacus, not Kirk Douglas.
I also read an article from a guy named Um
(02:38):
Kenneth Spartacus Kenneth P check c z e c H
like check the Czech Republic. I guess maybe that's where
his family is from. Who knows, but he wrote an
article back in the nineties about Um Spartacus that was
very exhaustive, that was helpful. And then there's also a
historian named Barry Strauss who I read some like interviews
(03:00):
articles from him too. He's a bit of a specialist
on Spartacus, so shout out to those cats as well. Yeah.
So the story of Spartacus, if you've watched this the
Kubrick film, it is not Um. I mean, there are
bits of truth in there, but it's definitely not some
real truthful biopic of his life. Good movie, but we're
(03:21):
going to give you the real story of spartacus life,
which is that of a and the leader of an
uprising of slaves who said Rome We're not going to
take it anymore. Um, no, we ain't gonna take it.
That's right, We're not going to take it. And it's
(03:42):
the original title, I think. Um, and we we met
that guy. Oh, actually we passed that guy backstage on's
members right? What show was that? Whatever? I think it
was Jeff Brokes, wasn't it? No? No, no, it was
the whatever show? With? Was it with? Was that Martha
Stewart's daughter? Yea, she has a first name, Alexis, Alexis
and Jennifer, right, Jennifer and Alexis. Wow. Yes, remember when
(04:07):
we were on TV every now and then, Yeah, we'd
be on that. We were on Jeff Probes. Do you
remember the Jeff Probes Show. He was interviewing us and
he zoned out so hard I almost said, like, Jeff,
are you okay while we were talking. Yeah, and we
used to occasionally we'd be on CNN. They would have
us on to do like talking head stuff, and then, uh,
(04:27):
everyone just sort of stopped caring about us. We got
really well, we got really popular podcasting, and they just
all said, huh, well, whatever, we don't need those guys.
That's okay, Now, I don't want to be on CNN
or any news network. Well, yeah, we were on the
soul A Deed O'Brien show. We were interviewed by Christine Roman.
(04:51):
She's she's like super legit journalist. It was pretty so
was Jeff Probest right. The tribe has spoken and they
who else? And that what he said, the tribe is spoken? Yeah,
and then he that candle. He'd kick you in the
seat of your pants on the way out, and you
would thank God, because what a relief to be kicked
(05:11):
off that garbage show man. It was good the first
season or two. I think. I think I did watch
the first couple of seasons. Um, but you know, I'm
not gonna yunk someone's army. There's probably still Survivor shows
going on. Oh no, there are they. I think the
most recent season they brought together like past champions or
(05:32):
past people who got kicked off one of the two
and said who's going to win this time? Yeah? I don't.
The only one I do like that is Top Chef,
which is still maintained its integrity after all these years
and never became dumb. And then for a little while
I did that. Discovery had a show I cannot remember
the name of it where it was like a post
(05:52):
apocalyptic scenario where they would put people in this area
and like a ocasionally they would send in these mad
Max type people to mess with them and take their stuff,
and they had to build things and defend themselves. God,
what was that called? It was really awful. And where
the people naked? Because I can tell you the name
of the show if they were naked. I have watched
(06:15):
more than one episode of Naked and Afraid I haven't.
Did they just like like blur out there there, um
the parts of their bathing suit covers. No, they're completely
naked and it's just shows dong out the whole time
that like goyage Golden Record is blurred out. And the
kind of the first thing that the ladies do is
(06:37):
fashion some sort of uh eve like covering on her
on her bits. And the men either do that or
they're just like, hey, whatever. He's the guy at the
gym that has a towel like over his shoulder but
not around his waist. Oh yeah, that guy, that guy
wearing tennis shoes with no socks. Yes a k A.
(06:58):
Men who were proud of their generals dong out. So
I'm guessing Spartacus is probably dong out. He was, um,
are we back to Spartacus now you think, okay, So
Spartacus was this guy who everyone knows the name of. Uh.
And you may even know that he was a gladiator.
Maybe you know that he led a slave revolt. But
(07:22):
this guy was really nuanced, really detailed, and actually even
after a couple of thousand years of history analysis, you know,
falling in and out of favor of different cultures that
come and go, he he stands the test of time
pretty well, even after being draped in you know, a
(07:43):
lot of people's hang ups and like, you know, held
up as a prime example of the ideals of whatever
group are revering him. Like, even after you strip all
that stuff away and look at the historical figure, he
was still a pretty pretty interesting and and kind to
upstanding guy as far as leaders of slave revolts go.
(08:06):
That's right, and that's a good way to put it. Uh.
He was a Thracian, which means he is from Thrace.
We don't know a ton about his early life because
they just didn't bother recording the history of of nobody's
slaves in ancient Rome. Why would they. It took him
to do remarkable things for historians to take notice with
(08:27):
their their quill and paper, and the Romans at the time,
this was an area the Thrace was in southeast Europe
where they're always trying to subjugate this area of Europe
and first century BC, and it was just it was
just not a good scene if you weren't sort of
(08:47):
upper echelon Roman at the time. No, and Thrace was UM.
I get the impression that it was not really want
to live under Roman yoke, but I think I also
have the impression that they were, um, they were in
league with the Romans, but it was kind of like
one of those you know, we can either we can
(09:08):
either be an ally of yours or you can conquer
us kind of thing, and so I think there was
a bit of a tense truce and there was a U.
I don't I don't think any contemporary text about um
Sparta Kisses still around today. Most of the earliest stuff
we know about him comes from at the earliest the
(09:28):
first century CE, and he was living in the last
century or the first century BC. UM, so people were
writing about him a hundred two hundred years later. But
one of the one of those old texts says that
he wasn't born a slave, and that he actually was
a Thracian soldier who was an ally who who worked
(09:51):
in the auxiliary or fought in the auxiliary for Rome.
So he was a soldier under Roman command at some point,
and they think that that he was drummed out of
the army for some reason unjustly, this ancient author says,
and that that kind of led on this path to
him becoming a bandit and a criminal. Yeah, he was
(10:13):
like the guy in the new Star Wars movies, which
one which one, the guy that that was a stormtrooper
and then said, you know what, I'm not a stormtrooper anymore.
I want to kill stormtroopers. Okay, I haven't I've seen
the Last Jedi one. Yeah, that's one. Okay, So but
(10:33):
that was a that was like a side story, right,
that wasn't one of the actual cannon. No, So the
Last Jedi was they made three main ones, a part
of the cannon, and then a Star Wars fans, you
have words for all these things. Rogue one was the
one that was outside, and then the Han solo movie
was outside and not outside cannon, just not part of
(10:54):
the whatever that those movies. So Rogue one is the
one I'm thinking of that was really good. Yeah. I
enjoyed that one quite a bit. The other ones, I
don't think I've been able to make it through a
single one yet. Oh yeah, I like them, but they're
Star Wars movies. I don't I don't expect greatness. I
just think they're kind of fun. Yeah, I mean I
love the first three. Yeah, sure, but not the first
(11:15):
three seal you know, the first three that were released.
Ever you liked one through three sequentially or not? Yeah,
I'm talking about a fan of Menace. Yeah. It is
the best of the bunch, all right. So he's like
the stormtrooper guy in these new movies that is no
longer a stormtrooper and wants to kill stormtroopers. Uh. He
(11:36):
gets captured at one point, and he gets sold into
slavery in Rome. And then there was this man that
I love. This article says a man referred to at
times as Vacca. I guess that's his name, or maybe
he just had a bunch of names. But the upshot
is this guy had a gladiator school in Capua, about
(11:56):
a hundred and twenty miles southeast of Rome, and that's
where Spartacus was sent to train to be a gladiatory
in Hawaii, right, and I feel like we should take
a break and get our Star Wars facts straight and
come back. Goodness, Okay, all right, we'll be right back, Chuck, Chuck.
(12:41):
So when we left off, Chuck um Boba fett Head
left the army. You know, I'm not even going to
do that to us. Have you watched Mandalorian? No, huh,
it's good, the one with Amy Sadaris. Uh. Yeah, she
is the Mandalorian. She is in it, though she gets
to like hang out with baby Yoda. I think, no,
(13:03):
it's she isn't and it's a you know, I love
seeing her in anything, but it does taking me out
of the moment just a bit. But it's a fun show.
It's kind of like the A Team. You'd like it,
Oh well, yeah, I probably would like it. Then it's
like a week adventure of the Week type of thing. Okay, cool,
Yeah I might. I might actually check that out. I've
been looking for something new. I started Ozark and I'm like, man,
this is really dark. Yeah, where are you now? Fifth episode?
(13:27):
I think of season one? Okay, burned through season one
or anything. No, I've been taking it slow. I don't
like that. Yeah. I mean you've been taken in small
doses here there. Yeah, I think I'm through like the
first four of the latest season. And by the way, correction,
I think I said it was like Heartwell, it is
like Alatuna. Okay, that makes way more sense because I
(13:51):
was thinking, is that Ala Tuna? Yeah? Alatuna is you
know where Alatuna is for damn is? Yeah? Ala Tuna
or heart wells up near South Carolina. It's not at
the same lake, yeah, because I have friends, We have
friends who um have a place on Heartwell. And I
was like, I don't recognize it. But then I thought
I probably wouldn't recognize this about any lake, so I
(14:14):
just kind of went with Heartwell. It was fine. Or
from what I learned, there was no such thing as
a natural lake in the state of Georgia. It's right
there all and most of them are from the Georgia
Power Company. Yeah. It's so creepy to me sometimes too,
when you're swimming in a lake, if you start thinking
about what's beneath your feet, um, it makes you want
(14:36):
to get back on the boat. Sometimes you mean like
a former town, yeah town or the woods or something. Yeah.
Car Oh well, oh man, how do we get so
off track? Okay, so we're talking about Sparta because who
has Um he left or was drummed out of the army,
became a bandit is captured and when he's captured, he's
(14:57):
taken to that gladiator school that you talked about by
a man sometimes called this call, sometimes referred to as Vodia.
And the thing about gladiators is thanks to movies like
Gladiator or UM, I don't know other movies about gladiators, Airplane,
the original Airplane, UM. You we have this conception of
(15:21):
gladiators is kind of like this awesome thing. But if
you were living in in Rome around the turn of
the last two millennia ago, you did not think of
gladiators very highly. There were some that rose to incredible prominence,
like the rock stars, sports heroes all mixed together of today.
(15:43):
Gladiator could rise to that level, but it was incredibly rare.
For the most part, they were criminals, prisoners of war,
um slaves, and they were considered the lowliest of the
low where the the owner their owner in this case Bodia,
who owned Um Sparta kiss It basically said the only
(16:03):
way for me to make money off of you is
to make you fight for these gladiator battles. Um and
and either bet on you or license you or something
like that, and that was it. But you were like
as far as the even the cast of slaves went,
you were at the bottom. If you were a gladiator. Yeah,
(16:24):
and you know gladiators, if you've seen the movies, it's
almost always depicted as a fight to the death. That's
not necessarily the case. You could kind of tap out
or if they drew blood, sometimes that would be the end.
But if they drew blood that might also be the
end of view pre antibiotics. Um. Either way, you might
end up dead. But it wasn't necessarily always a fight
(16:44):
to the death. Uh. And like you said, sometimes they
would if you were a great gladiator and a great warrior. Um.
They didn't know what your face look like, but you
had this cool mask that you were identified by, kind
of like wrestling or something like that. Or I guess
the Luca Libre are the ones who always had the mask.
But I can't believe we did an episode on that.
It's so funny. It was a good one too. Um.
(17:05):
But you could be if you want a lot and
you had a cool helmet you could be a pretty
big deal to the point where, um, you might have
slaves taking care of you, and you might lead a
bit of the better life, but you're still owned by
someone else. Yeah, you were a slave, you were a
prisoner of war, you were a criminal um. And but
(17:27):
when you were taken to gladiator school, it wasn't like
you're just kept there and then you were thrown into
the to the ring to fight like you were trained.
You were put on a diet um, you were you
were basically put through boot camp and and you were
introduced to the specifics of certain types of gladiatorial combat.
(17:48):
And apparently there were a handful of different types, and
one type of gladiator only fought one or two other
types of gladiators. And the type that Spartacus was was
a murmillo, which meant that he fought with a helmet,
a very long um tall shield kind of like the
Roman centurions were used, and then a short sword called
(18:09):
the gladius um, and that's what he would have fought with.
But there were other kinds of gladiators too. I ran
across the super cool one, the ready ready, ready arius,
and they would have a trident and a net and
a dagger, So you know, like those gladiators that that
like fought with a net. I think it might have
(18:30):
been a mad Max or something like that. Yeah, that's
based on an actual type of gladiator that used to
fight back in the day, and again here in the
twenty one century. We can sit there and think like, wow,
this is really interesting stuff, but you have to stop
for a second and think these people were being forced
against their will into fights to the death, sometimes in
(18:54):
front of spectators, for the sheer blood lust of the crowds.
That was it, and you can't really forget that because
it really puts you in the mind of somebody like Spartacus,
who has been captured as prisoner, potentially unjustly according to
an ancient text, and being forced into this life of fighting,
(19:16):
sometimes to the death, for the for the joy of
the wealthy crowds who came out to see everybody. That's right,
And that's why Spartacus looked around one day and said, guys,
we're here at Gladiator's University, right, And I know that
sounds super cool, but I see where the end is
(19:37):
for all of us, and that is dying for the
entertainment value of rich romans, and what do you say
we get a group of us together, like maybe seventy
of us, we get the heck out of here, and
let's let's do it, guys. And they all said, that's
a great idea. I don't want to go die in
a ring. So they got together. In seventy three b c.
(19:58):
They hijacked a caravan that just happened to have a
bunch of gladiator weapons and armor, and they said, hey,
you know what we are, We're a little army troop.
All of a sudden, think about the luck that that took.
Like they broke out. They overpowered their guards with meat
cleavers that they stole from the kitchen, and um broke out.
And as they were breaking out, they ran across a
(20:19):
supply truck of gladiator armor and weapons. I feeling that
was targeted. That was not the case. No, it happened
to be coming in as they were leaving, and they
were like, oh, we'll take this or else. They encountered
it on the road headed to the gladiator school, and
the timing was really fortunate. Well, at any rate, they
got all this gear and all of a sudden they
(20:40):
were kidded up. And I think one of the people
he was with with with his wife, This lady sounds
very interesting. Um, Like we said, we don't know a
lot about the actual historical record. We don't know her
actual name. But Plutarch was a writer who wrote that
Spartacus is why it was a prophetess who was possessed
(21:02):
by ecstatic frenzies that were part of the worship of
the god Dionysus, which you know, you know what that means.
She she liked a party. She did. That was the
party cult for sure, and she apparently was one of
the priestesses of this cult in Thrace. She was thracy
and as well ecstatic frenzies. Yeah, all though that was cool. Um,
(21:27):
But she her name apparently is just totally lost. No
one has any idea what her name is or what
became of her. They assumed that she probably died alongside
with Sparta kissed. But um, she being a prophetess, a priestess,
apparently foretold his rise to power even while he was
(21:47):
a slave in the gladiator camp, like she lived with
him there. Um, I guess while he was sleeping one
one night or day or whatever, a snake coiled itself
around his head. And she was like, well, that doesn't
happen every day, and I'm pretty sure that Dionysus has
something to do with this. So my husband's going to
be pretty important at some point, but he's also going
(22:08):
to have a very unfortunate end too that the snake
for tells. And it turns out she was right, that's right.
And then she said, so I'm gonna go have an
orgy with all these people and drink some wine with
some goat goat fellas. So, uh, these these dudes, this
little kind of for lack of a better term, battalion,
all of a sudden they start to train for combat.
(22:31):
They're near Mount Vesuvius, which don't don't be afraid of
the volcano everyone. This is about a hundred years before
that happened. Isn't that creepy though? To think, like this
historic thing took place and they were tramping all over
Vesuvius to have they had no idea what was coming,
just like a century from then. Mhm, I I don't know.
I think it's amazing, but not Vesuvius at this time.
(22:54):
What we're saying is it was lovely and it was lush,
and that was you could farm there. It was very fertile,
was covered with vines, and they were down their training.
And eventually Rome takes a little bit of notice, although
they weren't seriously worried yet. Uh. They were hiding out
and they were training. And one of his co leaders,
(23:15):
this guy Crixus, who kind of factors in as one
of his big co heads of state. I guess, and uh,
oh an a mouse as No, I think you had
it the first time. There was like an extra syllable
in there. Really, Yeah, but the the way you said
at the second time sounds better. Well, we'll just stick
to that. Uh. They would go around and raid uh
(23:40):
for supplies. They would recruit slaves eventually, and we'll see later.
They got so popular that they could even get non
slaves to join up in the rebellion. And Rome was
not super worried yet. They kind of heard about what
was going on, but they were busy. They were fighting
in Spain, they were fighting Crete, they were fighting in
Southeast Europe, and this little ragtime group of former slaves
(24:02):
wasn't that big of a deal. No. Less so the
fact that they were fighting elsewhere like Spain and Crete,
that meant that their greatest military leaders and those military leaders,
armies were away, they weren't in Italy, and like you
said at the time, they weren't taking Spartacus in his
his runaway slave band seriously at all. But they did,
(24:23):
you know, take enough notice that they sent a praetor there.
And a prator is like a very high up elected
official right under council, which is I think the highest
elected official in ancient Rome. So they were really super
high up. And actually they might have been laterals to
the council's I'm not sure, but it was a very
important person, but I get the impression that he was
(24:46):
a very um kind of low on the scale of
important people, because they sent him with a few a
few Roman soldiers and said, hey, when you get to Vesuvius,
just recruit some nicals to to go fight this this
band of runaway slaves and be back by dinner time. Please. Yeah.
(25:07):
It was you know, I love the National Guard, not
knocking them, but it kind of reminded me of, you know,
sort of sending in the National Guard to take care
of something rather than the Marines storming the beach. It's
basically the story of John Rambo in First Blood. I
trust me, I thought of that more than what R
I P. Brian Dennehy. By the way, when like last week, what,
(25:31):
how did I not hear that? I think it's just
sort of been under the radar with everything going on.
Was it from coronavirus? No, just I think he was
like in his early eighties and just just passed away.
R I P. For sure he was good, But I definitely,
I definitely thought of Rambo a lot while I was
reading this. The difference is was that Spartacus had a
team um to aid in his uprising, and Rambo was
(25:56):
of course a one man army in a team if
you will. But at any rate, they didn't send the
best of the best because they're all busy. Glabor's little army.
They they said, you know what, We're not even gonna
attack Spartacus. We'll just block off the route up to Vesuvius.
We're gonna pitch our tents, we're gonna hang out and
get drunk, and he's gonna starve to death and that's
(26:19):
kind of gonna be the end of it. So we think, yeah,
you said, Glabor glabors that praytor um. His name was
Claudius Glaber. He sounds like an inept kind of person
that you would send to take care of. I'll send
Glabor exactly. His name is just too close to Glaban,
I think so so Um Glaber said, he yeah, it's
(26:41):
exactly what you said. He posted a couple of guys
on the road to Vesuvius, the only road in or
out up the mountain. Um. And then the rest of
the group is at camp, and so um Spartacus in
his band are. They know that they can't get down
this road, but they're also not about to starve at
the hands of a guy named Glaber. So they actually
fashioned rope and rope ladder out of the vines that
(27:03):
are growing up on Vesuvius, and they climbed down the
mountain to a different spot, and they come up behind them.
The guys who are guarding the road, kill them, sneak
into the Roman camp, kill all of them while they're
bathing and sleeping, and have done two things. They just
wiped out the soldiers of a praetor a very high
(27:26):
elected official, and they just captured a Roman camp with
all of its supplies, all of its weapons, all of
its armory um. And these were really two really big
first strikes of fuel allow that and I will not.
(27:47):
And it was a really big deal because you know,
word gets around and for the first time slaves in
Italy we're thinking, Wow, there's actually someplace we could go.
It's not it's not like the in America where there
were slaves in the south mainly and they could escape
to the north. It was just like that all over Italy.
(28:08):
So they had no uh, they had nowhere to go.
They had no safe harbor, no quarter. If I'm allowed,
I will allow that as well. And they said, wow,
we got a place we can go. We can go
join up with this guy Spartacus. Um he's out there
sneaking up on on glabers and killing them while he's
taking a bath. And then like that sounds pretty good
(28:31):
to me. I want to get in on the fun. Yeah. Um.
I don't know if it was this historian Irwin from
um Murray State or if it was part of the article,
but somebody says at some point um that and I'm sorry,
not Irwin, Aaron Irvine is the name of the historian,
but somebody says at some point that those slaves because
they had nowhere to go, like you were saying, but
(28:53):
also because of the way that slave uprisings were brutally
dealt with that they very frequently didn't even require supervision.
That they would Um that there were whole rural areas
and towns that Spartacus was moving around to um where
the slaves vastly outnumbered the freed people. And Um they
(29:17):
were able to sustain that disproportionate um population distribution because
the slaves in Rome had such little hope of any
different life than what they had. And so yeah, like
you're saying, Spartacus provided hope and something different, and Um,
all of a sudden, his little ragtag band of slaves
(29:38):
and their slave uprising suddenly became a very large slave uprising.
And in a really short time they attracted something like
forty thousand slaves from these rural areas up around Vesuvius
and in northern Italy I think northeastern Italy. Um that
they would just run away and now they had a
place to go, I e. Spartacusses camp and they would
(30:00):
join up there and show up with like kitchen knives
and farm tools and stuff like that, and they would
be trained in combat. And now all of a sudden,
it goes from this ragtag band of gladiator slaves who
had escaped to something that looked a lot like a
actual rebellion. And that's what Rome started to think that
maybe they're dealing with. Yeah, and I get the ideas
(30:21):
around this time that sparka spartacus becomes kind of an
idea um, even more so than an actual human being,
because you know, when the word is getting around, it's
not like the newspaper's head front page headlines or anything.
You get these whispers and you get these stories and uh,
the spark of hope among the slaves, and this idea
(30:42):
that there is this rebellion and he's a great boss.
He splits everything right down the middle, and he's not
some awful leader. He divides all the spoils equally, and
he's getting non slaves to join up. Because even if
you're like a you know, you might not be a slave,
but if you're a very poor farmhand or something, uh,
(31:03):
it might look appealing all of a sudden because you're
not part of the elite Roman kind of upper echelon class. Yeah,
so the idea that he was splitting the spoils with
people like that's huge, and apparently that stands up that um.
Basically all of the ancient sources agree like this guy
took all his plunder and distributed. He didn't keep it
(31:24):
fro himself. He didn't turn himself into a king UM.
And he was running around freeing slaves. And that you know,
that's one of the reasons why he he did, like
you said, become a hero or an idea, and a
hero that's still to the state group's kind of latch onto.
So he's attracting more and more people. UM. One of
the things, one of the ugly truths about this is
(31:44):
that when they were going around to these small towns,
in these rural areas, freeing slaves, getting them to join
their ranks. UM, there was also a lot of plundering
going on, and they were not merciful with the slave
owners who own these big enormous um estates that they
were plundering. They would um engage in rape, they would
(32:08):
engage in torture, um, they would engage in murder. And
from what I saw, it wasn't Spartacus that was doing that,
that he actually commanded against that, but that his army
had a mind of its own in a lot of cases,
and that they would they would be pretty merciless and
brutal with them the freed people. Who who's stuff they
(32:32):
were taking? Yeah, I mean I'm sure they were like, no,
you're rape in pillage. That's what you do, right, That's
what That's how it is right now. Um, even in
the movie, Spartacus he uh he refuses to take part
in that. So there are a few things you know
that that Kubrick Um he didn't write the screenplay. That
was actually Dalton Trumbo, but he uh he he had
(32:55):
that in the movie. So there were bits of truth
throughout for sure. So, oh this is going on. Rome
finally is like, all right, we gotta really deal with
this guy. Can someone can someone please go kill Spartacus
for me? Right? Slabor glabor sucked so bad, you guys.
We gotta get a non glabor in there to take
care of business. And they did. They sent um Publius Varennius,
(33:19):
and he was another prator. So they're sending like pretty
important guys um along with their soldiers, and um Varennius.
He was almost nearly captured, which would have been enormous.
He was so close to being captured that I believe
Spartacus himself he stole the guy's horse. He got his
(33:40):
his horse and Varennius Publius, Publius, Varennius um. And that
was a huge black eye to Rome that like not
only as as this you know, band of runaway slaves.
You know it will like able to engage Rome in battle,
(34:01):
but he stole your horse and you're insignia and and
almost got your guy. That was a big deal. And
so all these these victories. With each victory, spartacus legend
just grows, and he's able to attract more and more people. Um.
I think within a year that UM historian Kenneth Check
says within a year, maybe a little more than a year,
(34:24):
there was as many, possibly as a hundred and twenty
five thousand freed slaves or slaves, escaped slaves and commoders
um who had joined spartacus army. A hundred and twenty
five thousand. And he started with seventy gladiators the year before. Yeah, seventy,
not seventy, just to reiterate, yeah, no, that's worth saying.
(34:48):
So spring of seventy two, b c uh, Spartacus has
these troops. Some of them stay in the south with
his buddy Crixus, And then he said the rest of
you come with me. We're the head towards the Alps
because it's lovely this time of year. And I think
at the time, who would they These guys have great names. Uh,
(35:10):
Rome sent armies led by Lucius Gellius public Publicola and
Neus Cornelius Lentulus Claudianus. Those are great names. Wow. Those
guys were councils, so they were the highest elected officials
(35:31):
in Rome. Yell of as many as like twenty guys
put together like this is serious business at that at
this time to go take care of Spartacus. Yeah. I
think when he almost captured Varennius, that was that really
caught Rome's attention for the first time. Um. Unfortunately, these
two councils what were their names again, Chuck, let's just
(35:54):
call him public Coola and claude Anius. Okay, fine, Um,
they were no better equipped to fight uh Spartacus either.
I think by this time he had he hadn't come
close to people yet, but he was up to forty
thou and both of um, both of the yeah, peaches
(36:17):
in herb nice Um. They underestimated how many troops he'd had.
They also were unaware that he had wintered UM in
the I think the north of Italy and had spent
the winter stealing horses and building up a cavalry unit,
which they had no idea. He had this UM and
one other thing he put to good use. So remember
(36:38):
this guy's potentially a Roman army veteran from Thrace, which
means he's familiar with guerrilla warfare that the Thracians practiced
and conventional warfare which the Romans practiced. And he's like
commanding tens of thousands of troops to to great effect
built a cavalry. And he also so like some of
those commoners who joined up who weren't slaves, but they
(37:01):
were not well off and they wanted to fight the
fight the power, so they joined UM. They were usually
like herdsman or shepherds or something like that from local
areas who knew the areas really well. So he used
them as scouts and um peaches and herb had no
idea that this, again, this band of runaways slaves had
(37:22):
turned into an actual like legit army under the command
of somebody who knew what they were doing, and he
ate both of them alive. Yeah, well it actually was, UM.
It was kind of tough. Because Peaches went down there
to the south where Crixus was and killed him with
a lot of the rebels. And then Herb came in
(37:43):
from the north of Spartacus, where he was headed toward
the Alps. Uh came you know, he was ahead of him,
so he came south from the north and he came in,
and Spartacus was basically trapped between these two armies that
had better equipment, better weaponry, better armor, more munitions and
food and water and everything and wine. And they had
(38:06):
no idea that this cavalry was waiting for him, that
he had been working on. It was kind of his
little Uh, kind of his little trojan horse in a way,
and they had never seen anything like it. And he
beat Peaches, I think, or was that Herb. Now am
all confused? He beat Herb. Okay, he beat Herb and
got all of the supplies that Herb's army had, and
(38:29):
then it was it was on in a big, big way.
So I misspoke. By this time, yes, he probably had
close to people in his army, but they had split
off because Crixus, who was one of the gladiators that
you just mentioned, one of the original gladiators, he broke
out of gladiator school with and who basically co operated
(38:52):
the army with him. Um. He apparently wanted to split
off and take it straight to Rome, wanted to attack Rome.
Him and Sparta Kisses whole thing was like, no, no, no,
let's go north to Thrace, out of Italy. We can
be we can build our army up even better there
and either just hang out in Thrace and be great
(39:12):
or maybe then we can come back to Italy. And
they had a disagreement, they had a falling out, um,
and they split up, and crix Has took thirty thousand men.
And like you said, I don't remember if it was
Peaches or Herb who got him, but the Crixus and
his men were killed, but simultaneously, even though Sparta kiss
later beat that both of those guys, he had just
(39:34):
lost thirty thousand of his troops, which is a pretty
pretty big troop reduction, especially basically overnight. Yeah, but he's
still won in the end. In that battle, he uh,
he fought very bravely. He rushed either Peaches or Herb,
broke them down, captured their supplies, and then we don't
know for sure if he defeated Herb or not. Or
(39:57):
if they just retreated, but at any rate, that was
sort of the end of them, and they were allowed
to go onto the Alps. Right, So you want to
take another break, Yeah, let's take our last break and
we'll we'll wind it up here with the last stand. Okay,
(40:29):
change to Chuck. So Sparta Kiss is not only now
beaten prators that the Romans sent, he's beaten councils in
their armies, and Rome is full lipped out. I don't
(40:51):
know if they knew that Crixus, who by the way,
was a celt which I find immensely interesting, but Crixus Um,
I don't know if they knew that he was coming
toward Rome and that they just narrowly avoided being attacked
by that contingent. But it was definitely on their mind
that Rome was left unprotected because remember, the best generals
(41:12):
and the best their best armies were in Spain and
Crete Um, and there was a really really angry group
of um impoverished and escaped slaves who were who had
assembled themselves into a pretty respectable army UM possibly coming
toward Rome. Yeah, and Rome was on thin ice at
(41:35):
this point. I mean, they were still super powerful, obviously,
but um, they make a good point in this article
that they kind of relied on the fact that everyone
thought they were great and was super scared of them,
and they had these big, scary armies. And once they
started getting these defeats, and once they started getting defeats,
especially at the hands of a former slave who was
(41:55):
leading this kind of rag tag team that was revolting
against them, there's a little chink in that armor. And
Spartacus is about they're winning battles, and everyone hears about this,
and that's a big big deal to Rome. All of
a sudden, they seem like they're defeatable. Yeah, which if
you are, if your society includes slaves and the slaves
(42:16):
are kept in line by the idea that you were undefeatable,
that's right. And so they're there. They seem like they're defeatable.
Now they're best armies in generals are away and they
couldn't really find anyone to really take care of Spartacus
until this guy stepped up. He was a wealthy prater
named Marcus Crassis, and he said, you know what, I've
(42:38):
got the dough and I'm a pretty brutal leader in
my own right. Maybe you've heard of me, and so
I'm gonna finance this army and I'm gonna go kill
that guy. And so if there's a villain in this story,
it is Crassis. He was a terrible, terrible person, possibly
the richest person Rome has ever seen. Um. I read
somewhere that he he would go to places that had
(43:00):
caught fire with his own personal fire brigade and would
negotiate with the owner of the house or whatever um
to buy it. And if the if they would negotiate
at just an extremely cheap rate to sell their house
that was on fire, then Crassies or Crassis would have
his fire brigade put it out. If they didn't negotiate
(43:22):
or sell, then he would just leave with his fire
brigade and let it burn. Here's that kind of guys
is like, hey man, this place is on fire, and
I'm offering to buy it from you. Right, it's a
fire sale. You should you should take this. Yeah. But
if they wouldn't, if they'd be like, no, this is
completely unacceptable and immoral, he'd be like, all right, see
you later, and his fire brigae would leave. That's just
(43:42):
not good stuff. That's the kind of thing that if
you do that people continue to talk about it in
a negative like two thousand years later on some dumb podcasts.
So Crassis, you also might recognize his name. He was
part of the first triumvirate with Um, Pompey and Caesar.
He was the third guy. Remember that name, so Um.
(44:02):
So Crassus steps up and he says, you know what,
my father got a triumph, which is basically like a
military parade for a great military victory. And I've always
been envious. I want mine. I'm gonna make mine the
defeat of Spartacus. I'm gonna go get them. I'm gonna
finance this army. I'm gonna go pick up some of
the other armies that have been defeated and kind of
(44:23):
left scattered around Italy and reassemble them. And there was
one in particular, I think it was um, the army
of the Praetor, who was almost captured Verennius. Some of
his people ran away, and Crassus got them together, I
believe five hundred people who had been accused of desertion
and running away during battle. And he brought out of
(44:47):
the old steamer trunk, an old technique for keeping your
troops in line. Called decimation chuck, which is a word
that we've misused for years on this podcast. But this
is the real deal that he was doing. Yeah, and
I don't think we've been missusing it for years. I
think it's now part of a popular terminology, just not
(45:07):
necessarily reduced by ten. Okay, fair enough. But what he
did was he said, okay, all of you five break
up into fifty groups of ten, and in every group,
all ten of you draw lots. Whoever draws the shortest
lot gets executed. And he executed fifty out of five
hundred deserters in front of his troops to basically say, hey,
(45:28):
let's get that moral up everybody. This is what happens
to you if you don't fight valiantly. And that was
the kind of leader that he was. So he's a
real jerk in business, in a real jerk on the
battlefield too, even with his own troops, and a very
selfish lover from what I hear he really was. He'd
be like, well that's it for me, good luck to yourself.
So he had a real be in his bonnet to
(45:49):
get that victory parade. He goes and chases Spartacus all
over Italy and there was some infighting going on, which
is what can happen a lot of times in a rebellion,
and if you don't keep everyone's spirits up. So that
kind of weakened his army a little bit. And so
in a last ditch effort, Spartacus said, you know what
we need to do is we need to go kill
Crassis in front of everybody. And that's that'll do the trick.
(46:13):
If everyone seas Crassis has gone, you cut off that head,
maybe another one will not grow up in its place. Uh.
And that didn't work out for Spartacus. He was actually
cut down in battle. His army was finally defeated. Uh.
They hunted down all six thousand of the survivors of
the army and crucified them. Uh. He was not himself
(46:33):
crucified like in the movie Spartacus. And there was never
that great moment in the movie that I'm Spartacus moment
that never really happened in real life. Unfortunately, Um, they
never found his body, which is sort of a a
sad end to this. Um to a leader who did
some pretty great things for a little while, but not
really though, because I read he was last seen he
(46:56):
was really close to Crassis. He was headed to Crasses
to kill him himself, and he I think killed two
centurions in hand to hand combat on his way to
Crasses before he was swarmed on like Hollywood style and
cut down by like just a mob of dudes who
overwhelmed them. Which is, it's not a sad end. No,
(47:18):
if you're living by the sword and dying by the sword,
that's the way to go for sure. Okay, I bet
you he would have preferred to kill Crasses. I'll give
you that. But if he was never faded to kill Crasses,
if that snake coiled on his head and fore told
that he would never kill Crasses, that's the way to go. Well.
In the end, Uh, he has gone. His rebellion is squashed,
(47:38):
but some good comes out of it. Rome kind of says,
you know what, this taught us a great lesson, which
is maybe we should listen to the lower class a
little bit more. It wasn't some huge sweeping reform change
or anything like that. I don't want to like sugarcoat it,
but there were a number of reforms that were passed
(48:00):
that did strengthen the voice of the people as a whole,
and they had a little bit more say, in their
government because they didn't want another Spartacus to come along. Yeah.
And then over the years, like many thousands of years later,
like I said, he was kind of held up as
like this hero, this ideal, so like the abolitionist movement
in the United States held him up as a hero
because he was known to free slaves. That was how
(48:22):
he assembled his army. And he wasn't necessarily freeing slaves
for the ideal of ending slavery. He was freeing slaves
to help build up his army. Um, but I'm sure
there was a certain amount of like this is a
good thing that these slaves are no longer slaves when
they're you know with me that he must have entertained
at least. And then later on, like you said, Dalton
(48:43):
Trumbo wrote the script for Um, the nineteen sixty movie
directed by Kubrick on Spartacus, and Dalton Trumbo was blacklisted
from Hollywood because he was a communist or he wouldn't
name names I can't remember. And Dalton Trumbo wrote that
script based on a novel written by a guy named
Howard Fast who had written the novel in jail. Because
(49:04):
he wouldn't name names on the McCarthy hearings. UM, and
so Spartaca's kind of became like a hero of Marxists
because he freed slates. He overthrew the oppressors, but he
also took the oppressor's wealth and redistributed it among you know,
the lower classes, which Marxists are just bonkers for pretty
(49:26):
interesting stuff. Uh, there's plenty more about sparta kiss, gladiators,
all that stuff. This is really thick stuff, and this
is stuff you should know. It's not what we do.
We've just kind of given overview. So if this floated
your boat at all, go look up Spartaca's start reading
on him and you will be fascinated. And since I
said that it's time for listener mail, I'm gonna call
(49:50):
this wastewater operator or a former now retired wastewater operators. Hey, guys,
just finished listening to the episode on wastewater treatment with
a critical ear. Having worked for over twenty years, is
both a w W lab analysts and operator. While I
understand you were aiming for the least knowledgeable common denominator
in your audience, I feel like you did a disservice
(50:12):
to all wastewater treatment plants and their employees by failing
to mention that every treatment plant in America must abide
by strict regulatory permits issued under the Clean Water Act
tailored to the needs of the of these specific facilities. Influent,
your words make it sound like we and operations made
our own decisions as to how clean the water, Uh,
(50:32):
how how clean is clean enough? And that cannot be
further from the truth. UM. I want to stop here
because I don't feel like we did that, did we?
We certainly didn't mean to. I don't think that we
were just like you know, it's up to text who's
running the levers to decide what's clean enough. If we did, Sorry,
we definitely don't think that. No, we didn't think that
at all. Uh. In my position as analysts, I perform
(50:54):
an average performed in average of thirty thousand standard laboratory
tests per year to maintain permit compliance and support operations.
That number increased dramatically when there are operational upsets, process changes,
influence variations, etcetera. In addition, operators collect and analyzed process
control samples several times per shift for the same reason. Um,
(51:14):
I think we knew that stuff was going on, right, Yeah,
I don't want to sound defensive, but do this person
listen or just say, oh, I see this title. Here's
all the things are going to get wrong. Now I
think they listened. I wish to thank you for attempting
to educate the public on the vital role clean water
and sewage treatment play and the health and prosperity of
the United States. I firmly believe this is what truly
(51:36):
makes America great. You don't hear people saying they need
vaccinations and antibiotics to fend off water borne illness when
visiting the United States. Uh. Sorry to rant On, I
appreciate your time, Thanks for reading, and please put out
a big thank you to all wastewater treatment operators about
whom nobody is paying attention, but whom everyone needs. And
that is from uh. Anne Danielson, retired operator and analyst.
(52:00):
Thanks a lot, and that's good stuff. And yes, agreed.
If everyone doesn't know that we need waste water treatment
people and they're not paying attention, so hats rop to
you and your colleagues from us. Agreed. Yes, I know
that there's a lot of work and analysis and testing,
and if we didn't hammer that home enough, then we
are now yeah, Well, if we missed the mark on something,
(52:23):
or you just wanted to add something, or just want
to say, hey, you guys nailed it, nailed it. We
love that You can get in touch with this via email,
Wrap it up, spanking on the bottom, and send it
off to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff
you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radios. How
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(52:44):
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