Spartacus

Spartacus , d. 71 BC, leader in an ancient Italian slave revolt, b. Thrace. He broke out (73 BC) of a gladiators' school at Capua and fled to Mt. Vesuvius, where many fugitives joined him. Their army defeated several Roman forces and moved north, devastating S Italy and Campania; Spartacus' aim was a general escape from Italy, but his followers preferred plunder, and in 72 BC they were back in S Italy. They took Thurii and got through a cordon which Marcus Licinius Crassus stretched across the "toe" of Italy. Spartacus was killed in a battle with Crassus in Lucania. Pompey, back from Spain, helped annihilate the survivors. Of the captured slaves 6,000 were crucified along the Capua-Rome highway. After the death of Spartacus, 3,000 Roman prisoners were found unharmed in his camp.

Spartacus (died c.71 BC) Thracian slave and gladiator. He led a revolt against Rome in 73, increasing his army from some 70 gladiators at the outset to several thousand rebels. He was eventually defeated by Crassus in 71 and crucified.

Spartacus (died c.71 bc), Thracian slave and gladiator. He led a revolt against Rome in 73, increasing his army from some seventy gladiators at the outset to several thousand rebels, but was eventually defeated by Crassus in 71 and crucified.
Spartacus League a German revolutionary socialist group (the Spartacists) founded in 1916 by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht (1871–1919) with the aims of overthrowing the government and ending the First World War; they took their name from the Thracian slave and revolutionary Spartacus. At the end of 1918 the group became the German Communist Party, which in 1919 organized an uprising in Berlin that was brutally crushed.