Spartacus: The Leader of the Roman Slaves. Francis Ambrose Ridley 1962
As we have seen, the Spartacus insurrection was the last of its kind. No serious servile disturbance broke the iron uniformity of the police-state of the Caesars. The jealous suspicion with which the ruling class continued to watch the activities of the slave masses is clearly demonstrated by their rejection of a suggestion to give the slave class a common distinctive uniform, on the very significant ground that such a uniform would show the slaves their numbers and, hence, their potential power!
It seems to be a ‘law’ of human psychology that man cannot go on living without some hope in the future. After the failure of the great chain of servile insurrections, the prospects of the slaves in this world were hopeless. Warned by the event, the master class got rid of the decadent senatorial oligarchy, the incompetence of which had nearly been fatal when faced with a military genius like Spartacus, and put their administrative house in order. The iron military despotism set up by Julius and Augustus Caesar afforded no opportunity for the slaves to make any further effort to shake off their chains. The outlook in this world was without hope for the servile class. Their only hope, henceforth, lay in another, supra-mundane world, where the writ of Caesar did not run and where the cross had been transformed from an instrument of oppression into a symbol of salvation.
This last act of spiritual alchemy was effected in the century after Spartacus by the first religion in social history that was of popular, largely servile origin, and which came to be known as Christianity, from the name of its titular founder: the Galilean mystic, preacher and, perhaps, agitator, in whom Eisler [1] and others have seen a Jewish successor of Spartacus crucified for armed insurrection against the Roman Empire.
Never probably in the whole of recorded history has the social function of religion as ‘the opium of the people’ been demonstrated more clearly than in the case of the great religious revival at the opening of the Christian era. Understood realistically against its original social background, it represents probably the most colossal act of ‘escapism’ in recorded history. The transformation of the cross, the symbol of torture, into the symbol and instrument of salvation, was, assuredly, a stroke of genius on the part of Paul of Tarsus and his associate propagandists and goes far to explain its ultimate success.
The slaves made life again tolerable by this profound psychological victory over their oppressors, transferred from this world to the next. That the master class later captured the Church and turned it into one of the most effective instruments of counter-revolution in history must not be permitted to obscure its original social significance.
A vast literature has been composed round the origins of Christianity, without, however, adding much to our essential knowledge. But one of the authentic sources of Christianity seems to have been an armed Messianic insurrection against Rome. The prime instance is that Jesus is represented as having died on the cross, the special mode of execution designed for the slave and the revolutionary. We also learn that his follower Peter was carrying a sword in the Garden of Gethsemane, with which he cut off the ear of the High Priest. As the German socialist historian Karl Kautsky remarked in his book The Foundations of Christianity, this was a peculiar tool to carry at a prayer meeting.
In our Gospel narratives, in the oldest Gospel, St Mark refers to the insurrection in which Barabbas had participated. This seems to imply that his readers would have known what the insurrection was, though the Christian Church later found it convenient to suppress any information which may have been recorded in the original text.
Most significant of all, perhaps, Jesus is represented as seizing the Temple by force and driving out the money-changers. Since it is known that the Temple was held by a Roman garrison, this could only have been the result of a successful uprising in Jerusalem.
All these records may be regarded perhaps as straws blown by an original revolutionary wind. This interpretation derives further support from certain remarks attributed to Jesus in the Gospel. The Messiah – who is so often depicted as a pacifist – urges his followers that, if they do not possess swords, they must obtain them, and goes on record with the categorical assertion that: ‘The Kingdom of Heaven cometh by violence and violent men take it by force.’ A somewhat curious statement by the ‘Prince of Peace'!
The origins of Christianity can only be studied objectively in a post-Christian context. But the theory that Christianity actually started as an armed Messianic rising against Rome is at least a plausible one. In which case, Rome reacted by putting Jesus to the same death as it had put the surviving Spartacists. Be that as it may, the Roman Empire continued to regard the Christians as revolutionaries down to the time of Constantine. Where there was so much smoke, there must have also been some fire.
By a rather curious irony, perhaps only possible in the case of religious history, we still have extant a complete memoir of an unsuccessful revolution against the self-same Roman Empire, which Spartacus and his slaves fought so heroically in vain to overthrow. This revolution, a wish fulfilment, an eschatological escapism, on the part of its author, is to be found extant and set out in full, in terrifying symbolism, in the last book of our Biblical canon – the Apocalypse, or Revelation of St John.
In this terrifying work, composed of bizarre visions, recorded by one who obviously hated the Roman Empire – his picturesquely named Scarlet Woman – from the depths of his soul, we have a prophetic vision, couched in denunciatory language, of the victorious completion of the Jewish revolution against Rome. What Bar-Cockba – and perhaps Jesus Christ? – failed to achieve on earth, the final and irrevocable destruction of Rome, John’s Messiah descends from heaven to accomplish, and does actually accomplish – though, alas, only on paper! – at the head of an army of celestial cavalry led by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
What we have before us, in this Biblical narrative, preserved by so curious a chance on account of its alleged sacred character, is the only surviving contemporary account of the great social revolutions of antiquity, written by one of the revolutionaries themselves, but transferred from earth to heaven. For, as the French social historian quoted by Archibald Robertson has aptly observed: ‘From the moment that Spartacus failed Jesus was bound to win.’ As Robertson himself has noted, the Messiah of John, who wreaks final vengeance on Rome, is a kind of amalgam of all the great revolutionaries of antiquity, from Cleomenes of Sparta to Spartacus of Thrace.
The Book of Revelation is thus of quite unique interest. One need only add here that the victory of Spartacus upon this terrestrial earth would have made Revelation and its imaginary celestial victory over Rome impossible. But, in view of the circumstances of the age of the Caesars, one can only sympathise with the old Jewish revolutionary who was its author, who carried on the revolution in Heaven when it was no longer possible to carry it on upon earth.
In the colossal drama of ‘the foundations of Christianity’, Spartacus and the servile revolution take their place as an indirect but potent formative cause.
A number of passages in the New Testament are still recognisably anti-Roman. In particular, the Apocalypse (Revelation), which brands the Roman Empire as ‘the Beast’, is violently anti-Roman throughout. In such passages, bowdlerised as they are by ‘respectable’ ruling-class Christianity, we still hear faint but authentic echoes of the ancient slave revolutions.
1. Robert Eisler, John the Baptist and the Messiah Jesus (Dial, New York, 1931).