Crassus was then given the command against Spartacus (71). Crassus' legate, Mummius, engaged Spartacus in battle against Crassus' orders and was defeated. Out of Mummius' men, 500 were considered to have shown cowardice in battle, and so they were divided into groups of ten, and one from each group of ten was killed: the standard punishment for cowardice and the origin of our word decimate.
Spartacus attempted to sail for Sicily, but the pirates he hired to take his forces over the sea cheated him and sailed off with the payment he'd given them, leaving Spartacus' forces still in Italy. Spartacus established a camp for his men in the peninsula of Rhegium, whereupon Crassus built a wall across the neck of the peninsula, trapping them. However, taking advantage of a snowy night, Spartacus managed to get a third of his troops across the wall.
Crassus had written to the Senate to ask for help, but now regretted it since whoever the Senate sent would get the credit for defeating Spartacus - and they sent Pompey. Crassus inflicted a crushing defeat on Spartacus' troops and Spartacus himself was killed in the battle. Spartacus' men fled and were captured and killed by Pompey, who, as Crassus had predicted, claimed the credit for putting an end to the war. The magnificent scene from Stanley Kubrick's film "Spartacus", where, after the battle, one by one Spartacus' men claim to be Spartacus himself in a futile bid to save Spartacus, is, alas, pure fiction. It is true, however, that Crassus had 6000 recaptured slaves crucified along the Appian Way. Crassus was awarded an ovation - a kind of lesser triumph (see the entry for Ovatio from Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities) - for putting down the revolt, but Pompey was awarded a triumph for his victories in Spain. In part 2, Crassus leads a Roman army to invade the Parthian empire.
Primary Sources:
Plutarch's Life of Crassus (the Perrin translation) Plutarch paired Crassus with Nicias, and the Comparison between the two is online in the Dryden translation.
For the war against Spartacus, see also Appian's account in his The Civil Wars.
Secondary Sources:
For another life of Crassus, illustrated with maps and coins, see: Caesar's Contemporaries.
For the war against Spartacus, see Jona Lendering's two-part article, which has links to the original sources and some good illustrations, including a bust of Crassus.
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