With
Spartacus Blood and Sand appearing on Starz and Netflix as a 300ish fantasy, drama, adventure that is very entertaining, I realized I knew nothing about the historical Spartacus. At the local book store was the
Spartacus War by Barry Strauss which is probably selling well now courtesy of the series.
Spartacus was a Thracian who served in the Roman Auxiliary. This were barbarian units that served alongside the Roman heavy and light infantry. Since the Romans were not good horsemen, the barbarian auxiliary tended to be cavalry. So it was likely that Spartacus was a noble cavalryman from Thracia (modern day Bulgaria).
His reason for being sold into slavery according to one source was because he was a deserter that chose thievery, banditry or even a guerilla fighter rather than service in the auxilia. He was captured and the result was that he ended up in Rome in the slave markets.
Spartacus lived in a ludus or gladitorial school owned by Gnaeus Cornelius Lentalus Vatia, though Vatia appears as Batiatus in one source. The owner of the ludus (dominus in the tv series) was most likely an absentee owner and lived in Rome rather than in the ludus itself.
The story of Spartacus includes a Thracian woman whose name is unknown in history. She lived with Spartacus during his time in the ludus and even escaped with him from slavery during the uprising. She is cast in history as a seer and saw in Spartacus the divine and cast prophecy of his future.
Spartacus ended up leading a large slave army of Thracians, Gauls and Germans. They originally camped on Mt Vesuvius and looted from the surrounding plains. The other interesting thing was that Spartacus' generals were Crixus the Gaul and Oenomaus (doctori in the series). Together the defeated several Roman Armies that were raised to put the revolt down. Including one led by Caius Claudius Glaber which Spartacus solidly defeated.
In the end Crassus - the richest man in Rome - came into the picture and destroyed Spartacus' army over a six month period. Pompey also enters the picture at this team and wiped out a small left over band of 5,000 slaves from Spartacus' army after having returned from Spain.
Phoenix Eats Out is the restaurant review site for
Phoenix,
Scottsdale and
Old Town Scottsdale which lists the modernist and contemporary restaurants, taverns and bars in the greater Phoenix area.
This is the list of the most popular restaurants pages from phoenixeatsout.com that have been viewed the most;
My personal favourite restaurants in Phoenix are
AZ88,
Postinos,
Bomberos with
Grazie,
Humble Pie,
Orange Table,
The Vig,
Fez and others coming close behind. View the complete list with the photo-journalistic style images on
phoenixeatsout.com
Arizona is an outdoor state and has lots of hiking in the city and around the state. Phoenix is unusual for most cities in having several large mountains in the center of the city with great hiking. Anyone who comes to Phoenix has to do the
Echo Canyon trail on Camelback and the
Summit Hike on Squaw Peak or Piesta Peak. The views of the city, suburbs and surrounding mountains are wonderful from Camelback and Piesta Peak.
For more experienced hikers there is the McDowell Mountains in North Scottsdale that has several difficult and strenuous hikes in
Tom's Thumb and
Bell Pass. Alternatively, you can hike the highest mountain in Arizona. At 12,600 feet
Humphrey's Peak is a long and difficult hike.
Between 2004 and 2009 this site,
southsearepublic.org, was a constitutional blog based on scoop which focused on Australian and global constitutional issues.
One of the strongest aspects of it was the development of constitutions by those involved in the blog. These constitutions are the outcome:
The constitutions were built using principles from Montesquieu's separation of powers, the enlightnment's universal political rights and the ancient Athenian technology of sortition and choice by lot.
South Sea Republic started in 2004 as an Australian constitutional blog in 2004 based on scoop software. It was an immigrative outgrowth of Kuro5hin. The archives for each year since then;
The articles are ordered by views.
I am an Australian living in the United States as a permanent resident.
I am a software developer by trade and mostly work in Java and jump between middleware and front end.
I originally worked in the New York area of the United States in telecommunications before moving to Washington DC and
working in a mix of telecommunications, energy and ITS. I started my own software company before heading out to
Arizona and working with Shutterfly. Since then I have joined a startup in the Phoenix area and am thoroughly enjoying myself.
I do a lot of photography which I post on this website, but also on flickr. I have a photo-journalistic website which lists
the modernist and contemporary restaurants in phoenix. I have a site on the
Australian Flying Corps [AFC] which has been around since the 1990s and which I unfortunately
lost the .org URL to during a life event; however, it is under the
www.australianflyingcorps.com URL now.
The AFC website has gone through several iterations since the 90s and the two most recent are
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2004-2002) and
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2002-1999) which are good places to start.
