spartacus ancient rome spartan gladiators

(A modern estimate: there were two million slaves on an Italian population of six million.) Strong captives were sometimes forced to fight as gladiators in the arena. In this way, the countryside became crowded with slaves: usually prisoners of war, but often simply bought from slave traders, who bought them from pirates. And if they had any respite from these tribulations, they had no employment, because the land was owned by the rich who used slave farm workers instead of free men. For these reasons the powerful were becoming extremely rich, and the number of slaves in the country was reaching large proportions, while the Italian people were suffering from depopulation and a shortage of men, worn down as they were by poverty and taxes and military service. They employed slave hands and shepherds on these estates to avoid having free men dragged off the land to serve in the army, and they derived great profit from this form of ownership too, as the slaves had many children and no liability to military service and their numbers increased freely. The Greek historian Appian of Alexandria (c.95-c.165) describes the results: The rich used persuasion or force to buy or seize property which adjoined their own, or any other smallholdings belonging to poor men, and came to operate great ranches instead of single farms. The Italian cities were rapidly growing, and the countryside also changed.Slowly, the small farms were replaced by large plantations (often called latifundia), where the work was done by slaves, who could not be recruited for military service. Under these circumstances, there was only one solution: sell the farm and move from the country to the city.

Often, the soldiers had to stay abroad for a long time, and it often happened that on their return, they found that their farms had gone bankrupt.

The Romans had to fight their wars overseas: in Hispania, and, after 200, Greece and Macedonia. During the Second Punic war (218-202 against the Carthaginian general Hannibal), this started to change. For centuries, a Roman citizen was a peasant and a soldier. The Roman economy was based on agriculture and war. He was defeated by the Roman general Crassus. Spartacus: leader of an army of runaway slaves that shook Italy in 73-71 BCE.

Spartacus ancient rome spartan gladiators