Ben Kane

And then you have this, which again, your listeners and viewers will all be aware of, this moment where the slave army, having defeated every Roman army in its path, has nothing to stop it leaving the Roman Republic.

Nothing but the Alps.

All the way north.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, this is the whole story.

So, you know, historians think that Spartacus must have wanted to leave because why else did he go that way?

And maybe he did or maybe he didn't.

I think that makes sense to me.

But the fact is that his army turned around and then marched south again.

And we don't know why.

Now, there are probably loads of master's essays on it and PhD theories about it and academics love to argue about it.

We simply don't know.

The sources don't tell us.

So you've got to think about, was it because autumn was coming and the Alps are a significant barrier?

Was it because, um, they had spent the last year and more literally doing what they wanted up and down Italy and had beaten everybody, the Japanese during world war II, when they were moving really fast and taking everything in their path, like Singapore and all the islands in the Pacific.

they had a term that they called victory disease.

And it's like, you know, supporters of Man United back in the 90s.

When you keep winning, you just think you're always going to win.

Well, why would we leave now?