The revolt began in 73 BC, with the escape of around 70 slave gladiators from a gladiator school in Capua.
It was particularly alarming to Rome because its military seemed powerless to suppress it. This third rebellion was the only one that directly threatened the Roman heartland of Italy. The Third Servile War, also called the Gladiator War and the War of Spartacus by Plutarch, was the last in a series of slave rebellions against the Roman Republic known as the Servile Wars.
