Ah they and welcome to Emperor of Rome, a Roman history podcast from Latrobe University.

I'm your host Matt Smith and with me today is Dr.

Rianna Evans, senior lecturer in Classics and Ancient History at Latrobe University.

This is episode CV, Spartacus the Gladiator.

The Roman Empire was made mighty through the hard work of slaves, but occasionally they escaped,

banded together and caused a bit of a ruckus. The last and greatest slave rebellion was led by

Spartacus, a man who has come to symbolise the oppressed and resistance against tyranny.

We begin the story of his life by looking at his time as a gladiator.

Here's Rianna Evans.

So Spardicus was a slave who'd been assigned as a gladiator who escaped

from the gladiatorial school and started a slave rebellion.

He's famous for taking on the might of the Roman military machine and actually defeating

them in some battles and of course he's been made even more famous by all of the

20th and 21st century representations of him in books, film, TV.

So he's sort of become this symbol of rebellion.

And I guess what helps that even more is that he wasn't a opposing military army at all.

He wasn't Hannibal leading Carthaginians across the Alps with elephants. This is an army from within.

Yeah he represents the underdog in a society and when he's represented now on screen

that's often what's going on there so he's not

representing another state he doesn't have the institutions and the might of a

state he kind of has to get his own band of warriors together.

What year are we talking about here?

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