Ben Kane

Now, we don't know how, why, or when, but somebody must have spilled the beans to Batiatus because only, depending on your source, between 70 and 80 of them got out.

And they weren't able to seize the weapons, which had been kept separately in an armory in the gladiator school.

And the action started in the kitchen.

Again, we don't know why, but presumably because somebody realized maybe when they were eating their meal that they'd been rumbled and they needed to move right now.

And so they smashed their way into the kitchen and used the implements that they found there, which were meat cleavers.

And even pestles, you know, big pestles for pestles and mortar, smashed their way out of the gladiator school.

Again, we don't know how, but about 70 or 80 of them.

And we're very fortunate on the road out of Capua to come across a wagon train with arms for gladiators in a different gladiator school.

and presumably it only had a few guards, so they overpowered them, probably killed them, took all the weapons, and hot-footed it away.

Now where did they go?

Well, they went to Mount Vesuvius, because at that time it hadn't erupted as a volcano for hundreds of years, and yet because of the volcanic eruptions,

That makes for very fertile growing conditions.

So again, your viewers and listeners are probably familiar with the very famous image of Pompeii with Vesuvius in the background and Bacchus, and it's literally green from top to bottom.

Covered in vines, isn't it?

Covered in vines, yeah.

And so it was an incredibly fertile area, but it's also a big mountain.

Great place to go and hide out at the top.

So that's where they went and set up camp, possibly in the crater.

Now, nowadays there are two craters.

Back then there was only one because it hadn't erupted, obviously, like it did in 79.