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.
