{"id":98,"date":"2009-03-17T09:41:31","date_gmt":"2009-03-17T10:41:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barrystrauss.com\/blog\/?p=98"},"modified":"2022-04-27T22:25:20","modified_gmt":"2022-04-28T02:25:20","slug":"shamrocks-for-spartacus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/barrystrauss.com\/shamrocks-for-spartacus\/","title":{"rendered":"Shamrocks for Spartacus"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>March 17, St. Patrick\u2019s Day, is a good day for Ireland. I\u2019d like to think that it\u2019s a good day for Spartacus as well, since today is the publication date of my book, The Spartacus War.<\/p>\n

Spartacus has nothing to do with the Emerald Isle, but he wrote a chapter of Celtic history and he offers distant echoes of the saint\u2019s life. Let\u2019s take Patrick first.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Like Spartacus, Patrick was born free, fell into the hands of slave traders, and was shipped overseas into slavery. Like many of Spartacus\u2019s followers, Patrick spent slavery as a shepherd. Like Spartacus, Patrick escaped from slavery. Patrick had divine visions just as Spartacus may have; certainly, Spartacus was the subject of others\u2019 prophecy. Both men were great leaders and communicators. Both tried to reshape society, but there the similarity ends. Spartacus\u2019s sphere was military, Patrick\u2019s, spiritual.<\/p>\n

To turn to Celtic history, note that Celts made up one of the three main ethnic groups in Spartacus\u2019s army, alongside Germans and Thracians. Celts had come to Italy as slaves, either from Gaul or, as some think, from the Balkans, a Celtic stronghold in ancient times.<\/p>\n

Celts dot the narrative of Spartacus\u2019s war. Spartacus\u2019s two lieutenants, for example, had Celtic names: Crixus and Oenomaus. Then there was the slaves\u2019 habit of shouting insults at the Romans from the rebel camp: pre-battle taunts were a Celtic custom. Two Celtic women, to take another case, left the rebels\u2019 camp early one morning to go up a hillside and practice monthly religious rites. To their surprise they found Crassus\u2019s men setting an ambush for the insurgents. They hurried back to sound the alarm, which was courageous and plucky if, in the end, too late.<\/p>\n

What better day than March 17 to remember these two unnamed Celtic heroines?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"excerpt","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","castos_file_data":"","podmotor_file_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[392],"tags":[260],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/barrystrauss.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/barrystrauss.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/barrystrauss.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barrystrauss.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barrystrauss.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/barrystrauss.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/barrystrauss.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barrystrauss.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barrystrauss.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}