blog post for monday

Every year in the Roman age there were festivals and parties. These festivals consisted of games and dancing. Now one of the so called game they played was the Gladiatorial show. This was to honor, “when a king or war leader died, as part of the funeral ceremony a pair of warriors fought to the death as a way to honor the warlike spirit of the leader”.(daily life in Roman history line 345 p 2). These shows mostly had men sometimes they consisted of woman. Before the could participate in these shows they had to go to Gladiator school to get trained. One of the most famous Roman person that was in the show was Augustus, he won 7 times. This show only got sponsored 2 times by the senate. “Gladiatorial combats have a very ancient history in Roman society”.( daily life in Roman history, sentence line 1, p 2).

Daily Life In The Roman City

Daily Life In The Roman City

This article speaks of what slavery in ancient Roman times was like.  It explains that slavery was not based on race, but rather on prisoners of war.  Slavery was also a “permanent boundary,” and sometimes slaves were freed, and sometimes people became slaves.   Generally, people became slaves because of “military conquest.”  There was even a market located outside of Rhodes that had thousands of slaves going through it every day.  Slave trade dramatically increased after the Third Punic War, and after Caesar’s campaigns in Gaul.  People possessed the ability to sell themselves into slavery, and sell members of their family into slavery.  Children of slaves, and abandoned children also generally were sold into slavery.  Better skilled slaves were sold for more money, and less skilled for less.  Slaves were considered property, and by running away from their masters, they were committing theft.  There were two types of slaves, the rural slaves, and the urban slaves.  The rural slaves were the less valuable, ones, who usually worked on farms.  Their life was extremely harsh, and they were highly abused.  The urban slaves had much better lives.  They usually worked in the house of their owner, had families, and were friends of their owners.  These types of slaves sometimes earned a peculium.  A peculium was an amount of money which slaves built up, and once they had enough money, they could buy their freedom from their master.  The slaves generally inherited about a five percent profit from their master’s sales.  It usually took them about seven years to build up a peculium.  Many of these slaves experienced manumission, (being freed by their masters).

Since their was such a large number of slaves in the Roman empire, the Romans were often fearful that a slave rebellion was eminent.  There are examples of this in Roman history where slaves were severely punished for small errors.  Through the Roman Republic, the slaves rebelled a few times.  The most well-known rebellion was that led by Spartacus.  Spartacus had been the Thracian who had served in the Roman army.  After becoming a slave, he was sent to become a gladiator.  He had gathered together a band of about 90000 rebels, and defeated a total of three Roman armies.  He and his army had reached the alps on their way to Italy, and Spartacus had suggested to his followers to escape to their homes.  His followers refused, and they continued on their journey to Italy.  He and most of his followers were killed soon after in a battle, and crucified (as a warning of the results of revolt).  Through the following years, slaves started to become treated with more respect, and less torture.

Spartacus

Historical Background For Spartacus
By: Barbra F. McManus
and
Daily Life in the Roman City
By: Gregory S. Aldrete

In 73 B.C., a massive breakout occurred from a gladiator school located in Capua. Somewhere near to 70 gladiators escaped from this prison school while slaughtering all Roman soldiers inside. By the end of the year 73 B.C., what had originally been planned as a massive slave escape plan had turned into a full-scale war against The Roman Republic. This entire revolt was orchestrated by one man, Spartacus. Spartacus was a free Thracian man who was sold into slavery after he deserted the Roman Legion. After pillaging the Roman countryside for almost a year, Spartacus had an army of gladiators, barbarians, and regular slaves reaching 70,000. When Rome responded with an army, Spartacus was able to defeat the legions of Rome in several key battles before reaching the Alps. However, Instead of escaping Roman grasp by crossing the Alps, Spartacus continued plundering at his army's request.

In 72 B.C., Rome responded again by sending two more armies led by Gellius Publicola and Cornelius Lentulus Clodianus. Spartacus was able to defeat these two armies although one of his old barbarian armies who initially told Spartacus to keep plundering was defeated. Rome, disgusted by the defeat of their legions elected Marcus Licinius Crassus to lead six new legions to destroy Spartacus at all costs. Eventually, Spartacus was cornered at the heal of Italy by Crassus's armies. In order to escape this threat, Spartacus organized a deal with pirates in order to escape. However, Spartacus couldn't trust the pirates because they abandoned him. In 71 B.C., Spartacus and his army met with Crassus and his in a major battle in which Spartacus lost and apparently was killed in. The rest of the army was crucified on the Appian Way. Later on, the rest of Spartacus's army was captured by Pompey who took all the credit was the ending of the rebellion. Even today, this still remains one of the greatest revolts of all time.