[29] P. Varinius Glaber who was prætor; and Clodius was his legatus. He seems to be the same person whom Frontinus (Stratagem, i. 5) mentions under the name of L. Varinus Proconsul.
[30] The place is unknown. Probably the true reading is Salinæ, and the place may be the Salinæ Herculeæ, in the neighbourhood of Herculaneum. But this is only a guess.
[31] The consuls were L. Gellius Publicola and Cn. Lentulus Clodianus B.C. 72.
[32] This was C. Cassius Longinus Verus, proconsul of Gaul upon the Po (see c. 8). Plutarch calls him στρατηγός. Appian (Civil Wars, i. 117) says that one of the consuls defeated Crixus, who was at the head of 30,000 men, near Garganus, that Spartacus afterwards defeated both the consuls, and meditated advancing upon Rome with 120,000 foot soldiers. Spartacus sacrificed three hundred Roman captives to the manes of Crixus, who had fallen in the battle in which he was defeated; 20,000 of his men had perished with Crixus.
Cassius was defeated in the neighbourhood of Mutina (Modena) as we learn from Florus (iii. 20).
[33] Appian (i. 118) gives two accounts of the decimation, neither of which agrees with the account of Plutarch. This punishment which the Romans called Decimatio, is occasionally mentioned by the Roman writers (Liv. ii. 59).
[34] Kaltwasser with the help of a false reading has mistranslated this passage. He says that Spartacus sent over ten thousand men into Sicily. Drumann has understood the passage as I have translated it.
[35] If the length is rightly given, the ditch was about 38 Roman miles in length. There are no data for determining its position. The circumstance is briefly mentioned by Appian (Civil Wars, i. 118). Frontinus (Stratagem., i. 5) states that Spartacus filled up the ditch, where he crossed it, with the dead bodies of his prisoners and of the beasts which were killed for that purpose.
[36] This lake, which Plutarch spells Leukanis, is placed by Kaltwasser in the vicinity of Paestum or Poseidonia, but on what grounds I do not know. Strabo indeed (p. 251) states that the river makes marshes there, but that will not enable us to identify them. Cramer (Ancient Italy, ii. 366) places here the Stagnum Lucanum, where Plutarch "mentions that Crassus defeated a considerable body of rebels under the command of Spartacus (Plut. Vit. Crass.)": but nothing is given to prove the assertion. He adds, "In this district we must also place the Mons Calamatius and Mons Cathena of which Frontinus speaks in reference to the same event (Stratagem, ii. 4); they are the mountains of Capaccio." This is founded on Cluverius, but Cluverius concludes that the Calamatius of Frontinus (ii. 4, 7), or Calamarcus as the MSS. seem to have it, is the same as the Cathena of Frontinus (ii. 5, 34); for in fact Frontinus tells the same story twice, as he sometimes does. It is a mistake to say that Frontinus is speaking "of the same event," that is, the defeat of the gladiators on the lake. He is speaking of another event, which is described farther on in this chapter, when Crassus attacks Cannicius and Crixus, and "sent," as Frontinus says (ii. 4, 7), " twelve cohorts round behind a mountain."
[37] This was Marcus Lucullus, the brother of Lucius.