Spartacus Defeats the Consuls Separately

Crixus’s fall near Mount Garganus reverberated. Spartacus marked it with a brutal rite, then turned to the business of survival and retaliation. In Appian’s telling, he faced the consuls—L. Gellius Publicola and Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Clodianus—separately and beat each [11]. He used Italy’s ridgelines as allies. Moving along the spines of the Apennines, he slipped between Roman columns trying to close from Capua via Beneventum and from the Adriatic side through Luceria. When contact came near the passes above the Via Latina, the rebels attacked hard, then broke off before Roman reserves could deploy. The sound was controlled violence: short horn calls, the thud of a charge, then the sudden quiet of a chosen disengagement. Appian frames the result as humiliation for the consuls. One defeat, then another, with legionary standards lost and recovered differently than Roman custom tolerated [11]. The imagery from Roman camps was telling: torn tents, muddy boots drying around smoky fires near Beneventum, and terse letters carried to Rome along the Via Appia explaining why two consuls had failed against slaves. The victories opened the road north. Spartacus drove toward the Apennines with an eye, Plutarch would say, on the Alps and dispersal. Campania’s towns—Capua, Nola, Pompeii—receded behind him as he sought distance from consular pursuit. Yet even in triumph, fissures widened. The same men cheering the capture of consular baggage wanted plunder, not exile. The coming argument over direction would shape the winter and invite Rome’s next answer: Crassus with eight legions.