Ben Kane

There's some thought that he may have been from the Maedi tribe, that's M-A-E-D-I, but that comes from a presumption made by a German historian that the word describing him, which is nomadikos, or nomadikos, I think it's nomadikos, means that he was Maedi tribe, but I think most historians think that means he was a nomadic tribesman, which a lot of Thracians were.

So he may not have been Medi at all.

They were from the southwest of Thrace.

He may have been Odissari, which was a tribe on the east of Thrace, close to the Black Sea, because we have an example of a king of that tribe having a very similar name.

Sparadacus or something like that, I think.

They were very powerful.

He may have had kingly origins, but again, if that was his name at all, if that was his real name, because it's not certain that it was, but if that was his real name, he may have been named just because they wanted to show that he had similarities with somebody.

It doesn't mean he was from that tribe.

It's so frustrating.

But we know that he was Thracian, and we know that he was...

a soldier in the service of the Roman Empire.

So he would have been an auxiliary.

And as a Thracian, it's quite likely he would have been a cavalryman because they were very skilled horse riders.

And at the time of the rebellion, which was 73 to 71 BC, let's say he was a mature adult man.

So he was in his 20s, maybe early 30s.

So if he'd been in the service of the Roman army, it's quite possible that he was involved in the military campaigns against Mithridates, who was a king in modern-day Turkey who led a very long, 15-year war against the Romans.

And the Romans were forever, you know, basically fighting them and used Thracians as their auxiliaries, among others.

Yeah.

So to set the stage, Rome was not an empire.

It was a republic.