Spartacus sacks rome

First off, why? What does he have to gain from this?

Hannibal could not beat Rome, what chance does Spartacus have?

The end goal was always escaping. First Gaul, and when that failed, to Sicily. (Which also failed.)

Once Rome gets it act together, the whole thing was doomed.
 
lot of Loot, prestige, and a major psychological blow to the Romans


Rome's large slave population

But that was never the plan.

But that's the issue, there slaves, not soldiers. Rome had already dealt with two slave revolts before hand, the first and second Servile War.
 
lot of Loot, prestige, and a major psychological blow to the Romans


Rome's large slave population

Slaves in Rome would rather achieve freedom by fighting alongside her rather then risk death against her. But anyway, it’s all still impossible, Spartacus just wanted to flee Italy, he was smart enough to know that anything beyond that was unreasonable.
 
Um no. In a word: walls. In a few words: no siege engines. In a sentence: Spartacus had no means by which to seize the city, let alone sack it, especially given the huge number of gladiators and veteran legionaries that could be called to arms at a moment's notice (not to mention the actual legions, who slaughtered Spartacus when they returned to Italy IOTL).

lot of Loot, prestige, and a major psychological blow to the Romans

I guess my question here is, what would Spartacus do with the loot (nobody would willingly trade with a rebellious slave)? What would Spartacus gain from any prestige (who is he trying to impress)? And what does he have to gain by winning a psychological (read: Pyrrhic) victory? Especially on the heels of the Social War, the peoples of Italy had just had their patriotism renewed and I doubt they would turn on Rome again after the huge concessions they got.

To be fair, we don't fully understand Spartacus' motives during the revolt, given the numerous conflicting accounts given, but there's no way he was considering the sort of long-term grand strategies that opponents like Hannibal or Philip V were considering in their wars with Rome.
 
Wasn't every second person in Rome a slave? A direct attack would probably fail, but who says they can't sneak in?

Sneak in? One or two, yes, they could, hundreds? Nope. Besides that, it’s not like slaves in Rome held reunions where they could elaborate plans to help their fellows, so even if they wanted to help, and I doubt that would have been the case, the most they could do would be to randomly riot, which would only work if the slaves out of Rome could properly besiege the city, but they couldn’t, so it’d be all pointless anyway.
 
If he sacks Rome isn't he just causing his downfall earlier as it this point no other wars matter at that point the might of legions and armies will descend on to him with more soldiers and greater passion to crush them.
 
Then he shouldn't have marched on Rome in the first place. Then the slaves rather should have tried escaping to Thrace (wasn't it there where they wanted to go?)

Nope, not all of them, some, if not most of them, were Celts, they wanted to go to Gaul. But also, when did Spartacus ever march on Rome? He simply passed it by to reach Sicily, and that was after trying to cross the Alps failed.
 
Hey, that's Spartacus' job to answer, not mine.

Well obviously he can't do that, since he's been dead for over 2000 years, I more meant, why would he try to sack Rome in general (as is implied by your question)?

Then he shouldn't have marched on Rome in the first place. Then the slaves rather should have tried escaping to Thrace (wasn't it there where they wanted to go?)

He never marched on Rome, at least not to my knowledge. So this is a little moot. We don't know exactly why he didn't cross the Alps, but his march south was a beeline for Sicily (not Thrace)
 
Well obviously he can't do that, since he's been dead for over 2000 years, I more meant, why would he try to sack Rome in general (as is implied by your question)?

For revenge, maybe?

And about whether the Romans were afraid of him or not: I don't know sources, but when someone suggested that slaves should wear special clothing to be recognized as slaves, someone else said "no, then they'll know how strong they really are!" - So at least some Romans were afraid of a slave uprising, no matter whether it'd make sense or not.
 
For revenge, maybe?

And about whether the Romans were afraid of him or not: I don't know sources, but when someone suggested that slaves should wear special clothing to be recognized as slaves, someone else said "no, then they'll know how strong they really are!" - So at least some Romans were afraid of a slave uprising, no matter whether it'd make sense or not.

He got plenty of revenge sacking Roman towns and beating the various militias sent against him, sacking Rome would be too insurmountable a task. The cost-benefit analysis says no. And slaves within Rome tended to be freed during their lifetimes, so a massive uprising would be unlikely given that they would certainly be defeated and executed, especially when they could just serve out their term of service and receive citizenship on the manumission.
 
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