Glaber, P. Varinius
praetor, B. C. 73. He was among the first of the Roman generals sent against the gladiator Spartacus [SPARTACUS], and both in his own movements and in those of his lieutenants he was singularly unfortunate. Spartacus repeatedly defeated Glaber, and once captured his war-horse and his lictors. But, although commissioned by the senate to put down the insurrection of the slaves, Glaber had only a hastily levied army to oppose to Spartacus, and a sickly autumn thinned its ranks. (Appian, App. BC 1.116; Plut. Crass. 9; Frontin. Strat. 1.5.22.) Florus (3.20) mentions a Clodius Glaber; compare, however, Plutarch (l.c.).
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.