[0:00:03 Speaker 0] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, mm. Peace, the former director of Cornell's Peace Studies program and currently it's the director as well as the founder of the Program on Freedom and Free Societies. He's written numerous scholarly articles and reviews and book chapters and he's the author of two rather dramatic books in Ancient history, The Trojan War, A New History and the Battle of salamis and his most recent book is The Spartacus War. And today he's going to speak to us on the figure of Spartacus and the great books. Very thank you. Okay, thank you. The one thing I'm not is a technology expert is this on? Can you hear me? Excellent, thank you. Thank you tom. Well it's really a pleasure and an honor to be here. Um uh I'm a great fan of tom and uh Lauren Pangle and uh of the Jefferson Center and of the University of texas. It's a place his distinction in humanities sciences is well known and not least in my own field of the study of the ancient world. So again, great honor to be here and thank you. Well, my subject today, as Professor Pangle said is spartacus. And the great books. Most of us though come to Spartacus not from a great book or from a book at all, but of course from a movie From the famous 1960 Kirk Douglas, uh, Stanley Kubrick film. I understand that some of you saw it just the other night and whether you did or you didn't probably. Uh most everyone is familiar with the famous or infamous uh quote, I am spartacus, but Spartacus is a subject for the great books from antiquity to the present day. What I want to do today when I want to talk about this afternoon is three things. First, I want to talk about the modern notion of spartacus, a notion of spartacus that's rooted in the writings of Marx and Marxism, but that goes back earlier to the 18th century and that is the notion of Spartacus as an avatar of freedom. Spartacus is a freedom fighter, as an opponent of slavery and hence as a hero. Secondly, I want to uh take that against the backdrop of the historical Spartacus. How does that stack up Against what history tells us about Spartacus? & 3rd, I want to look at a very different image of Spartacus that comes from the ancient world. This too, is an image of Spartacus as a hero, but as Spartacus is a hero without opposition to slavery, it's not smart because it's a freedom fighter. It's a very different notion of Spartacus and one I think that indicates the depth of the gulf between the ancients and us and the difference in our way of perceiving things and the way that the ancients perceive things. When I talk about the ancient world, I'll refer particular to writers to Pluto Arc, greek writer and to Salluste roman. So, first, the modern notion of Spartacus Spartacus as an opponent of slavery and an avatar of freedom. We see it and here I'm going to rely on the work of my colleague Brent Schott Princeton has written widely about the subject. We see this image of Spartacus in the writings of Marx himself. Mark said that referred to Spartacus is one of the greatest characters of the whole of ancient history. He was a great general and a genuine representative of the ancient proletariat. Now, Lennon went a bit further, and he saw Spartacus as a leader of the class struggle of slaves against their masters, and Stalin went a bit further than that as well, he said, not only was Spartacus a leader of the class struggle, but he was accessible leader of the class struggle, thanks to Spartacus right Stalin slavery in the ancient world was given a knockout blow, and Spartacus and his revolt puts an end or nearly puts an end to ancient slavery. And soviet. Scholars and historians of course, follow the party line and explained how this was so. Now, this notion of Spartacus as a hero of freedom, if not as a representative of the proletariat And a figure in the class war goes back to the 18th century. It begins in the 1760s as an indirect result of the writings of Rousseau and Rousseau's notion of freedom, freedom, uh an indelible human right. And perhaps it follows something as well. The russos notions of romanticism, because Spartacus is nothing if not a figure of romance. Voltaire writing in 1769, call Spartacus rebellion, a just war. Indeed, the only just war in history. And if we were to go on and trace it, we could see how spartacus appeals in the 19th century to opponents of slavery, to opponents of American slavery. We can find American writers who cite spartacus as an example, an ideal to aim at. We can also find spartacus being cited by 19th century nationalists and liberals who looked at him as an example of liberation from tyranny from repression. Garibaldi, for instance, was a great fan of Spartacus. There's a great 19th century novel about Spartacus by an Italian writer and Garibaldi writes a preface for one of the additions of it. Later on. Vladimir Jabotinsky, revisionist Zionist translates that novel into Hebrew. And finally, another example of a non communist appropriation of Spartacus is here, or freedom comes from President Ronald Reagan 1982, in a speech in London cited Spartacus as a freedom fighter, but of course the use of Spartacus Spartacus is better known as a hero on the left as a result of communism. There were many, many, many sports clubs in europe called Spartacus Sports clubs. There still are Spartacus sports clubs. Of course, at the end of World War One, there was a revolt in Germany, uh rebel leaders of which called themselves the Spartacus League, part assist league, all based on the image of Spartacus and then In the United States in 1951 came the novel on which the movie Spartacus is based. Anyone read the novel? It's actually worth reading. It's written by Howard Fast, It's called Spartacus and I should say the movie is only lightly based on the novel. It was a best seller in its day. And um, a few years ago I got myself a copy and saw that it deserved to be a best seller. Really well written. Really interesting book. Uh, Fast explained in a later preface, that he wrote the book as a protest against mccarthyism. And he himself had been jailed for a month on a charge of contempt of Congress because he refused to name names. And so fast said that he wrote this book uh in response to that in order to tell his side of the story. And again, coming from a Marxist point of view, because Fast was a member of the Communist Party until the Hungarian Revolution, at which point he broke from the party. Fast is using Spartacus from the left as a figure of rebellion against slavery and a representative of the proletariat, the working classes of the oppressed as he saw it against the master class. Now, how does this all stack up against the historical tradition? Well, the first thing about the historical evidence for Spartacus is it's very sparse. There's very little evidence about Spartacus is revolt. Uh For those of you who know ancient history, this may seem paradoxical. Spartacus revolt and I guess I should take a step back first and say, to make it clear, Spartacus really was a historical figure. Some of you may be wondering about that, and rightly so, after all, we think of Spartacus in terms of american culture, in conjunction with that other great movie of the era. Ben hur and Ben hur is not a historical figure. He's a fictional character, an american fictional character invented by General Lew Wallace, who was a failed general of the Civil War and who decided afterwards that his life's ambition was to write a best seller. He tried a number of times and failed and ultimately succeeds with Ben hur which is the story of a failed a failure who goes on to justify himself but not real entirely fictional. Spartacus on the other hand, is a real person. He really was a gladiator and a slave who led a rebellion against the Romans. Rebellion began in the year 73 BC And it ended in the year 71. It goes on for about 2.5 years or a little over two years. Uh It really did begin as in the movie, in a kitchen in the kitchen of a gladiatorial school with the rebels wielding uh butcher knives and skewers against their guards. It really is begun with 74 gladiators who then escaped to Mount Vesuvius where they send out the call to others to join them and slaves from the surrounding area do join them. They do defeat a Roman army and grow. In fact, they go on to defeat no less than nine Roman armies. Spartacus is a mass, becomes the master of Southern Italy and is able to march up and down the Italian peninsula, defeating roman armies wherever he went, including one army by the governor of what was then called gall on this side of the alps, that's Northern Italy to us and two armies by led by roman consuls. Each of the consoles of the year leads an army and each is defeated by Spartacus, as well as numerous armies led by lesser roman officials. Much of Italy is sacked by Spartacus and tens of thousands of slaves leave their chains to join him, precisely how many left we don't know. But in my research on the subject, I suggest that 60,000 slave soldiers is a plausible estimate of the size of Spartacus Army. To say nothing of the non soldiers who followed along with the army. All of this has to be reconstructed because although the first century Bc is a relatively well documented period of ancient history. In Roman history, the 70s BC, the period of Spartacus activity is unfortunately a gap in the record. So we have a line here, a line there story here that can be put together an anecdote there that can be reconstructed, A presumption of possibility, but very little hard data. We don't know. Spartacus and his followers left. Absolutely no writings. There's a quotation or two that they might have said, but ancient authors tended to make up quotations. They had historical characters say what they think they should have said or might have said. All of the writings we have about the Spartacus war are told from the point of view of the masters, not from the point of view of the slaves. We have some writings by romans in latin and some writings by greek authors in Greek. We have four contemporary sources, but none of those four is especially detailed. Our most detailed sources come from hundreds of years after Spartacus. That in and of itself is not all that unusual given the nature of the evidence that we have of ancient history. After all, we have very few sources about alexander, the Great, that come from his lifetime and most of the ones that survive and all the detailed ones that survive come from hundreds of years later. But we know infinitely more about alexander than we do about Spartacus. We know that Spartacus was a thracian, which means that he came from the area that nowadays roughly is Bulgaria, and we know that he was not born a slave. In the movie Kirk Douglas says that he's the slave and the grandson of slaves. In real life, Spartacus was a free man, possibly an aristocrat in thracian society and definitely somebody who fought for the romans far from starting out his life and his career as an enemy of Rome, Spartacus began as an ally of Rome. He served in an allied unit in the roman army. What the romans called the dogs, Ilia quite possibly as a cavalrymen. Thracians were known for being cavalrymen. They're also known for being light armed soldiers. These are two fields in which the roman army. The roman legions were deficient since the romans were mostly infantrymen, it's quite common to them to have natives serving in these roles. And then something goes wrong and Spartacus ends up a slave and a gladiator in Italy. How did you get from point A to Point B how does he go from being an allied soldier to being a gladiator? Well, the sources give us two different stories. According to one story, he deserts and becomes what in latin is called a lot Trow that can refer either to a bandit, a common thief or to what we would call a gorilla or even an insurgent. Again, the word could have any of those meetings, but there's an entirely different tradition that says something entirely different happened. Spartacus went out on campaign one day with the romans, campaign against two will probably against one of the other thracian people's. The thracians were a warlike people from the roman point of view are barbarian people. They were divided into a series of ethnic groups or tribes if you will, and they constantly we were at war with each other. Some of them were allied to the romans, some of them were enemies of the romans. In all likelihood, Spartacus was on campaign with the romans against some of the other thracian peoples and then he gets captured. And typically what happens to people in the ancient world when they get captured as he get get sold into slavery and Spartacus, it seems was bought by a roman who then sells him to be a gladiator. Well the evidence that this is the case comes from a roman writer named varroa varroa was alive at the time it was a man in about his forties at the time of Spartacus is revolt and in the lost book of Arrow, one sentence survives. That says even though Spartacus was innocent, he was sent to be a gladiator. To be honest part that says he was sent to be a gladiator is a reconstruction likely reconstruction of the ancient text. So if narrow is rightly reconstructed, he tells us that Spartacus was innocent and yet he becomes a gladiator. If this is the case, this is less a matter of Kirk Douglas in Spartacus than of Russell Crowe in Gladiator, an innocent man who fought with the romans who unjustly is sent to a gladiatorial school. one other detail from the historical accounts and that is as in the movie, Spartacus has a woman in the movie, if you remember, his woman is Gene Simmons um and she is as elegant as a slave. Can be. I believe in the movie. She said to come from Britannia in the book. She said to come from Germania in the historical record, Spartacus woman or his wife was a thracian like him and she came from the same tribe as him and she was not elegant. She was a woman who was known for her lack of self control in a particular way. She was a priestess and a prophetess. And the god who she worshipped was dying ISIS. And she worshiped dying ISIS by going into trances And in these trances, she had visions and she had visions that scott Spartacus would have a great and fearful power. In fact, one of the visions she had was that while he was being sold into slavery at Rome, he went to sleep one day and a snake wrapped itself around his head. I've spoken to her pathologist both in the United States in Italy and they tell me there is no snake that's going to wrap itself around the sleeping person's head. Uh certainly not in Italy, although if way, if 30 ft waves can happen in the Mediterranean, I suppose anything can happen. But in all likelihood this is meant to be a vision, it's meant to be a supernatural feet. And so Spartacus is thracian woman and we don't know her name is in a way his john the baptist or his la pasa nada, his inspiration for this revolt and saying that Spartacus is a follower of Dionysus. Dionysus is the god of liberation, often associated with liberation movements of various kinds in the ancient world. So we get all of this from the ancient sources now there are many ancient sources about Spartacus. Uh most of them rather limited in their length, but they include some famous names from the ancient world. Caesar, cicero, Horace, livy, Tacitus ST Augustine. They all refer to Spartacus in one way or another and almost all of them are condemnatory. Almost all of them say that Spartacus was little more than a common criminal. Spartacus was responsible for devastating Italy, he caused untold suffering and on justice. He was guilty of rape and pillage and human sacrifice and all sorts of terrible things. And like the romans who had unjustly made him a gladiator. So Spartacus in his turn unjustly enslaved romans and forces them to be gladiators. Some ancient sources like Cicero and Cesar tend to poo poo Spartacus. Both of them were alive during his rebellion. They both lived through it. Cesar refers to Spartacus as rebellion in his gallic wars, but only obliquely so obliquely that he never mentions it. He just talks about an uprising of slaves. He talks about it in his speech to his soldiers, his soldiers are afraid of having to fight the fearsome Germans and he says to them, don't worry, we just defeated an uprising of slaves in Italy which included many Germans and they had learned a little bit of military school skill from watching us fight, but we had no trouble defeating them. Of course, there's a great exaggeration. The romans had a lot of trouble defeating Spartacus, but caesar does not. The stoop to mention Spartacus. His name, Cicero also refers to Spartacus. He mostly does so in a series of speeches against the former governor of Sicily, the infamous very raise. These are the speeches that launch Cicero's career and Cicero had an image of varies as the most corrupt roman governor of all time, which was saying something considering that this is the golden age of roman imperial admits the golden age of corruption in roman imperial administration. The first century Bc is the period of the decline and fall of the roman republic and Rome governors seem to think that their job was to squeeze the provincials until the pips squeak. And Cicero portrays varies as the worst of the bunch now. In reality, however corrupt he might have been, varies, was a very efficient administrator and the roman government extended his governorship of Sicily. Why? Because they wanted him to deal with an emergency and that emergency was Spartacus. They knew very well that is the leader of a slave rebellion in southern Italy. There was a danger that Spartacus would cross to Sicily. And the reason for this was that Sicily had been the cradle of slave rebellion. Spartacus rebellion in the seventies. B. C. Was in fact the third of three great slave rebellions in the roman world. The first two took place in Sicily and they took place in 30 year intervals. The first took place in the one thirties Bc, The second took place around 100 BC and the third took place in the 70 BC. Again and again, just about every generation would be a big slaver hole in each of these was a big, dramatic, difficult slavery. All the romans had a lot of trouble putting these rebellions down why these rebellions there. And then, because this is precisely the period when the romans are treating the entire eastern Mediterranean as one gigantic slave market, they're fighting wars and enslaving on a huge scale. The people who are defeated and the romans are also winking and nodding about the pirates and the pirates in this period are basically slave Raiders. Wherever they go, they simply take free people and they haul them off into slavery and in huge numbers, these people are being brought to italy and to Sicily where they serve as slaves in the fields, um also as shepherds, slave herdsmen of various kinds and finally in cities. So there's a huge population of slaves, many of whom are educated and trained in various professions, including the military profession. They're quite competent and the romans are not particularly good at policing them. And so you have inflammable material and the revolt is this series of slave rebellions. And so we have the historical Spartacus and a tradition that I said is largely quite negative. I'm sorry Cicero. Cicero writing about varies in various repression of various administration of Sicily, a very efficient administration of Sicily, which is successful in keeping Spartacus from landing there and Spartacus tries to land there. Sister of strategy in dealing with this is his speeches is to ignore Spartacus as much as possible to try to leave his name out to talk about the revolt of the slaves in Italy as if it was some minor thing that's not worthy of naming Cicero is not much help to us in understanding what Spartacus did and what he was really all about. Like caesar, he has his reasons for wanting to gloss over the revolt. So what are we gonna do? How are we going to find out what really happened in the Spartacus revolt? Well, to a certain extent, the answer is, we're not we don't, we don't have and we will never have Spartacus. This point of view will never be able to reconstruct what Spartacus was thinking, we can guess, but we'll never quite know what we do have is to other ancient authors who write about Spartacus and you see him not as a villain and not in negative terms, but each of whom has his own positive interpretation of Spartacus and the Spartacus revolved and that's what I want to turn to now. I want to turn to the writings of Salluste and then the writings of Plutarch Sallis was a contemporary of Spartacus. He was a teenager at the time of Spartacus revolt. He was born in the mid 80s BC And he died around 35. Pc. Sallis was a Soldier and politician in the late Republic. Very much a figure of late Republican Rome and one who is deeply influenced by its culture. This is a period, it's a very glorious period for roman culture and it's a terrible period for roman politics. It's a period of corruption violence. It's a period in which the republican institutions are being destroyed by the ambitions of a few. And it's a period of class warfare between the roman wealthy and the ordinary roman citizens. And it's a period in which the poorest roman citizens are following generals who are trying to make themselves superior to the republic, generals like Marius Sulla and pompey And ultimately of course, caesar and that is the background for salis writings. Sallis is a failure in his political career in an embittered man and he his project as a writer, it's a try to diagnose Rome's ills to understand the corruption, the greed, the military incompetence, the political divisions that beset Rome In his lifetime. He does so in two surviving works too short works, both of which are studies in character and studies enrollment decline. One is a study of jugar, tha the north african prince who is first a roman ally and then a roman rebel used to be. When I was in graduate school, Rome's long and mostly unhappy war against drug eartha was called Rome's Vietnam. His second book is a book on the Catalan arian conspiracy, a study of cattle line Himself, a Roman who leads a debtor's revolt against Rome in 63 BC that's famously put down by Cicero and that leaves its mark on Rome politics. But neither of these works with salis masterpiece. His masterpiece was a book that he wrote in his late career. It's a study of Roman politics and warfare in the 70s and 60s BC. And it's called the histories. And it's a book in which salis leaves what was probably the longest and most detailed account of Spartak is written by someone who was alive during the rebellion. Unfortunately, as so often in antiquity, it's a book that doesn't survive. That however, is not the end of the story because we classicists are people who don't like to take no for an answer. And so classicists have put together the so called fragments of salis history, the quotations, the scattered quotations from here and there that survived from what was clearly once a wonderful book and in certain cases, these are rather long quotations, several pages long, and at least one case we have a manuscript papyrus manuscript that quotes at length from uh from Saleh's history. Unfortunately, a fragmentary papyrus manuscript with many holes in it. But it does give us some of what salis had to say, and it's clear from this evidence That in the histories there are three main characters, three enemies of Rome who loom large. One of them is mithridates, the king of Pontus, a rebel against Rome, who for several decades uh fought the romans in a very serious war that was tumultuous throughout the roman east and spread to Greece, in which mithridates wanted to spread even to Italy. The second was a renegade roman named Sartorius, who ends up running his own government in Spain and you and at one point makes an alliance with mithridates And the 3rd, of course, is Spartacus. These are the three main enemies of Rome. The three central figures in these histories. One would expect that they, each, in his own way, should be a villain. But the odd thing about Sallis histories is that Salis has very positive things to say about each of them about mithridates, about Sartorius and about Spartacus. In fact, rather more positive things that he has to say about the central roman figure of this period, whose pompey pompey the Great, and who is clear that from what survives of this book is not one of Saleh's heroes. In fact, Salis sees him as a terrible figure in roman history. So, let's talk a little bit about what Salis has to say about Spartacus and here I am, greatly in the debt of one of my graduate students, Michael debates corona Excellent. Master's thesis on this very subject. Well, from the scattered fragments of salus history. When it comes to spartacus, we can see that salis had a very high opinion of spartacus and he emphasizes four main qualities. Spartacus, physical strength, his courage, his mental acuity, and his personal of nobility. For salis, spartacus was an exemplar of roman virtue. We're twos and for Salluste, We're two's consists of several things. 1st to have this, you need to be someone of natural talents. Secondly, you have to use those talents to achieve great deeds. Third, you have to achieve those great deeds through good means through fair means on not foul. And fourth, you have to achieve those deeds on behalf of the state, on behalf of the nation, not for selfish, private personal gain. Those for salis are the necessary conditions to achieve virtue. And it's clear from what we can piece together of this. Hit this book that for salad, Spartacus achieves those things. Sallis refers to Spartacus as a man who was endowed with an outstanding measure of strain and intellect. The strength is obvious. He's a gladiator. Another source tells us that he was a more mellow and a ramelow is a heavyweight gladiator, so you don't get to be a mom Ilo unless you are a very big and strong guy. The courage is revealed in a number of Spartacus military encounters, most famously in his last military encounter. As in the movie Spartacus, his last battle is a set battle. A pitched battle against the roman army led by Crassus Spartacus goes into the battle, he decides that he his only hope of winning is to personally take out Crassus. So he wades deep into the roman frontline, killing two centurions as he goes to roman officers and coming close to Crassus, the roman general himself, before he is finally killed. That means if you're paying attention, Spartacus was killed in his famous in his battle. That means that there could never be a scene after the battle in which Spartacus is captured and all of his men say I am Spartacus. Alas didn't happen. Spartacus is dead. Spartacus is a man of mental acuity and this is seen in the many stories and anecdotes we have of house particles fought because it's clear that this last battle is a typical Spartacus was an unconventional warrior before unconventional warfare had been invented. But then again the thracians were naturally unconventional warriors. They were light armed soldiers whose favorite way of war was consisted of raids, ambushes and night fighting and trickery and speed through using horses all very very different than the roman way of war and these are the main elements of Spartacus way of fighting. Another thing that's typical of Spartacus and it's so interesting is that he has his soldiers create their own weapons. They don't have weapons, so he has them view them out of trees, from the forest, out of vines, from the mountainside hides from animal. They kill, they kill, they make their own weapons until finally they kill and capture enough romans that they can take their weapons and the sources are full of the ambushes and the tricks that Spartacus used most famously has escaped from Mount Vesuvius, which we can talk about later if you'd like. So he is a man of personal acuity, excuse me Of mental security. Finally, a man of personal nobility. This comes out best in an anecdote that sell us, tells something that happens in the first year of Spartacus revolt. In the fall of the year 73 Bc Spartacus and his men descend one morning on a farming village in southern Italy, just south of Salerno, a village in a valley in the mountains, a place that's so small, it's just called an E. S. S. Forum and uh it's farm, farm country and Spartacus has orders to his men is to raid the food and free the slaves, but that's it. He says, don't hurt any civilians above all, don't touch the women, but Spartacus, his followers are men of a different sort. They ignore their commander's orders and they engage in rape and murder as well. Of course, pillage. Unlike Spartacus says Salluste, they are not noble. And then what happens next? Spartacus speaks to the army and he says, you shouldn't have done it. Not only that I know you folks and you're planning to do it again and again. You look at Italy as one gigantic bank where you can steal and have fun doing terrible deeds while you're at it. But the truth of the matter is that our current success in Italy is temporary. The reason that Spartacus was able to do so well against the roman armies is there weren't any roman armies in Italy and 73 B. C. At the time, the romans had a huge number of men under arms and they were all outside of Italy fighting against Sartorius in Spain and against mithridates, mostly in what is nowadays Turkey. And also by this point the romans have turned against the pirates and they were fighting them off the coast of Crete at home, there was just a skeleton force and in order to cope with Spartacus revolt, the romans had to create new armies from scratch. They weren't very good at that. And the soldiers they were sending out to fight Spartacus and his Gladiator led army were greenhorns. And the minute they got into battle they were terrified and they turned and ran and that's the reason why Spartacus is so successful. Spartacus can tell that this is not going to last. And so he says to his men, we must leave italy. His plan, as we learned from other sources, not Salluste, was to march north to cross the alps and then to have the men scattered to their home countries. Not an easy thing to do in a period when there were very few roads north of the alps, but not impossible either. And that's Spartacus. His plan, Saleh says that Spartacus is thinking of his father land, he wants to go back to three race and he's thinking that his men should think of their various fatherland as well. Some of his followers or Germans, some of them are kilts, some of them are thracians and no doubt some came from other countries as well, but they don't listen. So it's the picture. We get Spartacus from Salluste, we get a picture of someone who is noble, intelligent, courageous, and strong, who is an excellent soldier, who gives his men excellent advice is not always listen to. But the one thing we don't hear in Salluste is that Spartacus was a good man because he freed slaves. Salluste, of course, being a representative of the romans had no objection to slavery. The truth of the matter is that it's not clear that Spartacus had any objection to slavery either. Why do I say that? Well, for two reasons, 1 positive and one negative. On the one hand, we never have any statements in which Spartacus says he's opposed to slavery on principle. Now, you might say, well, that doesn't prove much because I said earlier that we have very few statements from Spartacus of any kind and that's true. But the second thing is that we have very few statements from anyone in the ancient world of being opposed slavery principle. There were plenty of people in antiquity who said, I'm opposed to me being enslaved. They're my people being enslaved. But of course somebody's got to be a slave, somebody's got to do the work as long as it's not me. And the difference between good and noble individuals and bad and corrupt individuals is good and noble individuals treat slaves well and they feel that they have a responsibility to educate them and bad and corrupt individuals treat slaves badly. Good and noble people only enslave people who are hopeless, anyhow, and bad and corrupt people, enslaved people who shouldn't be enslaved in the first place. But very little notion that slavery as a whole was bad. Another thing about Spartacus is that he makes no effort whatsoever to free urban slaves. He's only interested in freeing rural slice and in particular, he's only interested. He's mostly interested in recruiting herdsmen, not in field hands. Why the distinction? Because in the roman world, if you are a slave and your herdsmen, basically, you're free, the romans say you're now a slave, go out in the countryside and you've got to bring me back X quotient of sheep. I'll see you next year, you're on your own buddy. So, herdsmen slaves were totally different sort of being than field hands who were locked up and under much closer supervision. That's why Spartacus wants to build an army of slave shepherds and why he's not particularly interested in any other group of slaves, particularly urban slaves who are known for having a relatively soft and cushy existence. So Saleh Spartacus is a hero, but it has nothing to do with freedom or slave. What then of Pluto arcs Spartacus because that's the final figure that I want to turn to now. Plutarch is living under the roman empire. He's not a contemporary of Spartacus. He's born in the forties A. D. And dies in the one twenty's A. D. So quite a bit later, he's a roman citizen, but he's not a roman. He's a greek. He comes from a small city in central Greece city of Kyrenia and that's where he spends most of his life. Although he just traveled some and he's very knowledgeable about what's going on in the roman world of the luminous writer. Best known of course, for writing his paired lives of the noble Grecians and romans as they are traditionally called Plutarch. Like Salluste was interested in studying character. Pluto thought that character, the ethos of the individual was one of the most important things that give us a clue to what was good and what was bad about life. Plutarch is often used by historians, but he was not a historian per se. He wasn't writing history. He was, as a matter of fact, a very careful scholar. He doesn't make things up except for speeches, but virtually all ancient historians with very few exceptions, felt they were entitled to make the speeches up. I thought that was part of their job. That's what they're supposed to do. They're supposed to have dramatic speeches. But good ancient good historians of antiquity didn't make the facts up quite good at not making facts up. On the other hand, he's not so good at not confusing things and he often does confuse things and telescope things and he tells things from his point of view and he omits all sorts of details that don't serve his purpose. Pluto, just as salis had a project. Salis project was to diagnose what was wrong about the romans and to use the enemies of Rome as an exemplar of what the romans should aspire to. Salluste. Excuse me, Spartacus was more virtuous and a better roman than pompey was at least from salis point of view. So to Pluto has a project, Botox project is different from Saleh's project, Botox Project consists of two parts. First, he wants to compare the character of the great Greeks and the great romans. He wants to understand what they have in common and what made them different from each other and secondly, and part and parcel of the first is that Pluto wants to understand greek Nous, he wants to understand what it means to be a greek. He wants to understand what Hellenic identity is all about. Now. Of course, on one level, he wants to understand that simply as a matter of local pride, he's a greek, he understands very well that Greece has been conquered by the romans and waving the banner of local pride. He wants to uh put the Greeks in the best possible light, but on the other hand, I think Plutarch is trying to do something much more profound. He understands that greek Nous is fundamental, he understands there's something many things about the greek character that are absolutely basic to understanding the human condition in ways the roman character that show things about the human condition, in ways that the roman character do not. And so that's part of his project as well. In writing these lies where does Spartacus fit in? Pluto does not write a life of Spartacus, but he is perhaps our best continuous source for Spartacus. He tells us uh to ancient writers to give us rather detailed accounts of Spartacus. One is Plutarch and one is another greek language writer named Ap in whose about a generation younger than Plutarch opinion is born in the sixties And dies in the 140s. Pluto is a greek speaker from Greece Appian is a greek speaker from Egypt and opinion is a voluminous writer as voluminous as Pluto. Well almost as fluent as Plutarch, but not as good, not nearly as profound, not nearly as interesting, although luckily for us, he preserves a lot of interesting information, a lot of valuable information. He too, writes about Spartacus as part of a longer project on the civil wars of the roman world in the 1st, 2nd and 1st centuries. Bc. But I don't want to focus on Happy and I want to focus on Plutarch, even though Plutarch doesn't write a life of Spartacus, where then does he tell us about Spartacus? Well, he writes a life of the man who defeated Spartacus and that man, this Marcus licinius Crassus in the movie, If you recall uh Laurence Olivier, now, Crassus is not one of Plutarch favorite romans for Crassus. For Plutarch, excuse me. On the plus side, Crassus is an example of loftiness of spirit. Crassus aims high on the minus side, Crassus is an example of wealth and avarice agreed to the Nth degree. Someone who's interested in wealth and interested in wealth, his own wealth and not the wealth of his nation. And furthermore, someone who puts his own ambition before that of the nation and is willing to get his money by fair means or foul and Plutarch makes it clear that Crassus gets his money by foul means. Finally, Crassus is an example of the quote, one of my teachers in As undergraduate, he's an example of one of history's great losers because Crassus is responsible for bringing a roman army to one of the greatest defeats in roman history In 53. BCC Crassus in Dade's Mesopotamia. Uh He's going after the ruling dynasty of Iran at the time. It was called the party in empire and he blunders into a battle on the border with Syria at a place called Car I and they're, his army is destroyed, He loses the standards of his legion, the banners of his legion, and he loses his own life. He is murdered when he's captured by the enemy. It's a defeat that goes on to haunt the romans for centuries. The romans see it as one of the bleakest days in their history. So Plutarch is looking at Crassus okay, he's got great ambitions, but he's greedy, he's wealthy, he's selfish and he's a loser. The life that he compares him too. By the way is Nikias, if you remember from facilities, Nikias is a wealthy Athenian who it presides over the great defeat the Athenians have in Sicily. So to that extent the to have something in common. But in comparing them, Pluto makes it clear that he greatly prefers Nikias. He sees Nikias as a man who tried to do good things, who got his wealth by fair means rather than foul means. He got his wealth by the way, by owning silver slaves and that worked in silver mines and renting them out. And Plutarch says that's quite fair and acceptable. Um And uh finally it's true that Nikias does not aim for as lofty things as Crassus does, but he doesn't come anywhere near as low as Crassus. Not finally, actually one other thing, Nikias is a believer, he's a pious man, believer in the gods. Pluto to was a believer, He was a priest and Crassus most distinctly was not a believer, he was an impious man. All of that is the background Plutarch. Life of Crassus. The finale, the thing that it aims at. In fact more than 50% of the life is the story of his great defeat in the east. The battle of carry the carry campaign, The disaster that Crassus leads his mentors in the first part of the life though and about a quarter to a third of it is the story of the Spartacus war Carry 53 BC. Spartacus is defeated in 71 BC. So nearly 20 years earlier and crassus is the man in charge in both campaigns, Crassus is the man the romans turn to when they want to put down Spartacus. After everyone else has failed, the roman senate turns to Crassus and they say we are giving you a special command, we really don't like you, but we're bringing you in to be the general, the guy who's gonna put down Spartacus and the reason we're doing this is that one, you're filthy rich and we know you can fund part of this because we don't have any money left. We're fighting two wars at either end of the Mediterranean and to we know that you are very nasty and you will put in the disciplinary means necessary to defeat, to build a new army. And three, we know that you're extremely well connected to all sorts of nasty veterans of the roman army and you'll bring them back in. I apologize for the short end. I would, I could go on too much length if I explain the details. Well, it all comes to pass everything that the senate had thought they hold their nose. They're bringing Crassus, their opinion of crassus as much like blue sharks. He's a man who became wealthy by foul means. Um, and um, he does create a new army. He does bring back all sorts of disreputable veterans. He does impose a terrible discipline. He does build up a force that is able to finally defeat Spartacus and to win this victory and then to go on later later on to go onto this terrible defeat. But what does Pluto say about Spartacus and why does he like Spartacus? I'll explain first. Spartacus is the non crassus, this is the man who takes on his enemy, but there's more to it than that because Plutarco also talks about the party in kings, the Iranian generals who fight Crassus and flew truck, makes it clear that he has a very low opinion of them. He doesn't think highly of them. His opinion of Spartacus is rather different. Let me read to you what Plutarch says about Spartacus. He says Spartacus was a thracian from the nomadic tribes and not only did he have a great spirit and great physical strength, but he was more thoughtful and more dignified than than his circumstances, more greek than his race going to read it again, Spartacus was a thracian from the nomadic tribes and not only did he have a great spirit and great physical strength, but he was more thoughtful and more dignified than his circumstances, more greek than his race. Now. Plutarch is being extremely subtle and giving coded messages here and there's not time to go into any detail, but just say a few things okay, He's a man of great spirit like Crassus, he dreams great dreams and Plutarch thinks very highly of this physical strength will he probably gets that from reading Salluste, but the word for physical strength he uses is a good greek word that the Greeks often used to mean physical strength, and they often use it as a pun, it's row May or Rome. So he's saying is a pun. Spartacus is a man of Rome, he's got what the romans have, he's got strange, this is not a compliment to say that he's got simple strength, brute strength, but he's got something else because even though he's a thracian, even though he's a nomad, even though he's someone who we conventionally think of barbarian, he's rather greek much greek er than you think. And so my question to Pluto work is how is he greek? What makes this guy greek? Please tell me, did he study philosophers? Is he a great speaker? Is he a great strategist? What's the answer now? Here's the odd thing in the very next sentence. Pluto goes on to tell us, Yeah, and he had this wife and she was a thracian as well and she went into ecstatic trances and she worshipped Dionysus now, what's that all about? It just doesn't seem to follow, its not what you'd expect. Well if I had time to go through it in length and I'll try to go through it briefly. I think it's absolutely crucial to what Plutarch uh admires in Spartacus and what he sees in Spartacus and also crucial to what Crassus is not. And what's greek about Spartacus because the worship of Dionysus is not optional. It's not just a nifty little detail about Spartacus that we check off rather from Pluto? S point of view. It's central to who Spartacus was and what he was all about. And what that has to do with is the dying ISis of Europeans backup. Remember europe? It is back a this is a play about a greek name, Pen Theus the king of Thebes, who is immensely ambitious and wants to do great things and he thinks there's absolutely no limit to what he had, what he can do. And the last limit is going to accept is the limit of the god Dionysus and the women who worshipped Dionysus and don't know any better than to fall for this emotional cult. And the play, the back I goes on to show that Pontius was wrong and that he should have recognized that there are limits, There are real limits to what human reason and to what ambition and masculine pretensions can achieve. And part of worshipping dionysus is recognizing 1's own limits. Picture of Spartacus. We get in Pluto is precisely if someone who recognizes his own limits, who understands That it's okay to defeat a few um pick up Roman armies, but this is no way that this is not going to last, that eventually the Romans will bring the 18 back to Italy. And Plutarch, Spartacus says to his men, as I've already said, we've got to leave, we've got across the alps, we've got to go home, it's not going to work and no one listens to him because he's a patriotic person who feels a responsibility to his troops. He stays and he's utterly defeated. And there are other examples of Botox life of spartacus religiosity. He's a failure, but he's a noble failure because he understands the limits of human ambition. Crash is an entirely different sort of person. As Plutarch tells the story, he's someone who sees no limits, who just goes on and on and on. He brings Rome into an unjust and unnecessary war against the partisans, a war that leads to disaster and a war that ends well. When Pluto wrote his life of crass, as he had many different sources to choose from, there are many different accounts of what happened to Crassus and how he was killed. He's killed in captivity, that much we know, but the one Plutarco settles on is this Crassus has run through by the party ins rather dishonorably and then they decapitate him and they take his head and they bring it to the capital city and they presented to the king and at the time the king who happens to be a devotee of greek literature is watching a play. What play? Of course, europe it is back a and crashes his head ends up as a prop to be used in this play. It's a rather gross but unforgettable moment from Pluto and it brings us back to Spartacus to the worship of Dionysus, to what is rather greek about Spartacus, that he doesn't end up this way, because he understands his limits. Neither Plutarch no more than Salluste is a believer in the abolition of slavery or was it admirer of Spartacus in particular? Because he fought for freedom rather like salis, he admires Spartacus because he exemplifies other characteristics in some of them are the same physical strength, ambition. But for Plutarch it's also that Spartacus is thoughtful and dignified and greek because he knows his limits. So we go from Voltaire Marks, Garibaldi Ronald Reagan and Spartacus as a freedom fighter or representative of the proletariat or the class struggle or someone who's ending slavery to a Spartacus who was the noblest roman of them all, even though he wasn't roman and Spartacus who was rather greek. It's a dizzying perspective. But as a reminder, I trust that what makes great books great is that they force us out of our narrow horizon and make us realize that there are people who have looked at the world in very different ways than we do now and that if we look at their perspectives we may learn to challenge our own. Thank you. Yeah. Mm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, mm