possessed the qualities of an able leader. Unfortunately for him, he led
an unmanageable host. In the next year both the consuls took the field
against him. By this time his army had swelled to more than one hundred
thousand men, and with these he pushed his way northward through the
passes of the Apennines. But now insubordination appeared. Crixus, one
of his lieutenants, ambitious of independent command, led off a large
division of the army, chiefly Germans. He was quickly punished for his
temerity, being surprised and slain with the whole of his force.

Spartacus, wise enough to know that he could not long hold out against
the whole power of Rome, kept on northward, hoping to pass the Alps and
find a place of refuge remote from the stronghold of his foes. Both the
consuls attacked him in his march, and both were defeated, while he
retaliated on Rome by forcing his prisoners to fight as gladiators in
memory of the slain Crixus.

Reaching the provinces of the north, his diminished force was repulsed
by Crassus, one of the richest men of Rome, who had taken the field as
praetor. Spartacus would still have fought his way towards the Alps but
for his followers, whose impatient thirst for rapine forced him to march
southward again.

Every Roman force that assailed him on this march was hurled back in
defeat. He even meditated an attack on Rome itself, but relinquished
this plan as too desperate, and instead employed his men in collecting
arms and treasure from the cities of central and southern Italy.
Discipline was almost at an end. The wild horde of slaves and outlaws
were beyond any strict military control. So great and general were their
ravages that in a later day the poet Horace promised his friend a jar of
wine made in the Social War, "if he could find one that had escaped the
ravages of roaming Spartacus."

In the year 71 B.C. the most vigorous efforts were made to put down this
dangerous revolt. Pompey was still in Spain. The only man at home of any
military reputation was the praetor Crassus, who had amassed an enormous
fortune by buying up property at famine prices during the Proscription
of Sulla, and in speculative measures since.

He was given full command, took the field with a large army, restored
discipline to the beaten bands of the consuls by cruel and rigorous
measures, and assailed Spartacus in Calabria, where he was seeking to
rekindle the Servile War, or slave outbreak, in Sicily. He had even
en