Ben Kane

Whether he had his clothes on or not, we don't know.

But he fled for his life, pursued by Spartacus' men, and was attacked in his camp.

but thousands of his men were killed.

A massive defeat for the Romans.

And then this began to happen in quick succession.

So another officer of Varinus's was called Furius.

He was probably furious.

He got beaten as well, ambushed.

They still weren't facing the Romans in open battle, but it all went wrong.

There was another officer called Tyrannus, I think he was, and he got beaten as well.

And so in very quick succession in a matter of a few months, the Romans just suffered defeat after defeat by Spartacus's army, which presumably led to even more slaves joining his army because it's thought by at some point anyway, at the height of his rebellion, he had as many as 50 or 60,000 men.

Yeah, and by this point, having defeated so many Roman armies, just like Hannibal did after Trasimene, they would have been pillaging the corpses for their armor and their swords and their spears and their shields.

So a lot of his men were probably fighting with Roman weaponry, looking like Roman soldiers.

Right.

maybe racially different or whatever, but this is where it starts to get really interesting.

We know that they'd caught wild horses during the winter down in the Bay of Toronto and they were using cavalry.

So whether they were Thracians or other, the Gauls were renowned horsemen as well.

At this point, I mean, I had in my novels a Sertorian officer teaching them how to fight like Romans and Spartacus teaching them how to fight like Thracian cavalry.

Whatever they did, we know, as the story unfolds, that they beat the Romans again and again, even in open battle.

A lot of people will tell you who don't know, oh, well, Spartacus, what did he do?