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 SPARTACUS SPECIES 233 whole of the Peloponnesus to submit to the Achsean league, until in 146 it fell with the rest of Greece under the dominion of Rome. (See ATHENS, and GREECE.) SPARTACUS, a Roman gladiator, of Thracian birth, leader of a servile insurrection in 73-71 B. C. Originally a shepherd, he became a chief of banditti, and was captured by the Romans. He was sold and trained as a gladiator, and in 73 persuaded 77 of his associates to escape with him from the school of Lentulus at Capua. They took refuge in the crater of Mt. Vesuvius, and chose Spartacus for their lead- er. C. Claudius Pulcher was sent against them with 3,000 men, but was defeated, and his arms became the trophy of the victors. Spartacus now proclaimed liberty to all slaves that should flee to him, and for two years he held the supremacy in Campania, Lucania, Bruttium, and other parts of Italy. At the head of 70,000 men he triumphed over two consular armies in 72, and forced his Roman captives to fight as gladiators at the funeral games which he celebrated. His army in- creased to 100,000 men, the consuls were again defeated, and he meditated an attack upon Rome itself. His own desire was to secure the freedom of the slaves by taking them be- yond the Alps, but they, eager for plunder, refused to leave Italy. He for a time main- tained his superiority in 71, but in consequence of repeated divisions among his troops, he was twice defeated by Crassus, and fled with his followers. Through the treachery of Cili- cian pirates, who were to carry him over to Sicily, 12,000 of his men fell into the hands of the Romans. He at length effected his escape, but his followers refusing to go to the north, he faced the Romans again, defeated them, and went to Brundusium, where, baffled in his attempt to seize the shipping, he per- ished in battle with Crassus near the head of the river Silarus. Pompey completed the work of extinguishing the insurrection. Of the reb- els 60,000 fell in combat, and 6,000 prisoners were crucified in the Appian way. Roman writers naturally paint the character of Spar- 3us in the blackest colors, but critical inves- igations have led modern historians generally speak in his praise. SPARTANBURG, a N. W. county of South Car- olina, bordering on North Carolina, and wa- tered by affluents of Broad river ; area, about " " "i sq. m. ; pop. in 1870, 25,-784, of whom 8,408 were colored. The surface is mostly hilly ; the soil is productive. It is traversed by the Ipartanburg and Union and the Atlanta and Richmond Air-line railroads. The chief pro- ductions in 1870 were 73,783 bushels of wheat, 525,698 of Indian corn, 36,106 of oats, 30,247 of sweet potatoes, 2,851 bales of cotton, 15,- 315 Ibs. of wool, and 170,951 of butter. There were 2,465 horses, 1,794 mules and asses, 5,451 milch cows, 6,740 other cattle, 11,380 sheep, and 19,701 swine; 4 manufactories of carriages and wagons, 5 of cotton, 18 flour mills, 8 tanneries, and 8 currying establish- ments. Capital, Spartanburg Court House. SPAFLDING, Levl, an American missionary, born in Jaffrey, N. H., Aug. 22, 1791, died in Ceylon, June 18, 1873. He graduated at Dart- mouth college in 1815, and at Andover the- ological seminary in 1818, was ordained at Salem, Mass., and reached Jaffna, Ceylon, early in 1820. In addition to the usual missionary labor, much of the time he superintended the female boarding school at Oodooville, and per- formed a large amount of literary labor, su- perintending the press, preparing tracts and hymns in the Tamil language, and translating or writing books, among which are " Pilgrim's Progress," " Scripture History," a "Tamil Dic- tionary," "Notes on the Bible," and a revised edition of the Scriptures in Tamil. He re- visited the United States in 1844. SPEAKER, a term applied to the presiding officer of each house of the parliament of Great Britain, of the house of representatives of the United States congress, and generally of the lower houses of the state legislatures. The house of commons elects its own speaker, who must be approved by the crown, and who can only speak or vote in committee, ex- cept in the case of an equality of votes, when he gives the casting vote. He holds office until the dissolution of the parliament. The office existed as early as the reign of Henry III., when Peter de Montford communicated the answer of parliament to Pope Alexander IV., but the name was not used till the reign of Edward III. The speaker of the house of lords is the lord chancellor for the time being, appointed by the crown. The house of repre- sentatives of the United States elects its own speaker at the first session of each congress, who, holds office until the meeting of the next congress ; and in the state legislatures an anal- ogous practice prevails. SPECIES, in its most general acceptation, a kind or sort of something, which something is the genus to which the species belongs. Thus, a black stone is a species of the genus stone ; a gray horse is a species of the genus horse ; a scalene triangle is a species of the genus trian- gle ; and, generally, it may be said that every adjective denotes a species of the genus indi- cated by the substantive to which it is applied. In the technology of the physical sciences the term " species " has a more restricted significa- tion. It is used to denote a group of individ- uals which corresponds with an early stage of that process of abstraction by which the qual- ities of individual objects are arranged in the subordinated categories of classification. The individual object alone exists in nature ; but, when individual objects are compared, it is found that many agree in all those characters which, for the particular purpose of the classi- fier, are regarded as important, while they dif- fer only in those which are unimportant ; and those which thus agree constitute a species, the definition of which is a statement of the com-