Slave Revolts in Antiquity

by Urbainczyk, Theresa;

  Although the evidence about the slaves in Pergamum is not abundant, their uprising lasted four years and this group was also able to maintain the rebellion and provide for themselves. Strabo gives the curious detail that Aristonicus called his followers, the poor and slaves, Heliopolitae, Citizens of the City of the Sun, and people have speculated about what this might signify.60 He does not say that Aristonicus founded a city called Heliopolis, although it is the name of more than one city in antiquity.

  Quite remarkably, as mentioned earlier, an inscription found in Claros refers to a “city of slaves” in the region of Colophon, which has been thought to be a reference to a settlement of Aristonicus’ followers.61 Although this term in the inscription may be one of abuse, and might refer to a community such as described by Cicero in Cilicia, that is, one receptive to runaway slaves, some of the individuals in the settlement seem to have been former slaves and so we appear to have more evidence than normal of slave activity. The inscription refers to this community being a nuisance. This may well be a completely different group of slaves, an example of an ancient maroon community. Such communities of runaways may have been quite common but it is possible that we do not hear of them simply because literary sources seldom mention them.

  While Strabo and Diodorus mention slaves as being involved in this Pergamene uprising, it was Diodorus who made the direct connection between them and the first Sicilian slave war. In Book 2 he throws some light on the significance of the name Heliopolitae. He had described the Indians, Scythians and Arabians, ending his book with his account of Iambulus’ trip to what seems to be a utopia, rather than a real place.62 Apparently the character Iambulus ends up at the islands of the sun, after which its inhabitants, who live in a state of extreme equality, are called.63 Diodorus ends Book 2 with a detailed description of the way these extraordinary people lived.64 The connection between these islands of the sun and the phrase “citizens of the city of the sun” has not gone unnoticed. And indeed the word “Heliopolis”, meaning City of the Sun, is not so very common that we are not entitled to enquire into such a connection.

  Another factor that has led some to see an ideological aspect to the Pergamene uprising is the fact that we are told Blossius, the Stoic friend of Tiberius Gracchus, fled to help Aristonicus after Tiberius’ murder. Some have thought that having worked to influence the reforms of Tiberius Gracchus in Rome aiming at a redistribution of wealth in the form of land, he then moved to Pergamum, where he had similar designs.65

  The description of events of the second war in Sicily is rather similar to that of the first war in the massive and sudden increase of rebels. Prior to the second war, after the uprising near Halicyae, it was reported to the authorities that some slaves had murdered their masters and rebelled. At first there were about eighty rebels involved, but their numbers increased rapidly. Diodorus has the story that the governor did march past the area where the rebels were but did not attack them, presumably because he feared he did not have enough troops, having disbanded most of them.66 However, when it was reported that the number of rebels was more than 800, and soon after that had increased to 2,000, he made Marcus Titinius the commander and sent him with 600 soldiers from the garrison at Enna, but these troops were defeated by the slaves:

  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.67

  Acquiring adherents is never reported as being a problem in these uprisings. The crucial time is the beginning, the actual breakout, because after a very short amount of time massive numbers of slaves took the opportunity to join in.

  After their first success, the victory over Marcus Titinius, the slaves formed an assembly. At this point, they numbered more than 6,000, and elected a leader whom they called a king. Like Drimakos, their leader, Salvius, is described as strict, ordering his followers to avoid cities, since they bred luxury and degeneration. The slave army was well trained and organized; it was split into three groups, each of which had its own commander. They behaved efficiently and effectively and from raiding they soon acquired enough equipment for 2,000 cavalry and 20,000 infantry, and enough supplies to support their substantial army.68

  The slave army’s next move was to attack Morgantina, a city in central Sicily, slightly south-east of Enna. The Roman governor, Nerva, advanced to meet them with 10,000 Italian and Sicilian soldiers and the Romans captured the empty rebel camp, which only had a few guards. The slaves returned, however, and fought back. Photius’ narrative tells us that the Roman army started running away, and then reports that Salvius declared that if the Romans dropped their weapons they would not be killed. Most of the Roman soldiers threw down their arms and the slaves retook their camp and gained many new weapons. In Diodorus’ narrative the Romans are total cowards and the slaves have their measure. Diodorus adds that because of this humane proclamation (διὰ τὴν του̑ κηρύγματος φιλανθρωπίαν69) only 600 of the Roman army died, while 4,000 were taken prisoner. The word “philanthropia” is quite a remarkable word for an ancient author to use of a slave. One has the sense that the Romans are being criticized here, since they behave in a cowardly way, and the result is a very favourable account of the behaviour of the slaves.

  Christian Mileta remarks that this detail of Salvius’ offer not to kill Romans who dropped their weapons is not in the Excerpts of Constantine, even though the account there is virtually word for word the same as that of Photius.70 He concludes that the excerptors felt that there was no need to add this, as readers would already know it from their knowledge of Photius.71 Bradley adds the further comment that the attack on Morgantina is not mentioned by any other ancient author:

  It is somewhat surprising that no other ancient writer ever mentions Salvius and the siege of Morgantina. The reason perhaps is that the new slave king, despite his great success in converting the early insurgents in the west into a coordinated and well-regulated army, never seems to have become as charismatic a figure as the wonderworker Eunus before him.72

  Another explanation could be that most Roman historians did not want to record such an embarrassing, and for them disgraceful, episode. The Romans not only lost, they lost through cowardice. They fled, threw down their weapons and took up the magnanimous, or contemptuous, offer of the slave leader, and thousands of them were taken prisoner.73

  The slave army besieged Morgantina and offered the slaves in the city their freedom. These slaves, however, preferred to believe their masters, who also offered them freedom if they helped to defend the city. They were mistaken to do so: the governor rescinded the manumission. The slaves therefore ran away and joined the rebels.74

  As in the first slave war, there was another uprising of slaves in a different part of the island. Diodorus reports that again the authorities hoped that the two groups of slaves would fight each other but, as in the previous war, they joined forces instead. Diodorus comments: “Fortune, as though intentionally increasing the power of the fugitives, caused their leaders to be of one mind”.75 Athenion, the leader of this second revolt, became Salvius’ general, although later Salvius was suspicious of him; Diodorus writes that Salvius ordered Athenion “to be placed in detention”.76

  Maintaining an army in Italy

  We can see something similar in the Spartacan outbreak thirty years later. The escaped gladiators and their co-rebels had a rapid series of victories, starting against the Roman army of 3,000 led by a praetor who thought he had trapped the rebels on a hill.77 But the gladiators twisted vines into ropes, abseiled down the rockface and attacked the Romans from the rear. After this victory, in which the Roman commander’s horse was taken by the slaves, the rebel army numbered 70,000, states Appian. Plutarch adds the detail that they were joined by herdsmen and shepherds from the area, although he does not give any indication of the number. Two more praetors (Publ
ius Varinius and Cossinius) were sent out, neither of whom had any luck against the rebels.

  The slave army marched northwards. Plutarch and Appian interpret this not as Spartacus intending to avoid the Romans but to cross the Alps. His men, however, had different ideas and preferred to plunder Italy. By this stage the Romans were alarmed, and sent out both consuls to deal with what they considered a major war, writes Plutarch.78 One of the consuls destroyed the Germans from Spartacus’ army but the other was defeated. Crixus, Appian tells us, had 30,000 men under him and two-thirds of these were killed. The rest of the army headed towards Gaul, met Cassius, the governor of Cisalpine Gaul, with 10,000 men, and defeated them too. Plutarch does not say how many men Spartacus had at this point, although we may infer that he was not short of troops. However, Appian, in reporting that their intention was to attack Rome, says that the slave army numbered 120,000 men.

  So the numbers involved at this stage were huge and this may explain the apparently aimless marching up and down Italy: the army had to keep moving in order to acquire more food and supplies. Every time they defeated Roman troops they could take their supplies and arms.79 But also by moving (and continuing to be successful) they could hope to recruit more to their army. Even if the numbers are vastly exaggerated, it is clear that the size of the slave contingent was threatening for their former masters. The ancient sources interpreted the long march as the army intending to cross the Alps but, despite their victories over the Romans at this point, the army turned around. In order to make sense of it Plutarch presumes that Spartacus’ men disobeyed him and decided to stay in Italy to pillage the countryside. Presumably they did pillage the countryside, but this must generally have been how they supplied themselves with food and equipment.

  Appian tells the story of the intention to march on Rome. He explains that Spartacus had changed his mind about marching on Rome because he was not ready for such a battle. It seems likely that there was no intention to march on Rome but the Romans were so afraid that they thought this terrible thing was about to happen. Appian also adds that no city had joined the rebels, but only slaves, deserters and riff-raff (although only a few sentences earlier he tells us that Spartacus had refused to accept deserters, and the word αὐτομόλοι is used in both cases80). In the next sentence, he reports that the slaves took Thurii, apparently contradicting himself.

  The army maintained itself by constantly being on the move, as well as gathering more recruits. It seems that the rebels were allowed to pass through the Italian countryside, not prevented, as they could have been, by the Italians, had they been so disposed. In his account of the Mithridatic War, Appian comments that Mithridates hoped that many of the Italians would join him if he invaded Italy as they had recently been at war with the Romans themselves. The historian adds that Mithridates was encouraged in this hope by the fact that recently the Italians had sided with Spartacus against the Romans, even though he was a wholly disreputable person.81 The alienation of the Italians from the Romans helps account for the success in the maintenance of the slave army. Appian reports that after taking Thurii the slaves were not allowed by Spartacus to acquire gold or silver and nor could merchants import it into the city. However, they did use iron and copper, and were well stocked with basic materials; when they wanted more they raided, or attacked a Roman army.

  After so many humiliating defeats for the Romans, Crassus was given supreme command of the war.82 He marched against Spartacus with six legions and when he arrived he received in addition the two armies of the consuls, which he decimated for their previous conduct. As Spartacus was heading to Picenum, Crassus waited there and ordered his commander, Mummius, to follow the rebels by another route with two legions, but not to confront them. Mummius thought he knew better and that he had a good opportunity to defeat the slaves, so he attacked them and was duly defeated.

  Appian also tells the alternative story of Crassus decimating the whole army, which would have meant killing 4,000 soldiers. He showed his men he was more dangerous than Spartacus and they were victorious in the next engagement, killing two-thirds of the 10,000 rebels in the encounter. According to this narrative, there had been an arrangement with some Cilician pirates to land 2,000 men in Sicily but the pirates broke their agreement and sailed without their cargo of rebels.83 The slave army marched back from the sea.

  Spartacus’ intention, thinks Plutarch, was to incite the island, which had recently had a slave war of its own and could therefore easily be encouraged to have another. It may well be that the slaves were going to cross over into Sicily where they might hope to take over the whole island. But, again, it is one of those suppositions about Spartacus’ intentions. Was he intending to cross the Alps, to march on Rome or to go to Sicily? All are possible, but we can never know. Crassus had earlier written to the Senate to ask for help from Lucullus and Pompey, but changed his mind and tried to finish the war before they arrived. There was a battle and the Romans killed 12,300 men, writes Plutarch. He states that only two of them were wounded in the back, the others dying fighting the Romans, thus painting a picture of heroism on the part of the slaves.

  After the final battle, according to Appian, many of the surviving rebels fled to the mountains and continued to fight until all except 6,000 of them were killed; they were captured and crucified along the road from Capua to Rome. Crassus had finished his task in six months. There were slaves still alive in 61 BCE, more than ten years later, who were described as the remnants of this rebel army; Suetonius writes that the father of the Emperor Augustus defeated them.84 These individuals, and one must suppose they were quite numerous for this to be remembered of Augustus’ father, had survived for ten years, presumably in southern Italy, thus showing the possibility that there were more of such groups than we have records for.85 After all, we hear about these only because of the individual who crushed them, and because they had belonged to such a famous army.

  Maintaining themselves does not seem to have been a problem for any of these slave armies. In every case they were defeated militarily. It does not appear to have been the case that they had problems getting supplies or arms; at no point are we told that these aspects are problematic.

  Bradley argues that we should not read too much into these slave rebellions:

  There can be no reasonable doubt, therefore, that widespread revolt, whether of slaves or of slaves in alliance with other social elements, was not at all the best means by which the gladiators from Capua might hope to convert their act of flight into a state of permanent freedom, for the greater the rebel numbers, the greater the prospect of Roman retaliation in kind.86

  The Roman retaliation was always going to be severe. The slaves could never have hoped for more lenient treatment if only a few of them had escaped, or had fought back. Bradley argues that the slaves merely wanted to flee, and not to collect large numbers and fight the Romans; he suggests that they could not achieve their aims because there were too many of them. However, he also acknowledges that we know nothing of their aims, and that we cannot know anything because none of our information is from the slaves themselves.87 Despite this, he affirms that the slaves did not want anything other than flight and he asserts this with surprising confidence: “Within the rebel movement, therefore, a coherent set of objectives never existed”.88

  It is difficult to see what difference the presence of such a purpose or a thought would have made. In any event, we have no way of knowing what they intended. It seems rather presumptuous, however, to say that we know for sure that they did not intend a general rebellion. There is no reason why they might not have intended such a thing, however unrealistic it may seem to us today. In fact, it is only hindsight that enables us to judge accurately whether things seem realistic or not. Initially 200 gladiators were supposed to break out, although in the end only about seventy did so. Even seventy is unwieldy if all they wanted to do was run away and melt into the countryside.

  There is also the issue that there had been two previous upr
isings in living memory, which the sources assume that Spartacus remembered when they suggest that he wanted to cross over to Sicily in order to reignite the flames of rebellion there. Spartacus and his men could very well have known of the revolts in Sicily, and indeed our sources assume that he did.89 Given this, it is entirely possible that they wished to emulate their predecessors. Certainly other gladiators revolted.

  Bradley observes:

  Naturally it has to be recognized that the information available on motives comes from nonslave sources – authors who rationalized the behavior of the slave rebels in their own way – and that because the rebels have left no statements of their aspirations and intentions, their views of events, as of all their experiences in slavery must always remain irrecoverable.90

  However, after conceding that therefore all suggestions about the slaves’ intentions may be incorrect, he concludes: “As far as can be told, the great escalation of all three movements was unforeseen, unplanned and unexpected”.91

  On this view, the slaves in the second Sicilian slave war had not learned from the first, and Spartacus was ignorant of both. Yet the little evidence we have shows that the slaves did not make very many mistakes – in fact, they were very successful and concerned for the future, and did what they could to succeed – and the slaves in these outbreaks managed to survive for several years. They provided for, and organized, vast armies of followers to the surprise and admiration, however reluctant, of the historians.

  Some Roman sources claim that Spartacus achieved success because he had been in the Roman army; they are thereby making the best of a terrible situation – he was good, because they themselves had trained him. A similar approach is to argue, as some have, that the Romans themselves had used slaves in civil wars prior to this, that is, they had used slaves against fellow Romans, so this had given the slaves the idea of fighting Romans for themselves.92 There may be some truth in this, but it is improbable that Spartacus had no knowledge of the enormous impact of the Sicilian wars, and of the huge numbers involved in both of them, and thus it seems unlikely that he was surprised when similar numbers joined his revolt. It is not credible that this revolt, which required the same number of troops as Julius Caesar was to use to conquer Gaul, was the third in a series of accidents, all of which were unplanned by the individuals who headed them.