Spartacus was a Thracian, a member of the wild tribes that inhabited the region that is now Bulgaria. Spartacus wasn’t afraid of dying-as a warrior he scorned death-but he had grown tired of fighting and probably dying for the amusement of his casually brutal Roman captors. Few expected mercy-most of the thumbs turned down, for death, at the end of a contest.
All fought in gladiatorial “games” where life and death were decided by the direction of the crowd’s thumbs. Some, like Spartacus, wielded curved scimitars called sica others used long swords or tridents. The gladiators took their names from the short sword, or gladius, favored by many of the combatants. There, gladiators such as Spartacus perfected a savage craft of hand-to-hand combat designed to entertain their Roman masters. Like most gladiatorial schools, the House of Batiatus was a combination barracks, fortress, and prison.
He was a virtual captive at the gladiatorial school of Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus Batiatus, located at Capua in the Campania region of southern Italy. In the spring of 73 bc, Thracian gladiator Spartacus decided that the time was right to attempt an escape.
