Crixus

Crixus was a Gallic gladiator who became one of the principal commanders in the slave revolt that began at Capua in 73 BCE and developed into the Third Servile War. Ancient accounts place him among the gladiators who escaped from the school of Lentulus Batiatus and joined Spartacus, Oenomaus and other leaders. As the rising spread through southern Italy, the rebels defeated Roman forces and attracted large numbers of enslaved people and other followers.

In 72 BCE Crixus was operating separately from Spartacus in southern Italy with a substantial body of rebels, often described in the sources as Gauls and Germans. The reason for the separation is not securely known: surviving Roman narratives do not establish whether it arose from strategy, different objectives or the practical difficulty of keeping the whole rebel army together. A Roman force defeated Crixus near Mount Garganus in Apulia, where he was killed. Because the surviving accounts are brief and hostile to the revolt, his personality and motives cannot be reconstructed with confidence.

David Anthony Durham’s The Risen makes Crixus a significant figure in its multi-perspective retelling of the Spartacus revolt. The novel can supply motives, relationships and tensions within the rebel coalition that the ancient evidence does not preserve, so its characterization of Crixus is best read as historical reconstruction rather than documented biography.