An escaped gladiator built a slave army that beat Rome's legions for two years

In 73 BC, Spartacus and about 70 fellow gladiators broke out of a training school in Capua, and within months tens of thousands of enslaved and dispossessed people had joined them, defeating several Roman armies before being crushed in 71 BC. Six thousand captured survivors were crucified along the Appian Way as a warning.

— Plutarch; Appian, Life of Crassus; The Civil Wars — 2nd century AD accounts of events in 73-71 BC