years Rome had suffered severely from a
shortage in the supply of wheat that meant actual famine for the poorer
people. In Italy the fields which used to grow corn had been
increasingly planted with vine and olive--more profitable crops. The
corn grown in the countryside was not much more than sufficient for the
needs of the people living there. Rome depended in the main on supplies
from across the seas. Although the Sicilian towns were legally bound to
send a certain proportion of their crop to Rome they did not always do
so, and the Government was extremely slack in keeping them up to the
mark. A serious famine occurred in the year of Mithridates' invasion of
Bithynia, which looked dangerous enough. At the same time came the news
that the commander who had been sent out against the pirates who were
devastating the Cilician coast had been seriously defeated by them and,
worst of all, that a great rising of the slaves had broken out
throughout Italy (73).

This Slave War proved more serious even than at first appeared. The
slaves had not merely risen in great bodies: they had found a leader who
proved a real military genius in Spartacus. Spartacus was a Thracian,
and like most of his fellow slaves had been a prisoner of war.

These slaves were not the ordinary household slaves, many of whom were
treated kindly enough, or those employed in crafts and industries. They
were for the most part men kept in compounds under training for the
games. All over Italy there were training schools, belonging to rich
men, where picked slaves, chosen among prisoners of war because they
were tall, strong, and handsome, were kept and taught to fight as
gladiators. The conditions of these schools were very bad and the
unfortunate men in them had nothing better before them than the chance
of death in the arena. The taste of the Roman people was growing brutal;
the part of the shows given them by successful generals or politicians
who wanted popularity that they liked the best were the gladiatorial
fights: fights between men armed in different ways that went on till one
or other of the combatants was killed. A favourite combat was that
between a man armed with a trident and another provided with a net.
Sometimes these fights took place between bodies of men. Like the
Spanish bull fights, these shows excited the people of Rome beyond
anything. Good swordsmen fetched high prices and won fame for their
owners.

These unhappy men were for the