The Social War (9188_BC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_War_(91%E2%80%9388_BC)
ended with the physical extermination of some (Samnites) and Roman colonization by Sulla's
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulla
veterans of the rest of the Italic peoples.
This explains why the
Marsian,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsi
Paelignian,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paeligni
Vestine,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestini
Marrucinian,
North and South Picene (?),
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picentes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Picene_language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Picene_language
Messapian,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messapian_language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iapygii
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messapii
Oscan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samnites
and Umbrian
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umbrian_language
inscriptions disappear at this time, being replaced by Latin ones of the colonists, and why there are so few traces of the Italic languages in Italian dialects today.
These colonists would have needed capitalization, ie. they would have taken out loans to finance their new farm, eg for the acquisition of slaves. However, they were soldiers, not farmers, and the agricultural output of the former Italic, now Roman-populated, areas suffered. This explains why the Roman cavalry disappeared at that time, and not as explained here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_cavalry
esp.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_cavalry#End_of_the_citizen_cavalry
forcing the Romans to rely on foreign troops for their cavalry in the future, which eventually led to the mental separation of the Roman army from the institutions of the Roman republic.
Slavery is bad enough, but slavery under an incompetent owner, taking the failure of his enterprise out on everyone else would be hell. This might have incited more slaves to join Spartacus' uporising.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Servile_War
BTW, since the Germani do not appear at the beginning of the war, only later, they might have been taken prisoner as slaves of the Thracians not in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appius_Claudius_Pulcher_(consul_79_BC)
's campaign, in which most likely Spartacus himself was captured, but in that of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Terentius_Varro_Lucullus
the brother of the more famous Lucius Licinius Lucullus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucullus
in 72 BCE. If so, the Sullan colonists would have acquired new slaves, for loaned money, to replace those which defected to Spartacus, only to see them run away too.
No major Italic city joined Spartacus, only shepherds and riff-raff (Appian), probably because the Sullan colonists had nothing to gain from an uprising, living in eternal fear of a day of reckoning from the former owners of the farms they acquired by participating in Sulla's crimes.
Soon after Spartacus' war it becomes apparent that the incompetent Sullan colonists can't repay their debt, since the output of their farms continues to disappoint. This debt crisis, exacerbated by the falling prices of the farms and land put up as collateral, causes the two Catilinian insurgencies
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catiline
and made it clear that Egypt would have to be made a province.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grain_supply_to_the_city_of_Rome
Torsten