I have great periods of dismay with this site, but it also causes me to do deep meditations. I have spent years trying to understand why we cannot come to consensus about almost anything. And lately, why on a whole with such an educated population we would have take such time and trouble to work out on one another.
Then I found myself caged in my own irony because I like badabing in many so ways that I would cut her a rhetorical slack that I am furious at myself for buying from Obama.
I have recently really opened my mind and been mind blown by many of the documentary films I have watched on line. One of the best:
topdocumentaryfilms.com/spartacus-behind-myth/
The great moral of the story to me is that Spartacus was a democrat, and because of his friends and associates, he snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Details below the fold.
Spartacus was one of my favorite movies of all time and I remained ticked that Douglas did not get his Oscar for it. I also remain grateful that it gave Dalton Trumbo back his life. At the time, I thought it was more myth than reality because I had not yet recognized that although I had an extensive education as a history major, I knew little real history.
I had recently rented the entire 4 discs of Spartacus and I see the second season is about to start. What I loved most about the series is the depth it give to the personal ambitions driving all forms of politics. I now know, that like then, today's reality of policies and plans has almost nothing to do with what is good for the city, state, or nation, but the powerful who live there.
I now do a check when I can on my 1988 hardback Britannica to compare and contrast the internet. So the essence of documentary is true but the details are lacking and there is twice as much, naturally, about Marcus Licinius Crassus.
Since the 60s there is a lot more research on Spartacus and several more historical accounts written. Much of this had been suppressed because you never want the slaves to get real uppity. But at the time, Rome had the greatest army of the world and it was taken down not once but several times by the lowest people on the totem poles outnumbered often 30 to one.
Those who are about to be enslaved and sacrificed should not be saluting but reading and thinking.
Trumble had Spartacus born a slave and at 13 condemned for his lifetime to quarry work--making him tough as nails. Not true. He was born a free Thracian, an animal herder, who lead the local militia to protect the local herds from poaching nomadic tribes. Their success was based on strategy not strength.
He was offered a position in the Roman army as a grunt mercenary to fight the same neighboring tribes that were giving him trouble. It seemed the rational thing to do; so he did it. Thus, he learned from the ground up Roman tactics and military philosophy. He didn't buy it but it was a job and he actively reflected on their weaknesses. These he understood to be their greatest weaknesses: their personal power egos, their beliefs in Roman exceptionalism, and their adherence to rigid rules of authority and command.
So when Rome decided to change enemies to suit their need for perpetual war, he said he was done and was going home. This was not allowed. He could not simply quit--once the CIA has got you--you're theirs. So he deserted. They spent the time to hunt him down because he commanded personal respect and had worked his way up as far as you get in those circumstances.
His capture meant not only his enslavement but all of his friends and family also enslaved. They immediately killed his wife. He was sent to Capua to be trained as a gladiator so his death could be both public and profitable. They did not see him escaping six to one odds.
The story of how he built community within a system that you kill your friends or be killed by them can be told many ways. All of them worth knowing, if you think there is a possibility of ever living in occupied
territory.
The facts now become important. He fought the Romans for over two years from 73 to 71 BC. He took 70 men and turned them into a fighting force of over 100,000 and became a nationally known movement.
He knew that Rome would not send their finest first for there would be no glory in defeating slaves. So he immediately marched to the high ground of Vesuvius and with less than a 100 men destroyed over 3,000 Romans. The word to the country side was electrifying and the slaves began deserting and joining up. Rome considered it a mere mistake in sending the unseasoned. He fought a continuous guerrilla fight of strategy in preparation for the big one. He did not loose.
Then his best friend and co-leader decided to desert him. Spartacus always had a plan and his plan was to match north to the Alps and then disband and escape back thru them to their homelands. Cricksus does not want to leave Rome; he thinks they are so good that they can live and plunder off the land forever. So Cricksus leaves with 30,000 men who feel as he does. He is trapped on a peninsula and his army destroyed almost to a man.
Spartacus is deeply effected by this and turns around and defeats this Roman army so they are free to move north before they can be replaced. Now by this time Spartacus intentions are known and since he has succeeded making it to the foot of the Alps the Romans would have let him go, had the army really dispersed.
This is what I never knew before. Spartacus makes it to the Alps free and clear. They can all escape but you see them looking at the alps and it will be a long hard slog all the way home for these people. In many ways, life in Rome even as a slave is less hardship than the primitive ways of their homelands. Spartacus has lead this group as an open transparent democracy. He has shared his plans and his visions. It is now upon seeing the reality, that his people rebel against him. They do not really want to leave Roman either. And further, they tell him he cannot leave them because as leader he lead them here and now he must defend them as best he can. Even though Spartacus sees this as personally choosing ultimate death, he agrees.
Now all the battles are fought on principle and for historical significance. Spartacus understands this and this is why there are so many local stories that were there for recent exhumation about him.
Crassius who defeats him is not a Roman general but the richest man in Roman. He is even called The Rich. He has made all his money as a real estate investor. Part of that has been paying the government for the lands seized of dissidents. So he buys himself a huge mercenary army and purchases the general ship. He sees this as his investment in coming to power. He will have a huge local army while all the other major generals particularly Caesar and Pompey are on the frontiers. He can now hold all of Romen hostage. This is why when Pompey and Caesar return they form the first triumpherit. Then they see that Crassus has to lead an army on the frontier to say face and demonstrate his military equality. Since he is an urban man his army is trapped in 53BC by the Parthians who take it down completely in an ambush of bows and arrows. Crassus is killed on the battle field. This is also not shouted about in military history because it would show how vulnerable Rome had always been and refused to acknowledge.
Major military strategic defeats are always forgotten and/or practically denied existence. Especially, if it was against the odds. Even today, when in war games creative generals can show total defeat of the American military complex by small speedboats and hand held RPIs, that knowledge is never heeded.
So this story is the reality of be careful what you ask for in case you might get it. Something the tea party is going to find out. It is also that even good leadership will not be heeded; look at Feingold and Grayson and Kucinich. And then there is in an age of communication be wary what you hear and for that we have not only Nixon and Obama but Tester and Webb.
As a Jew, I was taught that Exodus lasted forty years because all the people born with slave mentality had to die before there could be entrance into the promised land. That the mental acceptance of being a slave had to be totally eradicated for a free standing nation to arise.
It is the elite who have kept history mostly to themselves and used it to their advantage. A major documentary of this site has been noted on Kos before: The Century of the Self. I could not recommend it more.
I once had a weird dream in which a dolphin told me that they and the whales had decided to stay and die on this planet with us so they could sing every day that we would come to our senses. I often feel like them: a dying species that came to consciousness without TV and grew up not locking my doors against my neighbors. Of having no concept that people I knew would simple take something I have because they could. I grew up poor but did not know it. I never had lack of money shoved in my face. I was invited since I was nine to sing for the rich who still had the wisdom to seek to experience various forms of art. We all shared the experience that music made the thought of spirit something that we could feel. Now, even though I am poor, I have a walk in closet and more than a dozen pair of shoes, but I know how much richer I used to be when I never even thought such things were possible.