Third Servile War participant Crixus
Defeat of the consular armies (72 BC)
In the spring of 72 BC, the escaped slaves left their winter encampments and began to move northwards towards Cisalpine Gaul. The Senate, alarmed by the size of the revolt and the defeat of the praetorian armies of Glaber and Varinius, dispatched a pair of consular legions under the command of Lucius Gellius and Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus Clodianus. Initially, the consular armies were successful. Gellius engaged a group of about 30,000 slaves, under the command of Crixus, near Mount Garganus and killed two-thirds of the rebels, including Crixus.At this point, there is a divergence in the classical sources as to the course of events, which do not correspond until the entry of Marcus Licinius Crassus into the war. The two most comprehensive (extant) histories of the war by Appian and Plutarch detail very different events. Neither account directly contradicts the other but simply reports different events, ignoring some events in the other account and reporting events that are unique to that account.