Spartacus was a Thracian gladiator who led a slave revolt with an army numbering in the tens of thousands. He defeated Roman forces over half a dozen times, marching his people up and down the Italian peninsula until he was killed in battle in April 71 B.C.
A favorite character in popular fiction, he was not crucified, and there was no "I’m Spartacus!" moment as seen in the famous 1960 Stanley Kubrick film. Also, while Spartacus was a real person who has inspired revolutionaries and filmmakers, scholars do not have an abundant amount of information about him. Accounts from only about a dozen ancient writers survive to this day, and none of the surviving reports was written by Spartacus or one of his supporters.
