Ben Kane

Now, it was a weakened republic.

It wasn't anything like what it had been fighting Hannibal in the third century BC.

This was only 30 years before Julius Caesar and when there was a civil war that ended up with the republic being dying.

But it was still a functioning democracy of its type.

And by this stage, it had largely subjugated a lot of the Mediterranean world.

But as you say, there were areas of it like in modern day Turkey where Mithridates was, which, you know, was not completely under Roman control because...

Although the Romans had a startlingly high success rate in battle between 31 BC, which is the Battle of Actium, to 235 AD, which is when the wheels started falling off, in that 266-year period, they had a success rate in battle of 70%, which is quite extraordinary.

If you compare that to any sporting team and ask them to win 70% of their matches for three centuries, it's not going to happen.

So that was the scene, and Spartacus was...

and he was then, according to one Roman source, I think it was Varro, wrongfully enslaved.

So for Romans to admit that something was done that was bad is very rare.

So some Roman sources say that he was enslaved, but one of them says he was wrongfully enslaved.

So I like to go with that one myself.

That's right.

And there are loads of types of those.

I thought they were all curved, but a friend who was on holiday in Bulgaria a couple of years ago, he was showing me all these photographs of straight Romfea, literally like a spear, but with a blade all along the bottom of it.

Indeed.

There are lots of quotes about how savage they were and bloodthirsty, and they severed the heads of their enemies and so on.

A bit like the Gauls, who were part of Spartacus's army.

They have fearsome descriptions of these people.