Spartacus Wife

In Spartacus, the famous 1960 movie, Spartacus had a wife named Varinia, but there is speculation as to whether or not he was actually married.

In 73 B.C., Spartacus—an enslaved Thracian man—escaped from a gladiatorial school in Capua. According to Appian's Civil Wars, Spartacus "persuaded about seventy of his comrades to strike for their own freedom rather than for the amusement of spectators." They fled to Mount Vesuvius—the same volcano that later erupted to bury Pompeii—and accumulated 70,000 men to create an army. That army was made up of discontented enslaved men and freedmen.

Rome sent military leaders to deal with Spartacus and his friends, but the former gladiator had turned his forces into an effective war machine. It wasn't until the following year, when Spartacus' army numbered about 120,000, that his fiercest opponent, Marcus Licinius Crassus, "a distinguished among the Romans for birth and wealth, assumed the praetorship and marched against Spartacus with six new legions."

Spartacus defeated Crassus, but the latter's forces eventually turned the tables and decimated Spartacus'. Writes Appian, " So great was the slaughter that it was impossible to count them. The Roman loss was about 1,000. The body of Spartacus was not found." In the midst of all this, Crassus and Pompey the Great were battling for who would get the glory of winning this war. The two were eventually elected co-consuls in 70 B.C.

Plutarch and Spartacus' Marriage

Varinia is the name novelist Howard Fast invented for the wife of Spartacus. She was called Sura in the recent TV series Spartacus: Blood and Sand. We don't know for sure that Spartacus was married, let alone what his wife's name was—although Plutarch does say Spartacus was married to a Thracian.

In his Life of Crassus, Plutarch writes,

"The first of these was Spartacus, a Thracian of Nomadic stock, possessed not only of great courage and strength, but also in sagacity and culture superior to his fortune, and more Hellenic than Thracian. It is said that when he was first brought to Rome to be sold, a serpent was seen coiled about his face as he slept, and his wife, who was of the same tribe as Spartacus, a prophetess, and subject to visitations of the Dionysiac frenzy, declared it the sign of a great and formidable power which would attend him to a fortunate issue. This woman shared in his escape and was then living with him."

The Prophetic Wife

The only ancient evidence we have for Spartacus' wife dubs her a fellow Thracian who had prophetic powers that she used to indicate her husband would be a hero.

In epic poems of the time, mystical signs often marked great heroes of mythology. If Spartacus' wife existed, it would make sense that she would try to elevate her husband into this elite category.

The Wall Street Journal classicist, Barry Strauss, elaborates on the possibility of Spartacus' wife and her mythological significance in building up the hero myth around her husband. It's possible he was married—even if it wasn't legal—but sadly, she likely met the same fate as her husband's followers.

Edited by Carly Silver