Third Servile War
The able-bodied adults of this band were a surprisingly effective armed force. They showed they could withstand the Roman military, from the local Campanian patrols, to the Roman militia, and finally they destroyed an army of trained Roman legions under consular command. Plutarch described the actions of the slaves as an attempt to escape their masters and flee through Cisalpine Gaul, while Appian and Florus depicted the revolt as a civil war in which the slaves tried to capture the city of Rome itself.