Ben Kane

What are the Romans going to do to us?

We can beat anybody.

Just one more army to beat.

Just one more army to beat, yeah.

So Spartacus obviously could have left himself.

So that's what I thought about.

Interestingly, we know that he had a wife who was a priestess of Dionysus.

So I had her as a character in the book.

We know almost nothing about her except that

She interpreted a dream of his before the rebellion when he had a snake wound around his head in this.

Well, supposedly it happened, but as anyone who knows about snakes, snakes don't do that.

But regardless of whether it was a dream, it was a portent of him having a great and terrible power.

And in the days of when everyone was a pagan and Roman generals, including Sulla, had used seers in their campaigns, this would have been potentially very powerful for Spartacus to use.

So he had a wife with him, we think.

And if he'd gone, you know, turned right and just headed across through Slovenia towards Thrace...

Who would have found him?

Now, I think the Romans would have gone after him because they were famous for revenge being a dish best eaten cold.

Look what they did with Germanicus in his raids into Germany after the Varian disaster.

I mean, they waited five or six years.

And then they crossed over the Rhine and they practiced genocide for a couple of years.