Many people have heard of Spartacus who lived in the calendar year 72 years BC, he was a slave in Rome. Roman Italy was based on strong families in the Senate, a very well trained army and millions of slaves doing the work in the fields and construction. Now days we have machines, Roman Italy had slaves. Similar to all people, some slaves were do doubt treated better than others, however there were many slave. Spartacus was an entertainer and his job was a gladiator. Gladiators fought in the forum and one or more people involved in the activity was expected to die, if they lived, they would fight another match in the coming months. For a number of months, the roar of the crowd, the fans would cheer for their favorite, but the gladiators were slaves.

Spartacus organized a breakout from his training base and were quickly joined by many other slaves (it was estimated the group grew to over a 100,000) . Spartacus went south towards Sicily but never made it, they went north through the mountain passes but never crossed the Alps which is the northern border of Italy and ended up in a battle south of where they started from. The problem with Spartacus was what did he think Rome was going to do? where did he think he was going to be able to live in peace? Rome sent a legion who underestimated the resolve of Spartacus and the people with him to be a free man. Spartacus had served in the military (knew what the military would do – how it set up camp) and together with the agility of the people he used the terrain to defeat the Legion. Over the next year, they kept legions away until Rome decided it was the time to kill all who were with Spartacus. In this instance, because the Roman commander had time on his side was able to pick and chose where he would fight and given the better tools of the military, he was able to kill Spartacus and his followers.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, many companies and people will have a reason to fight but they forget what do you think the big institution will do? rollover and sleep? or fight to the end? There are reasons in the company history of how the company achieved the size it did (no it did not have the best products, but it monopolized something – the distribution system; etc). When a company has become a dividend paying company, the expectation is it will continue and if the executives make a mistake they will be replaced by hungrier executives. Their first job is to keep the reasons why the company makes money – it monopoly? its control of the distribution? something. Your job is to understand what that is and to ensure the company is willing to fight for it.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.