Ben Kane

So maybe in the crater and presumably, basically, what are we going to do?

And so they started robbing the local estates.

You've got to remember that there was pretty much no police force in ancient Italy.

There wasn't a police force in Rome until the early 1st century AD.

So in the rural area...

there was even less.

There would have been local politicians and there would have been local militias potentially, but there wasn't a police force.

So you defended your property with your slaves and whatever you had if somebody came to steal.

But if an armed group of 80 men came, pretty much no estate would be able to defend themselves.

So it was basically like stealing toys from a child or sweets from a child.

Yeah, that's what he was.

And

Slaves began to come and join him, and it was apparent right from the outset that he refused to accept domestic slaves, soft-handed domestic slaves.

He only accepted agricultural slaves, used to working outdoors.

Interestingly, herdsmen, men who looked after sheep and cattle,

slaves were the only slaves who were allowed to be armed, because you remember there would be wolves and bears, so they would have had spears and bows and arrows.

So he allowed them to join, and also, you know, obviously gladiators.

So we have no idea how quickly his force swelled, but the Romans were quite slow to react, just as they had been in the previous two slave rebellions, which had taken place in Sicily between

135 and 132 BC and 104 and 100 BC.

This was the third and biggest, by far, slave rebellion.