Crixus was a Gaul, one of the many Gauls and Thracians in the school of Lentulus Batiatus at Capua, and when about seventy of them broke out in 73 BC he was chosen as one of the three leaders beside Spartacus and Oenomaus. His name is Celtic. It is usually taken to mean curly-haired.
He was, by every account, the second man of the revolt, and the sources treat him as the more impatient of the two. Sallust's fragments put the Gauls' and Germans' wish to attack on him; Plutarch says only that the men would not follow Spartacus north. Late in 73 BC or early in 72 he split off with about thirty thousand men, most of them Gauls and Germans. Whether he wanted to march on Rome while Spartacus wanted to go home, or whether the two of them divided the army to feed it, is argued either way and cannot be settled.
Mount Garganus
In 72 BC the consul Lucius Gellius caught Crixus's force in Apulia, near Mount Garganus, the spur on the heel of Italy. Appian says two-thirds of the thirty thousand were killed and Crixus with them. The summary of Livy credits the kill to the praetor Quintus Arrius and gives the dead as twenty thousand. Both accounts agree on the important thing: the army that left Spartacus was destroyed within months, and its leader did not survive it.
Spartacus's answer was the most gladiatorial thing in the whole war. Appian says he made three hundred Roman prisoners fight each other to the death as funeral games for Crixus. Orosius gives the number as four hundred. The slaves had learned the trade in Capua and gave the Romans a taste of it.
Sources
- Appian, Civil Wars 1.116–117.
- Plutarch, Life of Crassus 9.
- Livy, Periochae 96.
- Orosius, Histories 5.24.
- Sallust, Histories, fragments of book 3.
Checked against the sources on 2026-09-07. Where two ancient authors give different numbers, both are given.