Spartacus was hunted down by Marcus Licinius Crassus. "Crassus" and "Varus" sound a bit alike. Could you be confusing the two?
I really enjoyed the Vikings show. But they compressed several hundred years of the Sagas into 2 generations. While entertaining, it can be very misleading to folks that aren’t history buffs.
Spartacus is actually the 3rd Servile Revolt. The first two both occured on Sicily, the first one grabbed control over a chunk of the island. The second didn’t do as well.
The Kirk Douglas movie is a great film but awful history. Howard Fast an Amrican Communist who later recanted wrote the novel on which the movie is based. The original Spartacus was certainly no crusader for human rights or an egalitarian society. He likely saw nothing wrong with slavery, almost no one did in the classical age. Spartacus just knew he didn’t want to be one.
No, they had Crassus (and Pompeo) finishing off Spartacus. Varus was after him before. Varus is also depicted as taking Spartacus as a slave when he bucked the Roman alliance with his own people, the Thracians.
Looks like they took the name of a defeated Roman General and inserted him into the Spartacus story so he could get beat again. He was a right bastard, too.
