What if Spartacus had won? – Almost History Season 2 kicks off with a Roman rebellion

Episode 1 of our new season of the ‘What If?’ podcast from All About History is available now – Subscribe today on your preferred podcast player

Between 73-71 BCE Roman society was shaken by an uprising of enslaved men and women led by a man named Spartacus. It’s a name that is pretty familiar to us in the modern era thanks to his being immortalised in Stanley Kubrick’s 1960 epic and more recently in a Starz-produced TV show. But those adaptations of the story don’t necessarily paint the whole picture.

Spartacus terrified the elites of Rome for a number of reasons. As a Thracian soldier, he had the tactical knowledge and ability to really put up a fight, even against the Legion. As a gladiator, he represented the lowest level of Roman society and thus his victories brought even more shame to the powerful. And she he have won, it could have cracked open the system of slavery that much of the Roman economy was founded on.

But was there every a real chance of that happening? Did Spartacus have the numbers and ability to really challenge the might of Rome? And if he did, what would he have done with that advantage? Could he have marched on Rome? Was he simply looking to escape enslavement for himself and his wife? What might the longer repercussions of his victory have been for the growing empire?

To get to the bottom of these questions we could think of no one better to talk to than friend of All About History Dr Emma Southon. Her recent book Servus: How Slavery Made the Roman Empire gets to the heart of slavery’s role in Roman life and it was great to pick her brain about Spartacus and the Servile Wars. You can listen to our conversation now in episode 1 of a new season Almost History: The What If Podcast from All About History.

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