The history

The people are real. This is what was written about them.

Nobody who knew Spartacus wrote about him. What survives is a few pages each in Plutarch and Appian, a paragraph in Florus, a line in Orosius, and the summaries of the lost books of Livy. These pages say what those sources say, give both numbers where the sources disagree, and say plainly where nothing is known. Each ends with one paragraph on how the game uses it.

• 01Lentulus Batiatus, the lanista of CapuaThe man who owned Spartacus. One paragraph in Plutarch is nearly everything that survives of him.
• 02Spartacus, the Thracian in Batiatus's schoolNo one who knew him wrote about him. Here is what the people who came after him said.
• 03Crixus, the Gaul who leftHe commanded thirty thousand men and lasted a year. Spartacus buried him with three hundred Roman prisoners.
• 04Oenomaus, the third leaderThree men led the escape from Capua. This is the one history forgot to finish.
• 05Gannicus and Castus, the last breakawayTwelve thousand three hundred dead, Plutarch says, and only two of them wounded in the back.
• 06Crassus, the man who ended itThe richest man in Rome took the job nobody wanted, and got a lesser honour for it.
• 07The Third Servile War, 73 to 71 BCTwo years, from a kitchen in Capua to the road outside it.
• 08What a ludus was, and what a lanista didThe school was a business. This is how the business worked.
• 09The gladiator types: murmillo, thraex, hoplomachus, retiarius, dimachaerusA gladiator was not a swordsman. He was a kind of swordsman, and the kind decided who he fought.
• 10Capua, the city of the schoolsRome watched the games. Capua made the men.