Ben Kane

They filled the ditches with wood, animal carcasses, and even the bodies of the dead.

And this was having crucified a Roman soldier in view of the Roman defenses to show his own men this is what would happen to them if they gave up.

They smashed through the Roman fortifications and broke away.

They managed to get away.

Now, some sources say it was only some of his army.

Some say it was all.

We don't know.

But they did get away.

Certainly a substantial amount of them got away.

So they managed to get the north side out.

The north side, yeah.

And that's where you had another force of slaves break away, maybe as many as 10,000 under the leadership.

This is where we have two other names, so rare with the Spartacus Rebellion, but Castus and Gannicus, who were potentially Gauls, who just had enough, or we don't know.

But they broke away from Spartacus's army and...

They were attacked by Crassus' army, but fortunately were still close enough for Spartacus to come to their aid.

And he drove off Crassus' army, but then they split up again.

And Crassus waited until he was further away and attacked Castus and Gannicus again.

And that's when I mentioned of 12,300 bodies, only two had wounds in the back.

And so by this point, Spartacus' army was presumably quite depleted.

Again, we don't know, but still some tens of thousands of men strong.