What might have come of it, had the national kings from the mountains of Auvergne or of the Balkan, and not runaway gladiatorial slaves, been at the head of the victorious bands, it is impossible to say; as it was, the movement remained notwithstanding its brilliant victories a rising of robbers, and succumbed less to the superior force of its opponents than to internal discord and the want of definite plan.  The unity in confronting the common foe, which was so remarkably conspicuous in the earlier servile wars of Sicily, was wanting in this Italian war—­a difference probably due to the fact that, while the Sicilian slaves found a quasi-national point of union in the common Syrohellenism, the Italian slaves were separated into the two bodies of Helleno-Barbarians and Celto-Germans.  The rupture between the Celtic Crixus and the Thracian Spartacus—­Oenomaus had fallen in one of the earliest conflicts—­and other similar quarrels crippled them in turning to account the successes achieved, and procured for the Romans several important victories.  But the want of a definite plan and aim produced far more injurious effects on the enterprise than the insubordination of the Celto-Germans.  Spartacus doubtless—­to judge by the little which we learn regarding that remarkable man—­stood in this respect above his party.  Along with his strategic ability he displayed no ordinary talent for organization, as indeed from the very outset the uprightness, with which he presided over his band and distributed the spoil, had directed the eyes of the multitude to him quite as much at least as his valour.  To remedy the severely felt want of cavalry and of arms, he tried with the help of the herds of horses seized in Lower Italy to train and discipline a cavalry, and, so soon as he got the port of Thurii into his hands, to procure from that quarter iron and copper, doubtless through the medium of the pirates.  But in the main matters he was unable to induce the wild hordes whom he led to pursue any fixed ulterior aims.  Gladly would he have checked the frantic orgies of cruelty, in which the robbers indulged on the capture of towns, and which formed the chief reason why no Italian city voluntarily made common cause with the insurgents; but the obedience which the bandit-chief found in the conflic ceased with the victory, and his representations and entreaties were in vain.  After the victories obtained in the Apennine in 682 the slave army was free to move in any direction.  Spartacus himself is said to have intended to cross the Alps, with a view to open to himself and his followers the means of return to their Celtic or Thracian home:  if the statement is well founded, it shows how little the conqueror overrated his successes and his power.  When his men refused so speedily to turn their backs on the riches of Italy, Spartacus took the route for Rome, and is said to have meditated blockading the capital.  The troops, however, showed themselves also averse to this desperate but yet methodical enterprise;