They were now joined by a few others, fugitives and mountaineers, with whom they took refuge in the crater of Vesuvius, then, as from time immemorial, and for nearly a century and a half later, inactive. Thence, under the leadership of Spartacus and his lieutenants, Crixus and Oedomaus, they ravaged the country; but it is not probable that they caused much alarm, their number being only two hundred, and such collections of slaves being by no means uncommon. The Romans little dreamed that they were on the eve of one of the most terrible of their many wars. Claudius Pulcher, one of the Praetors, was sent against the "robbers," as they were considered to be. He found them so advantageously posted on the mountain, that, though superior to them in numbers in the ratio of fifteen to one, he resolved to blockade them, and so compel them to descend to the plain and fight at disadvantage, or starve. But he was contending with a man of genius, against whom even Rome's military system could not then succeed. He despised his enemy,--a sort of gratification which to those indulging in it generally costs very dear. Spartacus caused ropes to be made of vine branches, with the aid of which he and his followers lowered themselves to the base of the mountain, at a point which had been left unguarded by the Romans because considered inaccessible by the red-tapist who commanded them, and consequently affording a capital outlet for bold men under a daring leader. In the dead of night the gladiators stole round to the rear of the Roman camp, and assailed it. Taken by surprise and heavy with sleep, the Romans were routed like sheep, and their arms and baggage passed into the hands of the despised enemy. Spartacus saw now that it was time for him and his comrades to assume a higher character than had hitherto belonged to them. Instead of a leader of outlaws, he aspired to be the liberator of the servile population of Italy. He issued a proclamation, in which, while calling upon his followers to remember the multitudes who groaned in chains, he urged the slaves to rise, pointing out how strong they were and how weak were their oppressors, maintaining that the strength of the masters lay in the blind and disgraceful submission of the slaves, at the same time declaring that the land belonged of right to the bravest,--a sentiment as natural and proper when uttered by a man in his situation as it is base when proceeding from a modern buccaneer, who has taken up arms, not to obtain his own freedom, but to enslave others. The whole address is contemptuous towards the Romans, though somewhat too rhetorical for a man in the situation of Spartacus. It is the composition of Sallust, but we may believe that it expresses the sentiments of Spartacus, as Sallust was not only his contemporary, but was too good an artist to disregard keeping in what he wrote.