But the masters
felt themselves surrounded by hate. Pliny the Younger, learning that a
master was to be assassinated at the bath by his slaves, made this
reflection, "This is the peril under which we all live." "More
Romans," says another writer, "have fallen victims to the hate of
their slaves than to that of tyrants."
At different times slave revolts flamed up (the servile wars), almost
always in Sicily and south Italy where slaves were armed to guard the
herds. The most noted of these wars was the one under Spartacus. A
band of seventy gladiators, escaping from Capua, plundered a chariot
loaded with arms, and set themselves to hold the country. The slaves
escaped to them in crowds to unite their fortunes with theirs, and
soon they became an army.
The slaves defeated three Roman armies sent in succession against
them.
Their chief Spartacus wished to traverse the whole peninsula of Italy
in order to return to Thrace, from which country he had been brought
as a prisoner of war to serve as a gladiator. But at last these
ill-disciplined bands were shattered by the army of Crassus. The
revolutionists were all put to death.
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