Some accounts represent Spartacus as anxious for battle. Whether he
was so or not, he made every preparation that became a good general.
The armies met on the Silarus, in the northern part of Lucania; and
the battle which followed, and which was to finish this remarkable
war, was fought not far from where the traveller now sees the noble
ruins of Paestum. Spartacus made his last speech to his soldiers,
warning them of what they would have to expect, if they should fall
alive into the hands of their old masters. By way of practical
commentary on his text, he caused a cross to be erected on a height,
and to that cross was nailed a living Roman, whose agonies were
visible to the whole army. Spartacus then ordered his horse to be
brought to him in front of the army, and slew the animal with his own
hands. "I am determined," he said to his men, "to share all your
dangers. Our positions shall be the same. If we are victorious, I
shall get horses enough from the foe. If we are beaten, I shall need
a horse no more." [6]
[Footnote 6: When the Earl of Warwick, the King-maker, killed his
horse in front of the Yorkist army, at the battle of Towton,
(fought on Palm Sunday, 1461,) he little knew that he was imitating
the action of a general of revolted slaves, more than fifteen
centuries earlier.
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