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Birth date unknown
Thrace (a region In southeast Europe near Italy)
Died 71 B.C.E.

Roman slave and gladiator, rebellion leader

The slave war started by Spartacus in 73 B.C.E. was the largest slave outbreak in Roman history. In the two years of armed revolt tens of thousands of slaves ran away from their owners to join the original rebels. Not long before the Spartacan war, the Romans had already brutally crushed two previous slave wars in Sicily (a large island off the southern tip of Italy), the First Servile War (135-133 B.C.E.), and the Second Servile War (104-100 B.C.E.). Spartacus and his followers for two years battled one of the world's greatest armies and in the process occupied and controlled at one time or another large parts of central and southern Italy. Spartacus and his followers were eventually defeated but it took a military force as great as Caesar would later...