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Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lauren Voldeban.

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Speaker 1: Here in ancient Rome, while the upper class cavorted, feasted

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Speaker 1: and guzzled wine, impoverished commoners seethed with resentment. Then one

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Speaker 1: man became a symbol of an uprising against political corruption

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Speaker 1: and moral callousness, and to this very day he's regarded

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Speaker 1: as a hero. His name was Spartacus. He wasn't born

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Speaker 1: to wealth or power. He was considered part of the

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Speaker 1: dregs of society. Born in roughly one o nine BCE

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Speaker 1: in the province of Brace, which today makes up parts

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Speaker 1: of Greece and Bulgaria, his life is mostly a mystery

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Speaker 1: of history up until he made himself a thorn in

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Speaker 1: the side of the Roman Empire. What we do know

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Speaker 1: is that Spartacus was sent to a gladiator school far

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Speaker 1: away and Capua A near modern day Naples, where he

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Speaker 1: was trained to fight with various weapons as entertainment for

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Speaker 1: massive crowds and arenas. Discipline in these schools was harsh.

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Speaker 1: For the article, this episode is based on How Stuff Works.

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Speaker 1: Spoke via email with Aaron Irvin, a history professor at

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Speaker 1: Murray State University. Irvin is a well regarded historian who's

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Speaker 1: also consulted on many TV series about this particular part

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Speaker 1: of history. He explained gladiators were a long standing tradition

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Speaker 1: in Rome, one that was originally related to funerals. Fundamentally, though,

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Speaker 1: gladiators were slaves, and generally they were considered the lowest

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Speaker 1: of the low, the most worthless and useless. A slave

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Speaker 1: was made a gladiator as a last resort because the

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Speaker 1: owner saw no other feasible way of making money off

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Speaker 1: of them, so he might as well make the slave's

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Speaker 1: death entertaining. Not that all gladiator fights were to the death.

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Speaker 1: Some ended when a fighter drew first blood or drove

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Speaker 1: his opponent into submission. But in an age where basic

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Speaker 1: hygiene like hand washing was rare and antibiotics didn't exist,

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Speaker 1: even superficial wounds could prove fatal for one or both fighters.

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Speaker 1: A few fortunate gladiators found fame through bloodshed. They won

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Speaker 1: fight after fight, making names for themselves and becoming celebrities.

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Speaker 1: Other enslaved people served them, and a rare few became

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Speaker 1: the most popular figures in their cities, akin to rock

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Speaker 1: stars or sports heroes. Irvin said gladiator helmets were crafted

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Speaker 1: to specifically hide the face of the gladiators, making the

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Speaker 1: fighters recognizable in their gear but otherwise faceless automata to

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Speaker 1: the crowd. No longer debased slaves, the gladiators became something extraordinary,

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Speaker 1: something beyond mere humans. However, the vast majority of gladiators

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Speaker 1: faced short, desperate lives. That's why Spartacus and seventy of

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Speaker 1: his compatriots made a daring escape from a gladiator school

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Speaker 1: in seventy three BCE. They then hijacked a caravan carrying

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Speaker 1: a load of gladieater weapons and armor, and suddenly they

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Speaker 1: were the equivalent of a heavily armed gang, with Spartacus

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Speaker 1: as their initial leader. He brought along his wife, a

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Speaker 1: prophetess of Dionysus, who also hailed from Thrace, though her

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Speaker 1: name is no longer known. The men continued to train

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Speaker 1: themselves for combat at a location on Mount Vesuvius, occasionally

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Speaker 1: raiding the countryside below. Eventually they caught the attention of Rome.

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Speaker 1: A high ranking government official called a praetor by the

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Speaker 1: name of Claudius Glabert, was sent to put Spartacus down.

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Speaker 1: He perhaps erred in relying on local militia. With only

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Speaker 1: a small force of professional soldiers, and the gladiators defeated

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Speaker 1: them soundly. The victory proved monumental in Roman and human history.

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Speaker 1: Before that, enslaved people and the Roman Republic felt so

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Speaker 1: hopeless that they rarely tried to escape. The republic was

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Speaker 1: so vast, stretching throughout the Mediterranean, that there was nowhere

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Speaker 1: to escape to, no political equivalent of the US's Northern States.

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Speaker 1: People were so resigned to their fates that they often

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Speaker 1: didn't even require supervision. But Spartacus and his men provided

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Speaker 1: the spark of hope that became a wildfire of armed rage.

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Speaker 1: Ervin said, when Spartacus beat a Roman praetor, suddenly there

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Speaker 1: was another option. There was a group you could flee

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Speaker 1: to that had managed to not just stand against Rome,

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Speaker 1: but it actually managed to defeat a Roman officer on

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Speaker 1: the battlefield. Enslaved people and prisoners of war ran away

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Speaker 1: to join the uprising. People of very different backgrounds, both

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Speaker 1: men and women, saw Spartacas as a way to fight

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Speaker 1: back against their oppressors. Although records from the time are unreliable,

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Speaker 1: these people may have swelled the rebel army's ranks to

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Speaker 1: ten or even hundreds of thousands, Irvin said, it wasn't

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Speaker 1: so much that Spartacus rallied these men and women to

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Speaker 1: his cause, or that he even saw himself as leading

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Speaker 1: a cause in the first place. If anything, it tells

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Speaker 1: us how desperate and how awful things were in Italy

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Speaker 1: in the period where someone, anyone, even a lowly gladiator,

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Speaker 1: could attract such a massive following. After the slightest victory

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Speaker 1: against Realme, Spartacus won at least three more military engagements.

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Speaker 1: The rebel leader even triumphed over armies of the Roman councils,

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Speaker 1: the heads of the entire Roman government, and commanders in

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Speaker 1: chief of the armies. As gladiators, these men had nothing

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Speaker 1: to lose, so they fought with little fear. Some probably

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Speaker 1: believed that ultimately they must bring down the pillars of

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Speaker 1: Roman political power or risk being captured and forced back

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Speaker 1: into bondage. Ervin said what the Roman elite didn't anticipate

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Speaker 1: was the existing anger and resentment among the people of

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Speaker 1: Italy that would attach itself to Spartacus's band. They also

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Speaker 1: didn't understand that their slim grasp on power relied almost

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Speaker 1: totally on the perception of Roman military might. One chink

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Speaker 1: in that metal armor a few Spartacus victories, and the

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Speaker 1: revolt became real. That's exactly why Rome's leaders knew they

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Speaker 1: needed to find a way to kill Spartacus once and

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Speaker 1: for all. Rome was rattle. Its veteran armies were deployed elsewhere,

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Speaker 1: and the city had only a ragtag force left to

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Speaker 1: oppose any attackers. So frightening had Spartacus become that eventually

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Speaker 1: no leaders could be found to take the reins of

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Speaker 1: a force against him. Finally, a wealthy praetor named Marcus

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Speaker 1: Crassus agreed to finance and lead an army against the rebels.

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Speaker 1: A vicious general, he led his men with obsense of brutality,

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Speaker 1: randomly killing soldiers and units who ran from battle. He

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Speaker 1: pursued Spartacus across the countryside, slowly but surely, weakening the

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Speaker 1: gladiators and their legions. Infighting amongst the rebels weakened their

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Speaker 1: resolve and their ability to fight as one. In seventy

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Speaker 1: one BCE, in a final battle, Spartacus and his men

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Speaker 1: made a desperate lunge toward Crassus himself, hoping that perhaps

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Speaker 1: Crassus's death might save the rebellion, but Spartacus was cut

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Speaker 1: down and the rebel army crushed. Some six thousand survivors

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Speaker 1: were hunted down and crucified as a warning to other

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Speaker 1: would be rebels, but Spartacus's body itself was never found. Still,

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Speaker 1: his death and those of his allies weren't in vain.

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Speaker 1: Ervin explained. In the immediate aftermath of the war against Spartacus,

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Speaker 1: A Crassus and Pompey, the two generals who had brought

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Speaker 1: an end to Spartacus's army, passed a number of reforms

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Speaker 1: that strengthened the voice of the Roman people and the government,

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Speaker 1: and forced the elite to pay life or attention to

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Speaker 1: the desires and circumstances of Rome's lower classes. These same

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Speaker 1: reforms also paved the way for a new populist politician

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Speaker 1: by the name of Julius Caesar, who would combine his

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Speaker 1: own popularity with military success some twenty five years later

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Speaker 1: to bring down the entirety of the Roman Republic. Spartacus's

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Speaker 1: contemporaries had a mixed view of him. Some admired his

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Speaker 1: bravery and military tactics, others feared he could have started

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Speaker 1: the collapse of civilized society, and now Irvin said, ultimately

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Speaker 1: a Spartacus means to us today largely what he meant

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Speaker 1: in his own period, A cry of rage and anger

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Speaker 1: and frustration at an unfair, uncaring, unfeeling world. A people

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Speaker 1: who have finally reached a breaking point and will follow someone,

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Speaker 1: anyone who will give them a chance. Today's sode is

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Speaker 1: based on the article Spartacus was a Real Gladiator and

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Speaker 1: the Baddest rebel leader in Rome on HowStuffWorks dot Com,

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Speaker 1: written by Nathan Chandler. Brain Stuff is production of ByHeart

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Speaker 1: Radio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com and is produced

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Speaker 1: by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit

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Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to

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Speaker 1: your favorite shows,