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At the same time Spartacus, a Thracian by birth, who had once served as a
soldier with the Romans, but had since been a prisoner and sold for a
gladiator, and was in the gladiatorial training-school at Capua, persuaded
about
seventy of his comrades to strike for their own
freedom rather than for the amusement of spectators. They overcame the
guards and ran away. They armed themselves with clubs and daggers that they
took from people on the roads and took refuge on Mount Vesuvius. There many
fugitive slaves and even some freemen from the fields joined Spartacus, and
he plundered the neighboring country, having for subordinate officers two
gladiators named Œnomaus and Crixus. As he divided the plunder
impartially he soon had plenty of men. Varinius Glaber was first sent
against him and afterward Publius Valerius, not with regular armies, but
with forces picked up in haste and at random, for the Romans did not
consider this a war as yet, but a raid, something like an outbreak of
robbery. When they attacked Spartacus they were beaten. Spartacus even
captured the horse of Varinius; so narrowly did a Roman prætor
escape being captured by a gladiator. After this still greater numbers
flocked to Spartacus till his army numbered 70,000 men. For these he
manufactured weapons and collected apparatus.