Ben Kane

But anyway, Spartacus didn't promise that, but he led from the front, which is obviously very dangerous.

And the battle was brutal.

And he went straight for Crassus because you cut the head off the dragon and the army will run.

And we know that he killed two centurions on his way to Crassus.

So we were talking in an episode the other day about centurions and how brave they were and how they led.

They were the sort of inspired leaders for the Roman legion.

So to kill two centurions is quite something.

And then there are two accounts of how he died.

One is that he was wounded in the thigh by a spear and that he went down on one knee and continued to fight until he was overcome.

And another one is that he was abandoned by all his men, which I don't think would have happened, but that he fought on until he was killed.

And interestingly, to show you that he was a plain, simple man, his body was never found.

In other words, he wasn't covered in loads of special armor or valuable pieces of equipment.

He just looked like another soldier or another slave.

And so he fell, and his body was not found, and his army just went to pieces.

And the Romans did what the Romans did.

They killed, they only lost apparently a thousand of their own soldiers, which I have to say I think is a low figure.

They may have been underestimating it or lying because it looks better, but they killed thousands and thousands of slaves who then fled into the surrounding countryside.

Indeed, 5,000 of them were met.

By this stage, you had Roman generals being called in from everywhere.

There was a guy called Lentulus, another Lentulus, who had landed at Brindisi, ancient Brindisium.