Consequently, the governor of Sicily at this time, Licinius Nerva, immediately set about releasing those who had been free citizens of allied states and, in a few days, freed more than 800 individuals. This encouraged all slaves in Sicily, comments Diodorus.45 As in the account of the first war, he comments on the split between the Roman authorities and the local elite; the latter objected to seeing their property walking off and protested to the governor, urging him to stop freeing their slaves. Diodorus writes that Nerva was “persuaded by the money [of the slave-owners] or enslaved by their patronage”.46 There is hardly a huge difference between being bribed and being forced by the influence of local grandees, except perhaps Diodorus wishes to draw attention again to the “enslavement” of the Romans and the dangerous consequences of it, as he does elsewhere.
Whatever the reason, Nerva did cease his hearings and ordered all the slaves back to their masters. Having had their hopes raised in this way only to be dashed, the slaves fled to the sanctuary of the Palikoi. These were twin gods who avenged perjury and, more importantly here, the shrine of the Palikoi was a traditional place slaves fled to from their masters to escape ill treatment.47 Here they plotted to revolt.48
Diodorus writes that at the shrine they talked about revolt and, in the next sentence, that in many places the daring of the slaves became clear.49 However, the first slaves to make their bid for freedom were near Halicyae, in the extreme north-west of the island. About thirty slaves, owned by two very wealthy brothers who lived near Halicyae, were the first to rebel, led by a man named Varius. Their numbers escalated. The governor, being unable to quell the uprising, used the services of a traitor, whom the rebels in their ignorance welcomed because he had a reputation as a friend of the slaves; they made him their commander but he then betrayed them.50 Those who were not killed in the fighting threw themselves off a cliff and for a short time it looked as if the situation had been contained. But although this first set of rebels had been defeated, the setback, far from dispiriting others, seems rather to have encouraged them to try something similar.
The second slave war on Sicily
The island would have had to have been restocked with slaves after the first war and for once we have a clear statement from our ancient sources that many of the slaves in Sicily had once been free. The original release of 800 slaves gave hope to all enslaved on the island, writes Diodorus.51 It seems improbable that every slave on the island had been a citizen of an allied state of Rome.52 However, the Senate’s decision gives some indication that wrongful mass enslavement had been going on. Given the frequent wars Rome had been engaged in prior to the revolt, it seems safe to say that a dangerously large proportion of the slaves involved in the uprising on Sicily had been free-born. The slaves would have been able to communicate with each other easily if the Romans had not taken care to distribute the different ethnic groups into diverse holdings. We have no evidence that they did, and it seems unlikely that such a division had taken place, given the situation described on Sicily. Consequently, many of the conditions favourable to a successful uprising were once again present on the island.
Diodorus once again describes a split between the governor and the slave-owners, who had put pressure on him in effect to stop enforcing the Senate’s decree. Perhaps more importantly the Romans were short of soldiers: they had suffered the damaging defeat at Arausio against the German tribes and in an attempt to meet this threat, and given the shortage of eligible men to enlist, the Roman army was now open to men without the land qualification. To the outsider, to slaves, this must have looked like desperation. And amid these problems, the slaves took their opportunity and took it effectively, rapidly and forcefully.
Again they were successful for a considerable length of time. Diodorus tells us that the second slave war lasted four years (104–100 BCE). Soon after the attempt at rebellion near Halicyae had failed, eighty slaves banded together and killed their master, a Roman knight and started to organize themselves, collecting further recruits.53 Diodorus’ explanation for their success was that the governor, because he had already released his army, did not take swift enough action. The slaves were able to seize on this; they called the governor a coward, incited more to join them and within seven days had armed more than 800 men. Soon after this they numbered 2,000.
When the governor, who was now in Herakleia, realized the numbers involved he sent Marcus Titinius 600 soldiers from the garrison at Enna, but these troops were defeated by the slaves.54 Diodorus writes that the surviving Roman soldiers saved themselves only by abandoning their weapons and running away from the battle. The slaves thus increased their weapon supply and confidence.
Now all the slaves were encouraged by the prospect of rebellion. As more and more men turned to rebellion with every passing day, there was a sudden and unexpected increase in their number, with the result that, within a few days, they were more than six thousand.55
Once again Diodorus’ account describes revolts as giving others the courage to take similar action. Here the slaves had taken swift and effective measures. Diodorus writes that after the slaves near Halicyae had been overcome, the governor disbanded his soldiers. However, in his description of that uprising it seemed that he did not have many in the first place. It was, according to Diodorus, because he could not take the rebel slaves by force that he turned to treachery, persuading a local bandit to help him conquer them. It seems then that the lack of forces had been obvious to other slaves, who took this opportunity to rise up, proclaim the weakness of the Romans and thus quickly draw others to their army with little difficulty. The slaves here showed shrewdness, a correct assessment of the situation and rapid action, which worked.
Opportunity for Spartacus and the gladiators
Thirty years later the Romans were also facing severe problems. They had been engaged in a damaging war against the Italians; had experienced a civil war where one of their best generals, Sulla, and his army marched on Rome; had seen another, Sertorius, set himself up independently in Spain; and, lastly, were facing the threat of a hostile king, Mithridates, in the east.
Against this backdrop, in 73 BCE a small group of gladiators broke out of their gladiatorial school in Capua. In the Life of Crassus Plutarch describes how some gladiators were unjustly imprisoned. Because of this treatment, 200 of them had planned an escape, but only seventy-eight succeeded in breaking out. They had armed themselves with kitchen implements but once free came upon wagons containing weapons for gladiators, which they seized.
They elected three leaders, Spartacus, Crixus and Oenomaus. Plutarch writes that Spartacus was the most important and Appian states that he was the main general and the others were his subordinate officers.56 This band of gladiators was quickly joined by slaves and free men from the area. Their army had a series of major successes against the Roman armies that were sent out to put them down; the slaves acquired more followers and travelled the length of Italy, reaching Mutina in the north and then turning back to the extreme south. Even after the defeat by Marcus Licinius Crassus, and further round-ups by Pompey, there were slaves still alive in 61 BCE, more than ten years later, who were described as the remnants of this rebel army; Suetonius describes the father of the Emperor Augustus as having defeated them.57
The remarkable success of this slave army must have been helped by the alienation of the Italians from the Romans. In his account of the Mithridatic War, Appian comments that the Italians had sided with Spartacus, even though he was a wholly disreputable person, against the Romans, so great was their hatred for them.58 The survival of this slave army for such a length of time, on the Italian peninsula, the core of the Roman Empire, bears witness to the truth of this. The slaves had judged the situation carefully, and one might venture to suggest that this is why they did not leave Italy as they were apparently expected to.
Slaves continued to be caught up in the further unravelling of the Roman political system and we have no way of knowing how many fled, or achieved their freedom, during
this troubled time. The concentration of our authors naturally was not on what happened to the slaves, although there are flashes of information, such as Augustus’ boast: “I made the sea peaceful and freed it of pirates. In that war I captured about 30,000 slaves who had escaped from their masters and taken up arms against the republic, and I handed them over to their masters for punishment”.59 When free people appealed to slaves to help them, they were drawing on the acknowledged hostility slaves felt for their masters. Slaves often were involved, or seen as a danger, during the clashes between citizens. Sallust tells us that in 63 BCE the Senate ordered that gladiators be removed from Rome and sent to Capua and other outlying Italian cities since they were fearful of the possible use made of them by Catiline and his followers.60
In the troubled time of the early 40s BCE, we have evidence again of the perceived danger posed by gladiators. Caesar had sent an ultimatum to Pompey, which was accepted on condition that Caesar withdrew his garrison from towns he had occupied outside his own province. Pompey had Caesar’s gladiators distributed to individuals since there were 5,000 of them in a school and they were thought to be planning a breakout. Cicero reporting from Capua in January 49 BCE, wrote a letter about this dangerous situation.61 Caesar himself refers to this incident and says that the consul Lentulus brought Caesar’s gladiators to the forum and tried to bribe them to follow him with promises of freedom and gifts of horses. Because he was criticized for this he changed his mind, and divided up the troupe and distributed them throughout Campania.62 We are told that in 44 BCE gladiators were on the side of the conspirators and waited at the theatre of Pompey, ready to come to their aid if any senators offered resistance when the attack on Caesar was made.63
The increasing split within the slave-holding layer of society of the late Republic resulted in years of civil wars. The change of regime and the establishment of the principate was the solution to this unrest and, after this, there was much greater control over the richer members of the citizen body, the provinces and the armies. The monarchical system ended the relative freedom of the republican system and with it the splits that the increasing wealth of the empire had caused. Also, with the new order came a much slower expansion of the territory of the empire. The tighter control of the imperial bureaucracy resulted in fewer slave revolts. Slaves did still make attempts to escape and resist but with less dramatic results than previously. It may be that the threat that they had posed was recognized and dealt with but, in any event, nothing on the scale of the Spartacan rebellion happened again.64
Tacitus tells us that in 21 CE, gladiators were involved in an uprising against Rome. They joined Sacrovir, a Gallic leader, who seized Augustodunum, but this uprising failed, so he retreated and then killed himself.65 A little later, when describing events for the year 24 CE, Tacitus reports that a slave war, led by one Titus Curtisius, a former Roman soldier, in Brundisium, was only averted by accident.66 Tacitus finishes his report of this near rebellion saying how much fear this caused in Rome, since the number of slaves had vastly increased, while that of free inhabitants had diminished.
Later, in the Annals for the year 61 CE, the same historian tells us of the outbreak of gladiators in Praeneste that was crushed, but that caused alarm and made people talk of Spartacus “in gossip by the people, eager and anxious as ever, for revolutionary disturbances”.67 He goes on to list a series of incidents, the calamity of lost ships, and then, in the following chapter, portents, lightning, a comet and a two-headed baby.68 One assumes that Tacitus lists all these mishaps to demonstrate just how cursed Nero’s reign was. In other words, we learn about slave revolts by accident because they are added to indicate that Nero was a bad emperor, in the same way that we hear about the birth of a deformed child.
Opportunities in Sparta
Slave revolts were not confined to the Roman world, although these are the most thorougly documented. The most famous example from antiquity of war between masters and their workforce is between the Spartans and their helots, perhaps because Sparta was the enemy of Athens at a time when virtually all our literature comes from Athens. However, the picture drawn is quick action on the part of the slaves, the recognition of a suitable opportunity and the unhesitating readiness to seize it.69 Indeed, the ancient commentators themselves described this. Aristotle says quite explicitly that the helots who often rebelled lay in wait to take advantage of Spartan misfortune.70 He goes on to explain that this did not happen in Crete because the Cretans’ neighbours did not side with the rebels (presumably being an island was helpful here), whereas Sparta was surrounded by enemies.71
Thucydides describes how, in 464 BCE, helots and perioikoi took advantage of an earthquake to revolt and he says that the rebels held out for ten years with their centre on Mount Ithome.72 So here, seeing the chaos caused by an earthquake the helots took their chance successfully to escape their servitude, not temporarily but permanently. The Spartans, because they could not defeat them, appealed to their allies, including the Athenians, to come to their aid. They later sent the latter home again, fearing that they might be persuaded by the helots to help them instead. Not only were the rebels not defeated but the situation was only resolved when they were allowed to leave the area and settle in Naupactus at the entrance to the Peloponnese, where they remained loyal allies to the Athenians.73 In other words, here we have an example of a successful revolt.74
A very similar episode is about a much earlier time, although reported later by Athenaeus, who wrote that someone called Malacus, in his Annals of Siphnos:
tells the story of how some slaves of the Samians, a thousand in number, founded the city of Ephesus, These men had previously withdrawn to the mountain which is on the island of Samos and done the Samians a lot of harm. But as the result of an oracle, the Samians made a truce with these slaves in the sixth year of their revolt, on certain conditions; they were allowed to leave unharmed and sailed away from the island, landing at Ephesus. The Ephesians are their descendents.75
We learn here, again incidentally, of a successful rebellion by slaves to escape servitude. One might object that it is probably not true, and it was certainly a long time before Athenaeus’ life, but what is of significance here is that this is recorded as if it were a fact that the Ephesians are descended from rebellious slaves. It must have been an occurrence that could have happened for readers to accept this.
Throughout the period of the Peloponnesian War, 431–404 BCE, there were several episodes where Spartan action was affected by the threat of revolt or by actual rebellion on the part of their helots.76 So again we can see that the helots were aware that external wars could help their cause. The Athenian victory at Pylos in 425 BCE was due to the intervention of the Messenians.77 The Athenian general Demosthenes wanted to stop at Pylos, as he and his colleagues took their fleet to Corcyra, precisely because of its position. Thucydides states that Demosthenes had thought that: “the Messenians, whose country this used to be, and who spoke the same dialect as the Spartans, were capable, he thought, of doing a lot of damage if they had this place as a base, and would also be a very reliable garrison for it”.78 The Spartans shared his view; once they heard that the Athenians had landed there, they hurried back from Attica after only fifteen days, and immediately (εὐθυς) headed off to regain Pylos,79 sending orders to the Peloponnesian allies to come as quickly as possible.80 The Spartans’ uncharacteristically prompt action demonstrates the threat that having the Athenians in this area posed for them. The Messenians nearby did indeed help the Athenians, supplying forty hoplites and, at least according to Thucydides, it was their help that won the campaign for the Athenians, because their local knowledge was invaluable for attacking the Spartans.81 He also comments that once Pylos was garrisoned, the Messenians from Naupactus sent their best troops to the region, and inflicted much damage on the Spartans, partly through their knowledge of their land but again also because they spoke the same dialect: “The Spartans had no previous experience of this type of warfare and as the
helots began to desert, they feared the spread of revolution in their country and became exceedingly uneasy about it”.82 Demosthenes’ reasoning is presented by Thucydides as being correct and effective, but the overall strength of the Spartans meant that there was no general helot revolt.
The Spartans, although typified in our sources as slow and inactive, took energetic and severe means to prevent a mass revolt. The Athenians had seized Pylos, which was in Messenian territory, and they trapped 120 Spartiates on the island of Sphacteria. By their very presence the Athenians were encouraging neighbouring helots to revolt. The Spartans found this so threatening that they pretended to offer the bravest helots their freedom, and then slaughtered 2,000 of them. Thucydides introduces this episode with the general comment that most of the Spartan institutions were organized with a view to security, which indicates fear rather than confidence in their helots’ loyalty.83
Later, Xenophon described plans for a coup at Sparta in c. 397 BCE.84 Given the number of attempts made by helots to rebel, it is perhaps a sign of the immense strength of the Spartans that there were not more successful revolts. For various reasons the number of citizens, the Spartiates, declined dramatically in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. It is against this backdrop that we learn of the plot described by Xenophon. The would-be leader, Cinadon, led a potential recruit for revolution to the agora, and asked him how many Spartiates he saw. The reply was “about forty” and Cinadon described them as the enemy; the rest of those in the marketplace, who were not Spartiates and were recognizable as such, numbered in the region of 4,000, and these were the allies. When the ephors asked the informant how many were in the conspiracy, he replied that there were not very many, meaning not very many Spartans, because he then went on to say that they were in the plot with everyone else, that is, the various categories of non-Spartiates (helots, neodamōdeis, hypomeiones and perioikoi), who were permanently in a state of hostility against the Spartans.85 The last three groups do not concern us at present, but presumably at least the helots were distinguished by their clothes, since there is evidence that this was the case. Athenaeus records that Myron of Priene, in his Messenian History, had written that the Spartans made the helots wear a dogskin cap and a leather jerkin.86 The reason, remarks Xenophon, that the leaders had confidence that they were all potential allies was that whenever anyone mentioned the Spartiate class to them, none of them could hide the fact that they would like to eat them raw.87
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