The manner of Spartacus’ withdrawal from Varinius’ forces in the dead of night is as the texts describe. Mention is made of his desire to march north to the Alps, but apparently his men thought of ‘nothing but blood and booty’. Whether Crixus and the other Gauls were at the centre of the argument over what the slaves should do at that point is unknown, but given the later schisms in their army, it seems likely that they were. Little information survives about what the slaves did next, but details of the atrocities of the attack on Forum Annii remain. Other towns and settlements met the same fate. Intriguingly, some archaeological discoveries from the ‘heel’ of Italy may date to the time of Spartacus. A warehouse portico discovered in the ruins of Metapontum was destroyed during this period. A small grey vase was found buried under a house in Heraclea and dated to the same timeframe. It was filled with over five hundred silver coins and a gold necklace. Most of the coins can be dated to between 100 and 80 BC, and many are of low denomination, which is unusual for such finds, and may mean that the trove was buried in haste.
Setting the location of Varinius’ defeat at Thurii is fiction; however, he was beaten decisively, losing his horse and many of his standards to Spartacus’ forces. His fate is unknown. Crixus split from Spartacus’ main army eventually – I made it after the clash with Varinius. Twenty to thirty thousand men followed him. As I mentioned before, we don’t know when Castus and Gannicus joined the rebellion. In my version of the story, they were there from the days in the ludus and stayed with Spartacus when Crixus left. The slaves’ journey north through Italy is shrouded in mystery, but they marched along the Apennine Mountains and had their path blocked by the consul Lentulus. Scant details of the battle that followed survive: Lentulus was defeated; his men fled the field, leaving their baggage train; many standards were lost.
By the time I’d got to this stage, it was clear that Spartacus’ story wasn’t going to fit in one novel. I punted the idea of a second book to my editor, who responded with huge enthusiasm. It’s going to be written back-to-back with this novel, and is scheduled for release in late 2012. My mind is in overdrive thinking about it already.
The list of references for Spartacus is shorter than normal, because of the aforementioned lack of material. Apart from my Roman history texts, the main books I used were an excellent book on the whole rebellion called The Spartacus War by Professor Barry Strauss; Spartacus and the Slave Wars: A Brief History with Documents by Brent D. Shaw, which details every little scrap of ancient text about the man; Spartacus and the Slave War 73–71 BC, an Osprey book by Nic Fields; another Osprey title, The Thracians by Chris Webber was recently added to in a fantastic way by his textbook The Gods of Battle, which I recommend highly. The brilliant website www.RomanArmyTalk.com has to be mentioned too – it’s a wonderful place to find out anything and everything about the Roman army, and its members are always quick to answer any queries. Going to the RAT conference in York this year was extremely enjoyable; the lectures were excellent, and it was great to put faces to so many names.
As ever, I am hugely grateful to a large number of people. Rosie de Courcy, my editor, and Charlie Viney, my agent, are fantastic people to work with, and I deeply appreciate all that you do for me. Thank you very much to everyone at Preface, Cornerstone and other departments of Random House: it’s all your hard work that helps my books to do so well. I’m grateful to Leslie Jones, a reader of mine, for his input on Sertorius and his intelligence officers. Claire Wheller, you’re an incredible physio, and thank you for keeping my RSIs at bay. Arthur O’Connor, an old veterinary friend, has to get a big mention too. He is the ‘wall’ off which I bounce my ideas and finished manuscripts. He invariably comes up with great ideas as well as lots of ‘homework’. I am always immensely appreciative of them. Thanks, Arthur!
Cheers and good wishes to all of you wonderful readers out there. It’s because of you that I am able to keep writing. Please pop by my website www.benkane.net any time. You can also look for me on Facebook or Twitter: @benkaneauthor. And last but not least, thank you to Sair, my lovely wife, and Ferdia and Pippa, my wonderful children. I love you all very much.
Glossary
Abella: modern-day Avella.
acetum: sour wine, the universal beverage served to Roman soldiers. Also the word for vinegar, the most common disinfectant used by Roman doctors. Vinegar is excellent at killing bacteria, and its widespread use in Western medicine continued until late in the nineteenth century.
alopekis: a typical Thracian cap made of fox-skin. It came in two styles, pointed or with a low crown.
amphora (pl. amphorae): a large, two-handled clay vessel with a narrow neck used to store wine, olive oil and other produce.
aquilifer (pl. aquiliferi): the standard-bearer for the aquila, or eagle, of a legion.
as (pl. asses): a small bronze coin, originally worth two-fifths of a sestertius.
Asia Minor: a geographical term used to describe the westernmost part of the continent of Asia, equating to much of modern-day Turkey.
atrium: the large chamber immediately beyond the entrance hall in a Roman house. This was the social and devotional centre of the house. It had an opening in the roof and a pool, the impluvium, to catch the rainwater that entered.
Attic helmet: a helmet type originating in Greece, which was also widely used elsewhere in the ancient world.
auctoratus (pl. auctorati): a free Roman citizen who volunteered to become a gladiator.
aureus (pl. aurei): a small gold coin worth twenty-five denarii. Until the time of the early Empire, it was minted infrequently.
auxiliaries: Rome was happy to use allied soldiers of different types to increase their armies’ effectiveness. For most of the first century BC, there was no Roman citizen cavalry. It became the norm to recruit natural horsemen such as German, Gaulish and Spanish tribesmen.
ballista (pl. ballistae): a two-armed Roman catapult that looked like a crossbow on a stand, and which fired either bolts or stones with great accuracy and force.
Belenus: the Gaulish god of light. He was also the god of cattle and sheep.
Bithynia: a territory in north-west Asia Minor that was bequeathed to Rome by its king in 75/4 BC.
Brennus: the Gaulish chieftain who is reputed to have sacked Rome in 387 BC. (Also a character in my book The Forgotten Legion!)
bucina (pl. bucinae): a military trumpet. The Romans used a number of types of instruments, among them the tuba, the cornu and the bucina. To simplify matters, I have used just one of them: the bucina.
caldarium: an intensely hot room in Roman bath complexes. Used like a modern-day sauna, most also had a hot plunge pool. The caldarium was heated by hot air which flowed from a furnace through pipes into hollow bricks in the walls and under the raised floor.
caligae: heavy leather sandals worn by the Roman soldier. Sturdily constructed in three layers – a sole, insole and upper – caligae resembled an open-toed boot. Dozens of metal studs on the sole gave the sandals good grip.
Campania: a fertile region of west central Italy.
Campus Atinas: modern-day Vallo di Diano.
Campus Martius: part of the Tiber flood plain to the north-west of Rome. It was here that men exercised, armies were mustered and votes taken.
cenacula (pl. cenaculae): see insula.
censor: one of a pair of senior Roman magistrates whose primary function was to maintain the official list of all citizens.
centurion (in Latin, centurio): the disciplined, career officers who formed the backbone of the Roman army. In the first century BC, there were six centurions to a cohort, and sixty to a legion. See also entry for cohort.
Cerberus: the monstrous three-headed hound that guarded the entrance to Hades.
Cilician pirates: sea raiders from a region in southern Asia Minor who, in the second and first centuries BC, caused severe problems to shipping in the eastern Mediterranean.
Cinna, Lucius Cornelius (d. 84 BC): Little is known of the early life of this four-t
ime consul. An ally of Marius and an enemy of Sulla, he was killed in a mutiny by his own troops.
cohort: a unit of the Roman legion. There were ten cohorts in a legion in the 70s BC, with six centuries of eighty legionaries in every unit. Each century was under the command of a centurion.
consul: one of two annually elected chief magistrates, appointed by the people and ratified by the Senate. Effective rulers of Rome for a year, they were in charge of civil and military matters and led the Republic’s armies into war. Each could countermand the other and both were supposed to heed the wishes of the Senate. No man was supposed to serve as consul more than once. But by the early decades of the first century BC, powerful nobles such as Marius, Cinna and Sulla were holding on to the position for years on end. This dangerously weakened Rome’s democracy.
Crassus, Marcus Licinius (c.115–53 BC): an astute Roman politician and general who joined with Sulla after Cinna’s death and whose actions at the Colline Gate on Sulla’s behalf helped to take Rome. He lived modestly but was reputedly the richest man in Rome, making much of his fortune by buying and seizing the properties of those affected by Sulla’s proscriptions. To reveal more about him would ruin some readers’ enjoyment of the next book, so I will stop here.
Cumae: modern-day Cuma.
Curia: the building in Rome in which the Senate met.
denarius (pl. denarii): the staple coin of the Roman Republic. Made from silver, it was worth four sestertii, or ten asses (later sixteen).
Dionysus: the twice-born son of Zeus and Semele, daughter of the founder of Thebes. Recognised as man and animal, young and old, male and effeminate, he was one of the most versatile and indefinable of all Greek gods. Essentially, he was the god of wine and intoxication but was also associated with ritual madness, mania, and an afterlife blessed by his joys. Named Bacchus by the Romans, his cults were secretive, violent and strange.
editor (pl. editores): the sponsor of a munus, a gladiatorial contest.
familia: by taking the gladiator’s oath, a fighter became part of the familia gladiatoria, the tight-knit group that would be his only family, often until death.
Fortuna: the goddess of luck and good fortune. Like all deities, she was notoriously fickle.
Forum Annii: a farming settlement in the Campus Atinas that has been lost to history.
frigidarium (pl. frigidaria): a room in Roman baths containing a cold plunge pool.
fugitivus: a runaway slave – a fugitive.
Gaul: essentially, modern-day France.
Getai: a Thracian tribe.
gladius (pl. gladii): little information remains about the long ‘Spanish’ sword of the Republican army, the gladius hispaniensis, with its waisted blade. It is not clear when it was adopted by the Romans, but it was probably after encountering the weapon during the First Punic War, when it was used by Celtiberian troops. The shaped hilt was made of bone and protected by a pommel and guard of wood. The gladius was worn on the right, except by centurions and other senior officers, who wore it on the left.
Great Rider: almost nothing is known about Thracian religion. However, more than three thousand representations of one mysterious figure survive from Thrace. These depict a deity on horseback who is often accompanied a dog or a lion. He is usually aiming his spear at a boar hiding behind an altar. Invariably, there is a tree nearby with a snake coiled around it; often there are women present too. Other carvings depict the ‘hero’ god returning from a successful hunt with his dogs or lions, or approaching the altar in triumph, a bowl held in his hand. No name for this heroic deity survives, but his importance to the Thracians cannot be understated. I have therefore given him a name I thought suited quite well.
Hades: the underworld – hell. The god of the underworld was also called Hades.
Heraclea: modern-day Policoro.
Hercules (or, more correctly, Heracles): the greatest of Greek heroes, who completed twelve monumentally difficult labours.
Iberia: the Iberian peninsula. In the first century BC, it was divided into two Roman provinces, Hispania Citerior and Hispania Ulterior.
Illyria (or Illyricum): the Roman name for the lands that lay across the Adriatic Sea from Italy, including parts of modern-day Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Montenegro.
impluvium: see atrium.
insula (pl. insulae): high-rise (three-, four-or even five-storey) blocks of flats, or cenaculae, in which most Roman citizens lived.
Iugula: ‘Kill him’ in Latin.
Juno: sister and wife of Jupiter, she was the Roman goddess of marriage and women.
Jupiter: often referred to as Optimus Maximus – ‘Greatest and Best’. Most powerful of the Roman gods, he was responsible for weather, especially storms.
Kabyle: Thracians did not live in large urban gatherings. Kabyle was the only settlement that may have looked a town as we would nowadays describe it.
kopis (pl. kopides): a heavy Greek slashing sword with a forward curving blade. It was normally carried in a leather-covered sheath and suspended from a baldric. Many ancient peoples used the kopis, from the Etruscans to the Persians.
lanista (pl. lanistae): a gladiator trainer, often the owner of a ludus, a gladiator school.
lararium: a shrine found in Roman homes, where the household gods were worshipped.
Latin: in ancient times this was not just a language. The Latins were the inhabitants of Latium, an area close to Rome. By about 300 BC it had been vanquished by the Romans.
latifundium (pl. latifundia): a large estate, usually owned by Roman nobility, and which utilised large numbers of slaves as labour. Latifundia date back to the second century BC, when vast areas of land were confiscated from Italian peoples defeated by Rome, such as the Samnites.
latro (pl. latrones): thief or brigand. However, the word also meant ‘insurgent’.
legate: the officer in command of a legion, and a man of senatorial rank.
licium: linen loincloth worn by nobles. It is likely that all classes wore a variant of this.
lictor (pl. lictores): a magistrates’ enforcer. Lictores were essentially the bodyguards for the consuls, praetors and other senior Roman magistrates. Such officials were accompanied at all times in public by set numbers of lictores (the number depended on their rank). Each lictor carried fasces, the symbol of justice: a bundle of rods enclosing an axe.
Lucania: modern-day Basilicata, a mountainous region of southern Italy.
ludus (pl. ludi): a gladiator school.
machaira: another word for kopis.
Maedi (also spelt Maidi): a Thracian tribe from which Spartacus may have originated.
maenads: women inspired to mania, or ritual ecstasy, by Dionysus. Euripides reported that they ate raw meat, handled snakes and tore live animals apart.
manica (pl. manicae): an arm guard used by gladiators. It was usually made of layered materials such as durable linen and leather, or metal.
Marius, Gaius (c.157–86 BC): another prominent Roman politician of the late second century and early first century BC. He served as consul a record seven times, and was a very successful general, but was outwitted by Sulla’s march on Rome in 87 BC. Marius was also responsible for extensive remodelling of the Roman army. He was married to Julia, the aunt of Julius Caesar.
Mars: the Roman god of war.
Metapontum: modern-day Metaponto.
Minerva: the Roman goddess of war and also of wisdom.
Mitte: ‘Let him go’ in Latin.
munus (pl. munera): a gladiatorial combat, staged originally during celebrations honouring someone’s death. Their popularity meant that by the late Roman Republic, rival politicians were regularly staging munera to win the public’s favour and to upstage each other.
Mutina: modern-day Modena.
Neapolis: modern-day Naples.
Nubian: a person from Nubia, a region in the middle Nile valley.
Nuceria: modern-day Nocera.
Odrysai: the most powerful of the Thracian tribe
s, and the only one briefly to unite all the others.
olibanum: frankincense, an aromatic resin used in incense as well as perfume. Highly valued in ancient times, the best olibanum was reportedly grown in modern-day Oman, Yemen and Somalia.
optio (pl. optiones): the officer who ranked immediately below a centurion; the second-in-command of a century.
palus (pl. pali): a 1.82-m (6-ft) wooden post buried in the ground. Trainee gladiators and legionaries were taught swordsmanship by aiming blows at it.
peltast: a light infantryman of Greek and Anatolian origin. Thracian peltasts were feared because they were fierce fighters as well as expert missile-throwers. Apart from a shield, they usually fought unarmoured and, depending on their nationality, carried javelins and sometimes spears or knives. Their primary use was as skirmishers.
pelte: the most distinctive feature of the peltast, a crescent-shaped shield most probably invented by the Thracians.
phalera (pl. phalerae): a sculpted disc-like decoration for bravery which was worn on a chest harness over a Roman soldier’s armour. Phalerae were commonly made of bronze, but could be made of more precious metals as well.
Phrygian helmets: these originated in Phrygia, a region in Asia Minor. They had a characteristic forward curving crest.
pilum (pl. pila): the Roman javelin. It consisted of a wooden shaft approximately 1.2 m (4 ft) long, joined to a thin iron shank approximately 0.6 m (2 ft) long, and was topped by a small pyramidal point. The range of the pilum was about 30 m (100 ft), although the effective range was probably about half this distance.
Pisae: modern-day Pisa.
Pompey Magnus, Gnaeus (106–48 BC): son of a leading politician, he fought at a young age in the Social War. He led three private legions to Sulla’s aid in the civil war, helping Sulla to gain power. In 77 BC, he was sent to Iberia as proconsul, his mission to defeat the rebel Sertorius.
Pontifex Maximus: the leading member and spokesman of the four colleges of the Roman priesthood.
praetors: senior magistrates who administered justice in Rome and in its overseas possessions such as Sardinia, Sicily and Spain. They could also hold military commands and initiate legislation. The main understudy to the consuls, the praetor convened the Senate in their absence.