WI: Spartacus rises up during the Italian Social War?

[Achaemenid Rome]

What if Spartacus had been born twenty years earlier, and the Third Servile War in Sicily occurred at the same time as the rebellion of the Italian Allies in the Social War?

 

[James XI]

It's an interesting scenario. My first reaction is that the Social War itself means there are more active legions on hand in Italy itself at the time, meaning Spartacus might not get the same soft targets early on that swelled his ranks. Also both sides in the Social War had the same existential reliance on/attitude towards slavery, so although it would divide Spartacus' opponents, it wouldn't really lessen them, and I don't see much room for allying with either...it might even serve as a means of the Romans and Italians patching things up in the face of a common threat.

But it needs a lot more thought. Partly I guess it matters exactly when it happens.

 

[Red Orm]

What if Spartacus had been born twenty years earlier, and the Third Servile War in Sicily occurred at the same time as the rebellion of the Italian Allies in the Social War?

Then the Social War might never happen. Butterflies. The Spartacus Rebellion was a reaction to the end of the Social War/Sulla's Second Civil War, and not the institution of slavery as a whole.

 

[SlyDessertFox]

It's an interesting scenario. My first reaction is that the Social War itself means there are more active legions on hand in Italy itself at the time, meaning Spartacus might not get the same soft targets early on that swelled his ranks. Also both sides in the Social War had the same existential reliance on/attitude towards slavery, so although it would divide Spartacus' opponents, it wouldn't really lessen them, and I don't see much room for allying with either...it might even serve as a means of the Romans and Italians patching things up in the face of a common threat.

But it needs a lot more thought. Partly I guess it matters exactly when it happens.

It might hasten the Romans caving and giving the Italians citizenship. Though there is something to be said of Spartacus perhaps having collaborated a bit with Sertorius (that is one of the ultimate locations postulated for where he wanted to go), so some sort of cooperation is not completely impossible.

 

[Matteo]

It's an interesting scenario. My first reaction is that the Social War itself means there are more active legions on hand in Italy itself at the time, meaning Spartacus might not get the same soft targets early on that swelled his ranks. Also both sides in the Social War had the same existential reliance on/attitude towards slavery, so although it would divide Spartacus' opponents, it wouldn't really lessen them, and I don't see much room for allying with either...it might even serve as a means of the Romans and Italians patching things up in the face of a common threat.

But it needs a lot more thought. Partly I guess it matters exactly when it happens.

I share your first reaction but reach to a different conclusion. If both Rome and its rebel italian socii are on the warpath, then It will be far more easy for them to crush in the bud the slave uprising before It becomes massive. Especially since the soldiers are in Italy, not massively far away as OTL (fighting wars against Sertorius and Mithradates).

 

[James XI]

I share your first reaction but reach to a different conclusion. If both Rome and its rebel italian socii are on the warpath, then It will be far more easy for them to crush in the bud the slave uprising before It becomes massive. Especially since the soldiers are in Italy, not massively far away as OTL (fighting wars against Sertorius and Mithradates).

To be clear, that's my initial conclusion too. I only meant they might patch things up in the event it became protracted.

 

[Matteo]

To be clear, that's my initial conclusion too. I only meant they might patch things up in the event it became protracted.

Sorry, I did not go to the end of my own conclusion which was that I did not think it would incent romans and rebel socii to match things up in the face of this common threat.