The Roman slave wars or "servile wars" are a fascinating point of human history, especially with regard to the numbers of people who where involved, in terms of slaves and Roman soldiers. The servile wars dominate the historical mind in a manner that depicts the idea of modern civil rights, but on a level of violence never seen in the modern world without one official state attacking another official state. Yet, in many ways the servile wars can be looked at as civil wars as the number of people that the Roman Empire was trying to maintain as servile was actually rather staggering, yet the revolts posed an exception to the manner in which Rome had ruled and Romans had lived for centuries. Justinian's Digest of Roman law has a useful definition of the position of slave, and what the legal state of a slave actually was.

             (1) Slavery is an institution of the common law of peoples (ius gentium) by which a person is put into the ownership (dominium) of somebody else, contrary to the natural order.(2) Slaves (servi) are so called because commanders generally sell the people they capture and thereby save (servare) them instead of killing them.(3) The word for property in slaves (mancipia) is derived from the fact that they are captured from the enemy by force of arms (manu capiantur). (Wiedemann 15).

             Between the years 140 B.C. and 70 B.C. Rome had three major slave revolts, which boasted significant numbers of combatants. Two of the insurrections occurred on Sparta while the third occurred in Italy and was led by the famous gladiator Spartacus. The revolt led by Spartacus, in Italy actually threatened the city of Rome, a first in revolutionary conflict. This occurred despite the fact that the Roman Empire was similar in composition for centuries, and often held similar numbers of slaves, so what was different about the context of life in the Roman Empire, when these three prominent revolts occurred? .