Free Republic

Since the Enlightenment, the Anglosphere has had a laudable commitment to due process, which means opposing the brutality of group punishment. But what happens when that commitment leads to societal suicide? Our Founders cannot have intended this, especially regarding those people who ignored due process to enter America illegally. In 73 BC seventy slaves escaped from a gladiator school in the town of Caupa, in central Italy. They spent the next two years attacking various towns and encouraging slaves to revolt and join them. This was the beginning of the Third Servile War. By 71 BC the force numbered 120,000,...

A stone wall built by the Roman army as a defense against slave revolt leader and gladiator Spartacus and his men has been identified by archaeologists in an Italian forest. Local environmentalists who found the wall alerted archaeologists, who have now been able to provide greater insight using advanced radar and laser scanning methods, as well as soil sample analysis. The ditch and mound (or fossa and agger, respectively) was a common Roman defense system. This stone wall and earthwork, for instance, stretches nearly two miles through the Dossone della Melia forest in Italy’s Calabria region. A deep ditch once...