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BANDITS IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE
The same defensive strategy that Spartacus urged unavailingly on his men
had been prescribed to Roman forces by the dictator Q. Fabius Maximus
when, following the disaster at Lake Trasimene in 217 bc, it would have
been dangerous to risk a further pitched battle with Hannibal. However, his
second-in-command, his magister equitum, M. Minucius, then managed to
persuade the Roman Establishment to adopt an offensive strategy. Hannibal
thereupon brought Minucius into dire straits; but in the end Fabius Maximus,
‘the Delayer’, was able to resolve the crisis. 72 It was only this ultimate
success that was the difference between Fabius Maximus and Spartacus.
Plutarch, with Q. Fabius Maximus in mind, turned the dispute between
Spartacus and his men concerning the correct strategy into an object lesson.
His biographer could not of course compare the slave leader directly with
heroes of Roman history, even when he was setting off the sympathetic
Spartacus against the unsympathetic Crassus. However, he could legitimately
expect his readers to recognise the parallels between Spartacus and Fabius
Maximus without further direction. Roman anthologies of improving stories
were full of the Delayer; and, of course, Plutarch himself wrote about him. 73
The eagerness with which Roman authors deployed the idea of hubris
in assessing Spartacus, whether positively or negatively, together with the
unreliability of such statements, may be seen in the following conflict of
opinions. As we have seen, Plutarch cleared Spartacus of any notion of
delusion, while accusing his followers of arrogance. Florus judged the plan
to march on Rome a sign of presumption, but saw Spartacus, and not his
followers, as responsible for the decision. 74 However, it is clear from the totality
of Florus’ account that he saw Spartacus in a much worse light than did
Plutarch, who knew nothing about any scheme of marching on the capital.
Again, Appian, whose views on Spartacus lie somewhere between Florus’
remorseless disapproval and Plutarch’s thorough-going idealisation of him
as the leader of men par excellence, emphasised by reference to the planned
march on Rome, the measured judgement of Spartacus, who consciously
distanced himself from the project, since he appreciated that there was a lack
of arms, discipline and, above all, expertise. 75 Here, it is also clear that the
positive assessment of Spartacus, especially when contrasted against his immoderate
and over-confident followers, cannot be regarded as an invention
of Plutarch, for it occurs in Appian’s account as well. It may, in the last
analysis, derive from a source common to both writers (probably a work of
the later annalistic school, but perhaps also Sallust’s ‘Historiae’ which, to
judge from the extant fragments, were extremely well-disposed to Spartacus). 76
Unlike Eunous and Salvius, Spartacus did not project himself as a monarch
and, as we have seen, to his cost permitted his troops some freedom of
opinion. However, he also gave his movement various trappings of a state,
and observed some basic operational ground rules. 77 But all this should be
characterised, again, as leges latronum. For example, we can deduce from the
sources that, as one of the marks of a state, religion played an important part
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