This discrepancy is mainly the result of the sources in which these wars are recorded. Initially the only surviving historian who commented on the Sicilian slave wars was Diodorus Siculus (Siculus, by the way, is simply Latin for ‘Sicilian’). However, we don’t have direct access to Diodorus’ account of the slave wars: we can only read what other writers summarized of Diodorus’ original history.
Anyway back to Spartacus. The main surviving source for the account of Spartacus’ revolt is Plutarch’s Life of Crassus. Unlike Diodorus, Plutarch is a respected ancient author, who write across a variety of genres, including biography, essays and philosophical dialogues.
I’m interested in how Plutarch and Diodorus write about these slave revolts because ancient historians (and to some extent ancient biographers) are very interested in describing war as a time of reversals: the free become enslaved and the enslaved become free. In this blog I’ve already mentioned how in times of war ancient states would sometimes offer freedom to slave for help with fighting. A related phenomenon is slaves fighting for their own freedom.
Which brings me to the topic of this post. Plutarch never describes Spartacus as a freedman. Instead he is a slave, indeed, one of the worst kinds of slaves in the ancient world: a fugitive. Despite raising an army that won a victory against the Romans, Spartacus remained in Plutarch’s eyes a runaway slave. This emphasis is intriguing, since Plutarch does have some sympathy for Spartacus, since his courage is praiseworthy.