There were many in the late Roman Republic who, like Cicero, might have had reason to fear Marcus Licinius Crassus (ca. 115–53 bc). He was born to power, amassed even more wealth first as a partisan of Sulla and then as a shrewd entrepreneur, and finally rose to authority in his own right as consul (70 and 55 bc) and a member of the First Triumvirate. He fell short in his quest for military glory when Pompey stole what credit there was to be had for the defeat of Spartacus (72–71 bc) and when he and his three legions were wiped out in the invasion of Parthia at the battle of Carrhae (53 bc). He was a player in the rough world of the final generation of the Republic and the tale of his life is as compelling as any work of fiction, ancient or modern. His immense wealth, although stigmatized for its non-agricultural sources, made his political and military career possible, as did his uneasy alliances with Caesar, Pompey, and other upstarts and malcontents. Since we are dependent largely on Plutarch's Life of Crassus as a source, questions about his character, motivation, and goals remain vexing for modern scholars.

Before we can address the fictional receptions of this man, we should reflect on what we actually know. Our assessment of the real Crassus has evolved over the years, although according to Eric Gruen, “his image as the money-grubbing capitalist, second-rate politician, and incompetent military man still prevails in some scholarly circles.” While the revisionist efforts of scholars such as Theodore Cadoux, Frank Adcock, B. A. Marshall, and Allen Ward have helped to dispel this calumny, we still lack a well-rounded picture beyond the “familiar Crassus: a man absorbed in gaining parity with Pompey, conspiring with Caesar, goading Catiline, exploiting Clodius, reckoning with Cicero, courting the optimates.” The real Crassus is and will always remain, in Gruen's words, “an enigma indeed: fearsome and unpredictable, greedy and beneficent, ostentatious and temperate, affable and explosive.”

One of the major episodes of his career was the campaign against Spartacus. While this event looms large in the popular consciousness of the Roman Republic, it is in fact rather poorly documented, as our principal source takes up only four out of 33 sections (or six out of 42 pages in the Penguin translation) in Plutarch's Life of Crassus.