The Amphiteatrum Festival was born in the city of Santa Maria Capua Vetere (Santa Maria 'e Capua in dialect, also abbreviated as Santa Maria C. V. or S. Maria C.V.) is an Italian town of 31 868 inhabitants [1] in the province of Caserta in Campania.
It stands exactly on the ruins of ancient Capua, as attested by the numerous monuments of the Roman era - above all, the Campanian Amphitheater, second in size only to the Colosseum - as well as by the etymology of today's toponym. After the ancient glories, the city changed into a peasant village with the name of villa Santa Maria Maggiore (villa Sanctae Mariae Maioris) and became part of the universitas capuana.
City famous for the history of the great Spartacus, Rebel Gladiator
Precisely little is known about his youth, except that in all probability he was born in Thrace [1], at an unspecified place on the banks of the Strimone river (today's Struma river, in Bulgaria), between 111 and 109 BC about, in an aristocratic family belonging to the Maedi tribe. From an early age he served in the ranks of the Roman army, with which he fought in Macedonia, and, as reported by Plutarch, he was married to a priestess of his own tribe, dedicated to the cult of Dionysus.
Spartacus was not his real name, but a nickname, most likely given to him by Lentulo Batiatus, and possibly generated as a Latinization of Sparadakos ("famous for his spear") or Spartakos (which could perhaps indicate a particular place in Thrace or the very name of some legendary ruler of the region [2]) or, again, as a possible reference to the Greek city-state of Sparta, the warrior city par excellence in the ancient imagination. [3]
The iron Roman discipline that he had to endure within the militia convinced him, in the end, to desert and try to escape. As reported by Appiano of Alexandria [4], he was soon captured, judged a deserter and sentenced, according to Roman military law, to enslavement, probably together with his wife (which is not unusual). Appian also reports the theory according to which Spartacus was not enslaved for desertion, but because he was a prisoner of war as an ally, with his tribe, of Mithridates VI of Pontus during the war of the latter against the Roman Republic. [3] The strong knowledge of Roman legionary tactics demonstrated by Thrace during his revolt, however, has led modern and contemporary historians to favor his past as an auxiliary ex-legionary. [3]
Later, around 75 BC, he was destined to be a gladiator; Spartacus, in fact, was sold to Lentulo Batiato, a lanista who owned a school of gladiators in Capua. According to Plutarch, while he was in Rome waiting to be sold, one night a snake coiled around his face as he slept, which his companion prophetess would have interpreted as the omen of "a great fortune" or, according to another interpretation of the text of the Greek historian, of "a great misfortune".
In Capua, Spartacus was forced to fight inside the famous Campania amphitheater against wild beasts and other gladiators, as was the custom at that time, to amuse the people and the aristocracy.
The festival was born to reward Directors, Actors, Composers, screenwriters through their works
