Before his legendary revolt, Spartacus had been a Thracian auxiliary in the Roman army, giving him crucial military insight he would later use against his former masters. After deserting, he was captured and enslaved, forced to train as a gladiator at a school in Capua—a fate considered a living death. The rebellion he sparked, known as the Third Servile War (73-71 BCE), was the last and largest of three major Roman slave uprisings. It exposed the profound instability of Rome’s slave-based econo