Consuls Gellius and Lentulus Dispatched

Reports from Capua, Nuceria, and Lucania crowded the Senate’s benches. Raids had jumped from annoyance to threat. In 72 BCE, the Republic answered with rank: L. Gellius Publicola and Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Clodianus, consuls with full imperium, received the task of ending the war [11]. The optics mattered. Consular lictors with fasces moved down the Via Appia past Capua toward the southern roads. Officers planted standards near Nola and Cumae, their scarlet flags bright against spring fields. Florus, writing from a later Roman perspective, spat the phrase “war with slaves,” a shock that still stung rhetorical pride [6]. Appian describes a widened theater. The consuls aimed to split the rebel hosts and push them into the Apennine valleys. Detachments felt for Spartacus near the Apennines while probing Crixus’s movements near Mount Garganus in Apulia. The sound returned to regular war: trumpets, marching cadence on stone, and shouted orders in Latin snapped into ranks along the Via Latina [11]. But rank did not guarantee success. Coordination between two consular armies in rough country stretching from Campania to Apulia presented challenges. Communications ran through relay riders from Capua to Beneventum and across to the Adriatic road. Spartacus, reading the map as well as the consuls, prepared to test their ability to act together. The appointment of both consuls had political ramifications in Rome. Failure would be visible, and credit—if gained—would be enormous. The stakes of honor and future office now attached to the war’s outcome, a factor that would later inflame rivalry between Crassus and Pompey when victory came [11][6]. For the moment, Italy watched two consular eagles wheel south. The next blows would fall on Crixus and then, separately, on the consuls themselves.