Battle of Monte Gargano

The Battle of Mount Gargano, also known as the Battle of Mons Garganus, was a military engagement fought in 72 BC on Mount Gargano in southern Italy, between a Roman army led by either the consul Lucius Gellius Publicola or the praetor Quintus Arrius, and a force of escaped slaves and gladiators under the Gaulish leader Crixus. After breaking away from Spartacus's main army, Crixus was defeated and killed in the battle, marking the first major Roman victory of the Third Servile War.

Battle of Mount Gargano
Part of the Third Servile War
Map of the movements of the war in 72 BC, showing the battle at Mount Gargano.
Date 72 BC Location Mount Gargano, Roman Italy Result Roman victory
Belligerents
Roman Republic	Rebel slaves
Commanders and leaders
Lucius Gellius Publicola or the praetor Quintus Arrius	Crixus †
Strength
Two legions and auxiliaries	10,000–30,000
Casualties and losses
Unknown	20,000 killed

Background

Slavery in the late Republic

At the time of the war, an estimated one-third of the six million inhabitants of the Italian peninsula were enslaved. The large-scale arrival of slaves in Italy had begun in the first half of the 2nd century BC. The majority of these had been born free and retained the memory of their lost liberty. Most had been captured during wars in the eastern Mediterranean and were referred to generically as Syrians. These conflicts had begun after Rome's intervention in the region, which weakened the Seleucid Empire and gave rise to civil wars and to Cilicia becoming a haven for pirates who raided Mediterranean coasts in large slave-taking expeditions. The main exporting region, however, was around the Danube delta and the northern coast of the Black Sea, where the Scythians sold prisoners taken in their raids. These routes typically crossed Thrace, suggesting that the Thracians had regular contact with the slave trade. Later, large numbers of Celts and Germans were imported through the ports of Aquileia, Arelate and Massilia.

The first contingents worked on ranches and farms on the island of Sicily. Over time, patricians began to form large estates worked by hundreds or thousands of slaves in Sicily and the southern Italian peninsula. Some of these foreign slaves came to be used in gladiatorial games. In Capua at the beginning of the 1st century BC, nearly all combatants were Gauls or Thracians, and the situation was much the same across the peninsula.

The slave revolt

In 73 BC, a revolt of gladiators broke out in Capua at the school of Lentulus Batiatus; several dozen of them, led by Spartacus, Oenomaus and Crixus, escaped and took refuge on Mount Vesuvius. There they defeated the praetor Gaius Claudius Glaber, who had been sent against them with a force of militia comprising roughly four to six cohorts, or about 3,000 men. A similar fate befell the troops of Publius Varinius. During this period, the rebels grew from around 400 to 10,000 fighters.

After moving south through the Italian countryside while pillaging, the rebels passed the winter in the mountainous areas between Nola, Nocera Inferiore, Thurii and Metapontum. During this time Oenomaus probably died, killed in battle according to Orosius. At the same period some 110,000 Roman legionaries (equivalent to 20 or 22 legions) were occupied in distant wars against Quintus Sertorius in Spain and Mithridates VI of Pontus in Asia, in addition to a further eight legions in Gaul and Macedonia. Few troops remained to garrison Italy.

With the spring of 72 BC, the mass of Thracians, Germans, Celts and "Easterners" began a slow advance northward, reportedly intending to cross the Alps and escape into Gaul. For reasons of mobility and supply they marched and encamped in smaller, though relatively close, columns. Disputes between Crixus and Spartacus, however, led to a division of the rebel host: Crixus separated with a force of Gauls and Germans and made for Mount Gargano, intending to continue the war on his own terms. One modern scholar describes him as "equal to Spartacus in courage but not in good sense" and lacking discipline, while the Roman sources describe his decision to break away from the main force as "insolent and bold".

Crixus appears to have favoured attacking the Romans, whereas Spartacus wished to withdraw to the north. The rupture may have occurred while the rebels were engaged with Varinius, with Oenomaus accompanying the Gaul; on Crixus's death, Spartacus would have emerged as the sole leader of the surviving rebel faction.

Opposing forces

After their successes against Glaber and Varinius, the rebel host swelled to some 70,000 men, women and children, composed both of fugitive slaves and of other workers such as shepherds and herdsmen in southern Italy. As the region contained many large estates, the density of slaves was high. Spartacus armed some of them with armour and used others as scouts; his army was thus a mixture of warriors equipped with the traditional weapons of their peoples and with captured Roman equipment. The veteran gladiators were employed to train the new recruits. It was at this time that Crixus parted from Spartacus with 30,000 Gauls and Germans, a number likely to have included warriors as well as women and children with their wagons. Modern historians revise the total rebel figure downward to roughly 40,000, probably following Orosius, who states that Crixus had 10,000 warriors at his back and Spartacus three times that number.

The Romans took advantage of the split and attacked the two rebel leaders separately. The mission of attacking Crixus fell either to the praetor Quintus Arrius or to the consul Lucius Gellius Publicola in person. This discrepancy is significant, since provincial armies could be praetorian or consular depending on the rank of their imperator or governor. A praetorian command usually consisted of one Roman legion plus auxiliaries, a consular command of two. The historian Ricardo de la Cierva estimates a praetorian army at 8,000 to 10,000 men and a consular army at twice that number; other modern historians put a consular force at only about 10,000 men, consistent with two legions. According to Appian, each consul commanded two legions, though he probably referred to the forces of each of the consular armies.

Battle

Of the battle itself, ancient sources record only that the slaves fought with great valour. Modern historians have offered varying reconstructions of the engagement based on parallels with other Roman battles of the period.

Strauss's reconstruction

Drawing on testimony from contemporary engagements, the American historian Barry Strauss imagines a typical encounter. The two forces would have approached each other shouting to bolster their own courage and to intimidate the enemy; then auxiliary archers and slingers would have tried to weaken the rebel line with a hail of missiles. At less than 50 m, the legionaries would have hurled their pila accompanied by the terrifying call of the tubae and cornua. Then, with their standards raised, they would have charged in unison. On occasions such a display of equipment and discipline alone was enough to put an enemy to flight, but not in the case of Crixus and his men.

There was undoubtedly a fierce clash, with hand-to-hand fighting lasting some fifteen to twenty minutes before the combatants tired. A breakdown of the lines on both sides would follow, with a brief withdrawal to regroup. This cycle, common in ancient battles, would be repeated for two or three hours until one of the armies collapsed and fled. The engagement probably went through several such "rounds" before the Romans were able to turn the flanks or break through the rebel line. The slaves fought fiercely enough to inflict heavy Roman casualties but could not avert their defeat. Celts and Germans were accustomed to gathering around their chiefs during a battle and found it unthinkable to do anything but fight to the end; rather than suffer the humiliation of flight, they preferred to be cut down where they stood.

Fields's reconstruction

The British military historian Nic Fields believes that a fragment of Sallust refers to the battle. The fragment states that the legionaries occupied a high position in two battle lines and defended it with heavy losses. Fields uses this to argue that the legions were heavily outnumbered, since the duplex acies formation (each legion drawn up in two lines of five cohorts each) was defensive, in contrast to the traditional triplex acies, in which each legion was drawn up in three lines: a first of four cohorts and two more of three.

Acknowledging that he is only speculating, Fields supposes that the legions must have formed on the crest of a hill and that the rebels would have charged repeatedly, only to be driven back each time. Eventually the attackers would have hesitated and fled, to be pursued by the legionaries. Crixus, losing control of the situation, would have preferred to die fighting. The chief difficulty with this theory is that the same fragment names the Roman commander as the other consul, Lentulus, and seems to imply that the Romans were forced to abandon their position.

Sabin's reconstruction

In the television documentary Decisive Battles, the British military historian Philip A. G. Sabin offered a different account, in which Crixus's slaves were initially attacked by the Romans but managed to repulse them. Believing themselves victorious, the rebels began to celebrate and become drunk, at which point the Romans returned and killed them with little effort.

Aftermath

One ancient source states that all of the slaves were killed in the battle, while another reports that two-thirds were destroyed. A specific figure of 20,000 dead is recorded. Castus and Gannicus may have succeeded Crixus as the leaders of the Gallic and Germanic rebels.

Publicola's consular colleague, Lentulus, was defeated in the Apennines shortly afterward. The rebel host was enormous and marched northward; the defeat momentarily weakened the rebel movement but, more importantly, it exposed the rift between those who wished only to escape across the Alps and leave the Roman world behind, and those who preferred to plunder and take revenge.

See also

• Third Servile War
• Battle of Picenum
• Spartacus

Bibliography

Ancient sources

• Appian. The Civil Wars, Book I, part of the Roman History. Translation by Horace White, 1899.
• Eutropius. Abridgment of Roman History, Book VI. Translation by John Selby Watson, London: Henry G. Bohn, 1853.
• Florus. Epitome of Roman History, Book II. Translation by E. S. Forster, Loeb Classical Library, 1929.
• Orosius. Histories Against the Pagans. Translation by A. T. Fear, Liverpool University Press, 2010.
• Plutarch. Life of Crassus, part of the Parallel Lives. Translation by Bernadotte Perrin, Loeb Classical Library, 1916.
• Sallust. Histories, Book III (fragments). Translation by Patrick McGushin, Oxford University Press, 1992 and 1994.
• Sextus Julius Frontinus. Stratagems, Books I and II. Translation by Charles E. Bennett, 1925.
• Livy. Periochae. Translation by Jona Lendering and Andrew Smith, 2003.
• Velleius Paterculus. Compendium of Roman History. Translation by Frederick W. Shipley, Loeb Classical Library, 1924.

Modern works

• Broughton, Thomas Robert Shannon (1951). The Magistrates of the Roman Republic: 99 B.C.–31 B.C. Scholars Press.
• Cummins, Joseph (2008). Great Rivals in History: When Politics Gets Personal. Sydney: Pier 9, Murdoch Books.
• De la Cierva, Ricardo (2008). Historial total de España: del hombre de Altamira al rey Juan Carlos: lecciones amenas de historia profunda (in Spanish). Editorial Félix.
• Del Testa, David W.; Lemoine, Florence; Strickland, John (2001). Government Leaders, Military Rulers, and Political Activists. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group.
• Fields, Nic (2009). Spartacus and the Slave War 73–71 BC: A Gladiator Rebels Against Rome. New York; Oxford: Osprey Publishing.
• Goldsworthy, Adrian (2010). In the Name of Rome: The Men Who Won the Roman Empire. Hachette.
• Magill, Frank Northen; Moose, Christina J.; Aves, Alison (2003). Dictionary of World Biography: The Ancient World. Vol. I. Pasadena: Taylor & Francis.
• Schiavone, Aldo (2013). Spartacus. Harvard University Press.
• Shaw, Brent D. (2016). Spartacus and the Slave Wars: A Brief History with Documents. Springer.
• Strauss, Barry S. (2009). The Spartacus War. Simon and Schuster.
• Winkler, Martin M. (2008). Spartacus: Film and History. Victoria, Australia: John Wiley & Sons.