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Was Varinia the Wife of Spartacus?

By , About.com Guide

Question: Was Varinia the Wife of Spartacus?
Answer: Varinia is the name novelist Howard Fast invented for the wife of Spartacus. We don't know for sure that Spartacus was married although Plutarch says he was married to a Thracian.
From Plutarch's Life of Crassus:
    When he first came to be sold at Rome, they say a snake coiled itself upon his face as he lay asleep, and his wife, who at this latter time also accompanied him in his flight, his country-woman, a kind of prophetess, and one of those possessed with the bacchanal frenzy, declared that it was a sign portending great and formidable power to him with no happy event.

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