Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome

by Victor Davis Hanson

  perspective.14 Yet such an ideology is unlikely, because the pre-Christian

  world of Greece and Rome tended to lack mobilizing ideologies of uni-

  versal liberation. Nor did anything in antiquity combine, as Marxism

  later would, a secular utopian vision with an international ideology.

  Revolutions tended to be more local and parochial.

  By the same token, they contained strong elements of messianism.15

  Religion had always played an important role in ancient politics, from

  Themistocles’ use of oracles to mobilize the Athenians at Salamis to

  the Romans’ deification of their emperors. The leaders of slave revolts

  went further, however, and made themselves the gods’ representative

  on earth, if not gods themselves. When it came to ancient slave revolts,

  charismatic leadership stood front and center.

  One slave rebel with the gods on his side was Drimacus (probably

  third century BC). He announced to the citizens of Chios that the slave

  uprising was no mere secular event but rather the outcome of a di-

  vine oracle. They agreed with him, at least posthumously. Drimacus’s

  voluntary surrender to their demand for his execution brought only

  frustration to the masters because it led to an upswing in rebel at-

  tacks on their holdings. So they built a hero shrine to Drimacus in the

  country side and dedicated it to the Kindly Hero. Four hundred years

  later, in the second century AD, runaway slaves still dedicated to him

  there a portion of whatever they stole. Meanwhile, Drimacus suppos-

  edly appeared to free Chians in their dreams and warned them of an

  impending slave revolt, after which they too made dedications at his

  holy place.16

  Slave Wars of Greece and Rome 193

  The leaders of the First and Second Sicilian Slave Wars each claimed

  a direct, personal pipeline to the gods. In the First War (135–132 BC),

  Eunus, a Greek-speaking slave in the Sicilian city of Enna, encouraged

  discontented slaves to revolt. A native of Syrian Apamea, he main-

  tained that he had divine visions in his dreams, from which he recited

  prophetic messages. His pièce de résistance was to go into a trancelike

  state, breathe flames from his mouth (using a trick involving a hollow

  shell and embers), and issue yet more prophecies. Chosen king by the

  rebels, he took the throne name Antiochus, like a Seleucid monarch,

  and had coins issued in that name. His coins display the image of a god-

  dess, perhaps the Greek goddess Demeter or the immensely popular

  Mother Goddess of the East—or both.

  The rebels in the Second Sicilian Slave War (104–100 BC) chose as

  their king one Salvius, known for playing ecstatic music on the flute at

  women’s religious festivals and as a prophet. He took the throne name

  Tryphon, reminiscent of a Cilician adventurer who had claimed the

  throne of Syria around 140 BC, which no doubt appealed to the many

  Cilicians in the island’s slave population. Another leader of that revolt,

  Athenion, was known for his skill as an astrologer.

  Dionysus also loomed large in slave revolts. In addition to being the

  god of wine and theater, Dionysus was the god of liberation. He was

  unwelcome to the Romans. In 186 BC the Roman Senate claimed that

  Italy’s widespread Dionysiac groups masked a conspiracy. In a frenzied

  atmosphere, the Senate drove Romans out of the cult and permitted

  only women, foreigners, and slaves to worship the god. Dionysus was

  left to the powerless of Italy, and they embraced him. In 185–184, the

  slave shepherds of Apulia, the heel of the Italian “boot,” revolted, and

  the sources hint that they claimed Dionysus as their patron. Both Sicil-

  ian slave revolts invoked Dionysus.17 Mithridates VI Eupator of Pon-

  tus, who rebelled against Rome in 88–63 BC, called himself the “new

  Dionysus” and minted coins showing Dionysus and his grapes on one

  side and the cap worn by a freed slave on the other.

  Spartacus’s revolt (73–71 BC) combined Dionysus and prophecy with

  an added touch of star power. As a gladiator, Spartacus cut an impos-

  ing figure. He was a man “of enormous strength and spirit,” which was

  probably more than a boilerplate description: gladiators were selected

  194 Strauss

  for size and power and Spartacus was a murmillo, that is, a heavyweight.18

  He was also a Thracian, a people known for their intimidating size.

  Thracians also had a reputation for religious fervor, and Spartacus

  did not disappoint. He had a Thracian “woman” (either his wife or girl-

  friend) who went into trances inspired by Dionysus.19 A flexible deity,

  Dionysus was, in one of his many guises, the national god of Thrace.

  No doubt this added credibility to the prophecies that Spartacus’s

  woman uttered. When Spartacus was first sold into slavery at Rome, a

  snake wrapped itself around his face while the man slept; or so it was

  said. Since snakes do not wrap themselves around sleeping men’s faces,

  it was either a dream or a miracle. In either case, the Thracian woman

  announced it as “a sign of great and fearful power” and predicted that

  Spartacus would come to a lucky (or, in some manuscripts, unlucky)

  end.20 There may be an echo of the Thracian woman’s propaganda in

  the statement of a later Roman poet that Spartacus “raged through ev-

  ery part of Italy with sword and fire, like a worshipper of Dionysus.”21

  From Chios to Sicily to Italy, charisma inspired the rebel chief ’s fol-

  lowers. They needed inspiration indeed, because ancient slave rebel-

  lions always represented the triumph of hope over realism. Because

  the enemy had the resources of a state at its disposal, the insurgents

  had little chance of success in the long run against a determined foe.

  By employing surprise and unconventional tactics, however, they could

  score short-term victories, sometimes spectacular ones. Spartacus and

  his men, for example, sneaked down from their camp on Mt. Vesuvius

  by clinging to ropes that they wove from the local wild grapevines,

  then took a poorly guarded Roman army camp by storm.

  It also came with the territory that the rebels went after soft targets —

  that is, civilians. Revenge was a powerful motive, leading to the sexual

  abuse, torture, mutilation, and murder of masters who had mistreated

  slaves. Greed was a motive, too, causing very widespread looting and

  destruction of property.

  The rebels usually lacked weapons, food, and other supplies. The

  Sicilian slave leader Eunus, for example, armed his men with farm-

  ing implements such as axes and sickles; Spartacus’s followers be-

  gan their revolt with kitchen knives and cooking spits. Both groups

  went on to make such homemade weapons as vine-woven shields and

  Slave Wars of Greece and Rome 195

  fire-hardened spears; later they looted weapons from Roman prisoners

  and corpses. They also melted down their chains and hammered them

  into arms and armor. Less poetically, Spartacus’s men bought iron and

  bronze for weapons.

  Although more than a few slaves had military experience, since

  many were ex-prisoners of war, rebel
armies lacked the cohesion that

  comes of training together. They often represented linguistic or ethnic

  heterogeneity, which hampered communication, let alone solidarity.

  They also faced the problem of setting up camp in hostile territory

  without a walled, urban base.

  Since the enemy usually mustered well-armed and well-trained men

  who were used to fighting together and ready to wage pitched battles,

  they represented a force that the rebels could not hope to defeat in

  regular combat. More accurately, they could not hope to defeat them

  in the long run. Rebel armies could in fact win victories in pitched bat-

  tle at first, while they outnumbered the Romans and faced untrained

  legions. In Sicily, for example, the governor’s two legions were more

  constabularies than fighting forces. It took reinforcements from the

  mainland, led by a consul, to stand up to the rebels. In Italy, Spartacus

  and his men faced scratch troops at first. They were even able to beat

  consular armies. No mean feat, this pays tribute to Spartacus’s tactical

  skill, but it also reflects the absence of Rome’s veteran troops, who

  were abroad fighting wars in Spain, the Balkans, and Anatolia.

  The best tactic for the rebels, therefore, was usually raiding. Guer-

  rilla warfare and unconventional tactics were the staples of slave

  revolts. That often presented a military problem to the masters, com-

  pounded by a political predicament and an economic paradox. Their

  heavy-armed infantry was ill-equipped to defeat hit-and-run raiders.

  They found it hard to counter the rebels’ local knowledge of the hills

  and mountains that were the habitual terrain of slave rebellion.

  For the masters, retooling themselves for counterinsurgency was

  frustrating and time-consuming, and besides, they rarely wanted to.

  There was little glory in suppressing a slave rebellion and little dignity

  in fighting in what they perceived as contemptible styles of combat. A

  slave war, says one Roman, “had a humble and unworthy name.”22 The

  ideal solution was getting most of the rebels to surrender, preferably

  196 Strauss

  after killing their leaders, so as to cut off the shoots of future rebellion.

  Laying siege to rebel strongholds was a preferred tactic. In the First

  Sicilian Slave War, for example, the Roman consul Publius Rupilius laid

  siege successfully in 132 BC to the two main rebel strongholds of Tauro-

  menium and Enna.

  Knowing as they did these realities, wise insurgent leaders had three

  possible strategic goals: (1) to tire out the enemy sufficiently that he

  let the rebels maintain a runaway settlement in the hills—what in later

  days was called a community of maroons (from a Spanish word mean-

  ing “living on mountaintops”), (2) to break out and escape abroad, or

  (3) to find allies among the free population, either from abroad or from

  discontented groups at home.

  Drimacus, rebel slave leader in Chios, probably in the third century

  BC, applied the maroon strategy successfully. After fleeing to the hills

  and becoming leader of the fugitive slaves, Drimacus attacked Chian

  farms and beat back armed Chian attempts to defeat him. He offered

  a truce that promised to limit future looting and to return runaway

  slaves who could not demonstrate maltreatment by their masters. The

  Chians accepted these remarkably pragmatic terms, and supposedly

  they indeed led to a decline in the number of runaways. But the Chians

  found the situation intolerable in the end and put a reward on Drima-

  cus’s head. The story goes that in his old age, Drimacus had his lover

  kill him and decapitate the corpse in order to collect the reward money.

  It was only afterward that he became divine in Chian eyes.

  Less realistic, no doubt, Sicily’s slave leaders claimed to set up their

  own kingdoms, complete with monarchs, councils, and assemblies.

  Having driven Carthage from the island, Rome was not about to let a

  group of slaves take it over. Perhaps the insurgents took undue encour-

  agement from the support of some of Sicily’s population of free poor

  people. Now, the sources for the Sicilian Slave Revolts are so very inad-

  equate and confused that one scholar argues they weren’t slave revolts

  at al but rather nationalist uprisings.23 This theory is more clever than

  convincing, but it is true that the slaves found al ies among the free poor.

  When the First Sicilian revolt broke out, “the citizen masses . . . rejoiced

  because they were jealous at inequities of wealth and differences in

  lifestyle.” Instead of helping suppress the insurgency, “the free masses,

  Slave Wars of Greece and Rome 197

  because of their jealousy, would go out into the countryside on the pre-

  text of attacking the runaways and plunder the property there, and even

  burn down the farms.”24 In the Second Sicilian war, says one source,

  “Turmoil and an Iliad of woes possessed al Sicily. Not only slaves but

  impoverished freemen were guilty of rapine and lawlessness.”25

  Ever agile, Spartacus tried both strategies: he attempted to break

  out and escape abroad, but also sought allies. His original plan, once

  the revolt caught fire, was to march into northern Italy and then have

  his men split into separate groups and cross the Alps, where they would

  seek their respective homelands. The plan failed, however, because of

  division among his men. Spartacus was never able to impose his author-

  ity on the ethnically heterogeneous group of rebels who fought with

  him. They consisted of large numbers of Celts and Germans as well as

  Thracians and other groups, many of whom resisted his commands.

  Besides, success spoiled them: their many victories encouraged them

  to stay in Italy. A veteran soldier, Spartacus knew better: he understood

  that Rome would pull together a trained and experienced army that no

  ragtag insurgency could defeat, no matter how long they drilled.

  So it happened. Marcus Licinius Crassus gained a special command

  and raised a big, new army. Many of the recruits were probably vet-

  erans who had fought for Sulla in Rome’s civil wars a decade earlier;

  others were brought into line by the iron discipline that Crassus im-

  posed. For good measure, the Roman army recalled its legions from

  Spain, where Pompey (Caius Pompeius Magnus) had just defeated the

  rebels. With the handwriting on the wall, Spartacus convinced his men

  to retreat south and to try to cross the Strait of Messina to Sicily. He

  hoped to renew his fortunes there, either by starting a third slave war

  or perhaps by using the island as a stepping-stone to escape across the

  sea. But first he had to cross the strait.

  Not having any boats himself, Spartacus tried to hire pirates who,

  in those days, used Sicily as a base for raids. It was not his first expe-

  rience in alliances with free men. The Thracian gladiator had found

  support in the early days of his rebellion from “many runaway slaves

  and certain free men from the fields.”26 He may have even gained some

  backing from southern Italian elites, either because of their simmering

  enmity to Roman
rule or because Spartacus had bought them.

  198 Strauss

  Returning to the pirates: they came from southern Anatolia or

  Crete, considered themselves enemies of Rome, and had a history of

  alliance with Rome’s main enemy in the east, Mithridates. Hence, they

  represented a promising collaborator. After taking Spartacus’s money,

  however, the pirates left him and his men on the Italian shore. It was

  either a case of simple dishonesty or fear of the Roman governor of

  Sicily, Caius Verres. Immortalized by Cicero for his corruption, Verres

  in fact seems to have taken energetic action to fortify Sicily’s shoreline

  and arrest slave troublemakers around the island. He plausibly also ne-

  gotiated with the pirates himself, and may simply have outbid Sparta-

  cus. Afterward, the Thracian tried to get across the strait another way,

  by having his men build rafts, but they foundered in the winter waves.

  It is also possible that Spartacus made contact with Mithridates, as the

  Roman rebel Sertorius had done a few years earlier, from Spain. Mith-

  ridates later used his knowledge of Spartacus’s rebellion as a rhetorical

  device to try to stir up a Celtic invasion of Italy (it didn’t materialize). In

  any case, Spartacus found no new allies. The slaves were stuck in Italy.

  The endgame differed little in essentials when it came to each of the

  two Sicilian slave wars and Spartacus. The rebels of the First Sicilian

  Slave War managed to defeat in pitched battle several Roman armies,

  whose forces they greatly outnumbered, and to take several cities. Af-

  ter Rome’s humiliating defeats, the consul Publius Rupilius laid siege

  to the two main rebel cities and each time found a traitor to open the

  gates. Then he engaged in mopping-up operations around the island.

  After a series of incompetent generals failed to put down the second re-

  bellion, the consul Manius Aquilius rose to the occasion. He killed the

  rebel king in single combat, which would have won him Rome’s high-

  est military honor had his opponent been a free man and not a slave.

  Spartacus had defeated nine Roman armies, but he could not stand

  up to Crassus’s revitalized forces. First Crassus tried to blockade him in

  the mountains of the toe of the Italian boot, in winter 72–71 BC, which

  the Romans sealed with a massive project of wal s and trenches. Sparta-