One of the leading lieutenants of Lepidus in this campaign was Brutus, the father of the Brutus who was to be one of the assassins of Julius Cæsar. The elder Brutus was taken prisoner at this time and put to death. In the meantime another rebellion broke out in Spain, where Sertorius had assumed the government. Neither Metellus nor Pompey was able to reduce him to submission, and the rebellion was put to an end only by the murder of Sertorius in 72 B.C. The epoch of civil wars had now fully begun for Rome, and the same year which witnessed the murder of Sertorius saw also the breaking out of the rebellion of the gladiators under Spartacus. This rebellion, starting in the mere uprising of a handful of gladiators, reached very large proportions and occasioned the greatest fear at Rome before it was put down by Crassus in the south of Italy and Pompey in the north. The credit for putting down this insurrection clearly belonged to Crassus rather than to Pompey, whose share in the work had been merely the destruction of a band of fugitives who had fled to the north of Italy. Nevertheless, the Senate gave the highest honors to Pompey, who was voted a triumph, while only an ovation was granted to Crassus. Pompey and Crassus both sought election to the consulship, although both were ineligible, since Crassus was still a prætor and under the laws should have waited two years before being a candidate for consul, and Pompey was only thirty-five years old and had not even been quæstor. Each of the candidates, however, had an army under his control at the very gates of Rome, and the two illegal elections were secured from the people by fear. Pompey and Crassus, the two most powerful men in Rome at this time, were thus consuls together in the year 70 B.C.