Part Two: Spartacus and the Thurii Commune: How a Slave Rebellion in Ancient Rome Reimagined Society

Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff

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Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 717 Ratings

🗓️ 17 December 2025

⏱️ 58 minutes

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Summary

Margaret continues her talk with Katy Stoll about the leaderless society that almost overthrew Rome.

Sources:

Radical Antiquity, Christopher B. Zeichmann

https://www.worldhistory.org/Ostracism/

https://web.archive.org/web/20170719062739/http://www.livius.org/li-ln/livy/periochae/periochae091.html#95

https://web.archive.org/web/20160326113007/http://www.livius.org/so-st/spartacus/spartacus.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20160304220855/http://www.livius.org/so-st/spartacus/spartacus2.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20110805121329/http://www.ancientlibrary.com/smith-dgra/0581.html

https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Appian/Civil_Wars/1*.html#116

https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Crassus*.html#9

http://www.fsmitha.com/h1/ch18.htm

https://www.historyextra.com/period/roman/roman-republic-guide-how-senate-plebeians-citizenship-women-democratic-fall-end/

https://www.thecollector.com/first-servile-war-revolt-shook-rome/

https://www.thecollector.com/second-servile-war-slave-rebellion/

https://www.rfmwilliams.com/the-sicilian-slave-revolts-of-ancient-rome/

https://warflute.org/armies/sicilian_slave_revolts_135-132_104-103_bc_polemicus_army_t3.html

http://societasviaromana.net/Collegium_Religionis/human_sacrifice.php

https://www.history.co.uk/articles/gladiatorial-games-in-ancient-rome

https://pressbooks.claremont.edu/clas112pomonavalentine/chapter/why-are-we-so-uncomfortable-the-confusing-taboo-of-menstruation-in-ancient-rome-and-modern-america/

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is an I-Heart podcast.
0:02.5	Guaranteed Human.
0:06.0	CoolZone Media.
0:09.4	Hello, and welcome to cool people who did cool stuff.
0:11.8	Your weekly reminder that I'm in a weird hole reading about the ancient world.
0:15.5	And now you all are in a weird hole listening to me talk about the ancient world.
0:18.8	I am your host, Margaret Kilroy, and my
0:21.2	guest today, who pays attention to the regular world, the modern world, the postmodern world,
0:28.1	it's Katie Stoll. That's me. I pay your attentioner to the postmodern world. It's my official title.
0:37.4	Yeah. I love words that have so many meanings that you can't use them and expect people to understand what you're saying. That's how I feel about postmodern in this context. Oh, God, one day I'm going to do like a weird philosophy podcast where I'm... Nope. Anyway, stick with history. Said the same thing last episode. You can do a spin-off. You can do a one-off spin-off.
0:56.4	That's true.
0:56.9	You could do a whole side project, but then you've got to create more content.
1:00.8	I know. And the problem is that it's just like, I just want to know everything. I like deep diving new things.
1:08.4	And so this is the nice thing about history podcast is I'm not running out of history anytime soon. No, you got a pretty wide net. Yeah, even this week's subject, Spartacus. I've known I was going to do Spartacus since the very beginning. I'm on year like four, four and a half. There's a bunch of them. Like one day I'm going to just take like half a year and do Harriet Tubman because I'm pretty convinced Harriet Tubman is like literally the coolest person who's ever lived. You should definitely do that. But I haven't done Harriet Tubman yet because I'm like, this is going to be like an eight-parter. Or maybe it'll just be a two-parter. I don't know. You got to start, but you never know what can of worms you're opening. I know, I know. much like the can of worms of this episode about Spartacus
1:47.3	and how it's not about Spartacus and it's about the servile wars, but it's not even about the
1:51.1	wars. It's about the beautiful societies that people can build in the cracks when terrible things
1:56.9	are happening. Because where we last left our heroes, they hadn't even been introduced yet
2:02.3	because it was just context about slavery and the nightmare that is the ancient world, at least in
2:09.9	this part of the world. So you definitely should listen to the first one first. Yes. That should go
2:14.6	without saying. So there's three servile wars.
2:19.3	They are called the first servile war, the second servile war.
2:23.7	And you'll never guess what the third servile wars.
	...

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