Slave Revolts in Antiquity

by Urbainczyk, Theresa;

  Cinna offered freedom to slaves in Rome but none joined him, so for support he went to the neighbouring towns, the inhabitants of which had recently been given Roman citizenship.34 He was more successful with them, and after gaining support from them and also from the returning Marius he again asked them to join him. Marius is described as having about 500 slaves with him who had followed their masters. After these successes, and more, Cinna again appealed to slaves in Rome to desert to him, and this time they did, in large numbers.35 It is immediately after describing this, that is, the desertion by large numbers of slaves, that Appian then narrates that the Senate started to appease Cinna and asked to make peace. In other words, Cinna had had successes but it was once the slaves in Rome deserted that the situation became so critical that the Senate surrendered the city.36

  On being made dictator, Sulla instituted various reforms, endeavouring to prevent exceptions to the pattern of offices, the cursus honorum, and reducing the power of the tribunes. Because so many senators had been killed, he added about 300 equites and, more importantly for us here, added 10,000 slaves to the plebeians. That is, he freed them, gave them Roman citizenship and called them Cornelii after himself. Appian explains the benefits of doing this: “In this way he made sure of having 10,000 men among the plebeians always ready to obey his commands”.37 Later, when describing how Sulla retired, voluntarily laying down his power, Appian explains that he did this because he wanted a quiet life again, not because he was afraid (as one might think, having led such a life and created so many enemies). As Appian explains, he was still strong when he retired, and not only were there 120,000 of his veterans throughout Italy who were loyal to him, but also he could depend on “the 10,000 Cornelii ready in the city”.38 Again, for Appian, slaves play a crucial role in the politics of Rome.

  Florus

  Florus is another writer in whose construction of the history of the time we can see great importance given to the slave wars. It may be that he reflected Livy’s concerns but as Livy is not extant for this period, it is impossible to say. Florus wrote a summary of Livy in two books starting with Romulus and ending with the peace established by Augustus. It is not known exactly when he composed his history. He says that his own time was not far short of 200 years after Augustus:

  From the time of Caesar Augustus down to our own age there has been a period of not much less than 200 years, during which, owing to the inactivity of the emperors, the Roman people, as it were, grew old and lost its potency, save that under the rule of Trajan it again stirred its arms and, contrary to general expectation, again renewed its vigour with youth as it were restored.39

  Florus’ history neatly deals with external and internal enemies of Rome and draws the conclusion that Augustus was a great boon to Rome. The slave wars in Sicily have a chapter in Book 2 to themselves and so does that led by Spartacus.40 Book 1 is more concerned with external wars, whereas Book 2 has chapters on the revolutions of Tiberius Gracchus (“seditio Tiberi Gracchi”, 2.2), Gaius Gracchus (“seditio G. Gracchi”, 2.3), Apuleius (“seditio Apuleiana”, 2.4) and Drusus (“seditio Drusiana”, 2.5), the war against the allies (“bellum adversum socios”, 2.6), the war against the slaves (“bellum servile”, 2.7), the war against Spartacus (“bellum Spartacium”, 2.8), again not the seditio of Spartacus, then the civil war of Marius (“bellum civile Marianum”, 2.9), the war with Sertorius, the civil war under Lepidus, the war of Catiline and so on until the Peace with Parthia and the deification of Augustus. This is the first peace in Florus’ book. Until then it had been a list of seditiones and bella. The last chapter is “Pax Parthorum et consecratio Augusti”:

  It was also discussed in the senate whether he should not be called Romulus, because he had established the empire; but the name of Augustus was deemed more holy and venerable, in order that, while he still dwelt upon earth, he might be given a name and title which raised him to the rank of a deity.41

  Florus looks back at the Republican period from the imperial period, and sees the late Republic as one of decline, until the arrival of Octavian.

  In his introduction Florus explains his view of Rome: he saw Rome as a person passing through childhood, youth, maturity and senility. Its infancy was during the reign of the kings, which lasted nearly 400 years. Rome’s youth, on the other hand, was a mere 150 years when Rome subjugated Italy. The maturity was the 150 years when it conquered peoples further afield and, under Augustus, spread peace to the world. The war against Spartacus thus features in the mature period, but the actual picture presented in the account of the slave wars is one of a decline of sorts. The first book had been about imperial conquest but the second was concerned with internal fighting, and therefore full of condemnation of the actions of the Romans, who consequently needed the strong hand of Augustus to set things straight. In the account of the Social War Florus starts: “Though we call this war a war against allies, in order to lessen the odium of it, yet if we are to tell the truth, it was a war against citizens”.42 He goes on to say that when Italy had been united by the Romans, it became one body, so that for the Romans to fight against the Italians was to fight against fellow citizens.43 Chapter 7 starts: “Although we fought with allies, in itself an impious act, yet we fought with men who enjoyed liberty and were of free birth; but who could tolerate with equanimity wars waged by a sovereign people against slaves?”44 And Chapter 8 starts:

  One can tolerate indeed even the disgrace of a war against slaves; for although, by force of circumstances, they are liable to any kind of treatment, yet they form as it were a class (though an inferior class) of human beings and can be admitted to the blessings of liberty which we enjoy. But I know not what name to give to the war which was stirred up at the instigation of Spartacus; for the common soldiers being slaves and their leaders being gladiators, the former men of the humblest, the latter men of the worse, class added insult to the injury which they inflicted upon Rome.45

  He is hostile to the slaves generally and describes them as rampaging, pillaging and slaughtering, but also presents them as quite disciplined: they formed a regular army and made weapons and armour, using the rods and axes of the Romans they had captured. Spartacus, he says, had begun as a Roman soldier in Thrace, and then deserted, was a bandit and finally a gladiator. He used Roman funeral rights for his generals and then put on gladiatorial games himself.46 Florus thus gives a picture of a would-be Roman, someone who admired and therefore copied their customs. He says that the slaves fought like the gladiators that they were, that is, to the death. Spartacus died fighting in the front line, like a true general.47

  Even though the slaves were beaten, the overall situation worsened in Florus’ eyes, so that the following chapter about the civil war of Marius begins: “The only thing still wanting to complete the misfortunes of the Roman people was that they should draw the sword upon each other at home, and that citizens should fight against citizens in the midst of the city and in the forum like gladiators at the arena”.48 Whatever Florus says in his introduction, the benefits of maturity occur only with Augustus; until then, things had been going from bad to worse for the Romans. It was a calamity to fight allies, humiliating to fight slaves and even worse to fight gladiators, but worst of all was for Romans to behave like gladiators themselves. In other words, for Florus, the rebellion of the slaves was all part of the degeneration and disintegration of the Republic.

  This, however, does not really correspond to what he said he thought about Rome in his introduction. He gives a clearer version of his views of historical causation, and how he planned his work, at the end of his first book. In this interesting chapter he recapitulates what his first book had been about: “Such are the events of the third period of history of the Roman people during which, having once ventured to advance outside Italy they carried their arms over the whole world”.49 Here he departs from his view at the start of the book, or he uses a different division, because he remarks:

  The first hundred years of this period were pure and humane
and as we have said a golden age, free from vice and crime while the innocence of the old pastoral life was still untainted and uncorrupted, and the imminent threat of our Carthaginian foes kept alive the ancient discipline. The following 100 years which we have traced from the destruction of Carthage, Corinth and Numantia and the inheritance of the Asiatic Kingdom of Attalus down to the time of Caesar and Pompeius and of their successor Augustus, with whose history we still have to deal, were as deplorable and shameful owing to internal calamities as they were illustrious for the glory of their military achievements. For just as it was honourable and glorious to have won the rich and powerful provinces of Gaul, Thrace, Cilicia and Cappadocia as well as the territory of the Armenians and Britons, which though they served no practical purpose, constituted important titles to imperial greatness; so it was disgraceful and deplorable at the same time to have fought at home with fellow-citizens and allies, with slaves and gladiators and the whole senate divided against itself.50

  He continues by saying that it may actually have been better for Rome to forego her acquisitions, and to have been content with Sicily and Africa, or even not to have kept these but to have remained merely in control of Italy, than to increase so much that the Romans were ruined by their own greatness.51

  According to his view, the wealth produced the trouble:

  For what else produced those outbursts of domestic strife but excessive prosperity? It was the conquest of Syria which first corrupted us, followed by the Asiatic inheritance bequeathed by the king of Pergamon. The resources and wealth thus acquired spoiled the morals of the age and ruined the State, which was engulfed in its own vices as in a common sewer.52

  He goes on to say that this is why the Roman people demanded more, leading to the revolutions of the Gracchi. More importantly for our understanding of the slave wars, he writes:

  Again what brought the servile wars upon us except the excessive size of our establishments? How else could those armies of gladiators have arisen against their masters, save that a profuse expenditure, which aimed at conciliating the favour of the common people by indulging their love of shows, had turned what was originally a method of punishing enemies into a competition of skill?53

  He goes on to describe his second book: “We will, therefore now describe in their order all these domestic disturbances as distinct from foreign wars properly so called”.54

  Florus thus saw the imperial expansion as a direct cause of internal unrest; the huge wealth flowing into Rome destabilized that city and the individual fortunes that some of these successful generals gained were the source of trouble.

  The slave wars and the decline of the Roman Republic

  In a not dissimilar vein, Orosius wrote a very succinct account (he composed a history from the creation to 418 CE), and his was hostile: “Wherever they went the slaves indiscriminately mixed slaughter, arson, theft, and rape”.55 The slaves put on gladiatorial games (at the unlikely event of the funeral of a female prisoner who had killed herself because she had been raped by them), using 400 Roman prisoners. Orosius states explicitly what Florus had only implied: “Those who had once been the spectacle were now to be the spectators”.56 As if realizing that this makes them the equal of the Romans, he adds that they staged them not like military commanders but like gladiatorial entrepreneurs. Crassus’ decimation is not alluded to, but in the battle the Romans slew 6000 of the slaves and in the next engagement 30,000. In the final battle 60,000 men were killed, 6,000 taken prisoner and a further 3,000 escaped but were later hunted down. There is no mention of any heroism by Spartacus or the final crucifixion of the slaves by the Romans.

  Later, at the end of the fifth book, Orosius stresses the importance of this war which might appear insignificant because it was fought against slaves. Orosius emphasizes the disastrous losses for the Romans and the huge numbers involved. He ends: “As for the fugitive slaves themselves, the number of them who were slaughtered in the war surpassed 100,000”.57 The numbers involved had mushroomed by late antiquity. Wars against slaves were terrible to contemplate for the slave-owners. “Tot servi quot hostes” [All slaves are enemies]. They had an enemy within.

  When ancient writers analysed the fall of the republic they saw the slave wars as being part of the civil wars, fighting their own citizens and slaves. It was a sign of decline to be fighting slaves and, as Florus puts it, the reason the slaves could rebel was that there were so many of them. This is also very similar to the thesis put forward by Diodorus, who tells us most about the Sicilian slave wars.

  The works of Appian and Florus, together with Augustine, whose analysis will be briefly discussed later, show that ancient commentators thought the slave revolts were significant. Yet in some sense they had every reason to play down the revolts of slaves. In modern times, the view that one did not advertise slave rebellions for fear the news would get out to other slaves and give them ideas is well documented.58 The idea, which appeals to common sense, that slaves rebelling was a tremendous threat to the Romans should be taken more seriously: not just the uprising of Spartacus but those in Sicily too, although Spartacus brought the threat even closer to home by being in mainland Italy.

  Rome in the Late Republic by Beard and Crawford reveals, perhaps unsurprisingly, that they too see the decline as taking place in the same timescale as our ancient authors: “In some ways, as we have seen, it makes sense to regard Pompey as the first princeps”.59 Whereas Julius Caesar might seem the more obvious candidate for this, Beard and Crawford point out that Pompey was the turning point for the Republic:

  The example of Pompey was of particular importance. His early career, built entirely upon military success, culminated in 71: outside Rome and in command of his army, he obtained from the senate (no doubt with the unspoken threat of violent intervention) permission to stand for a consulship before holding any other elected office and a triumph. He proceeded later in the east to yet more striking forms of dominance, acting frequently without reference to the senate and occupying an almost royal position; coins were minted carrying his portrait; cities were named after him; religious cult was offered to him. Away from Rome, Pompey had gone far beyond what might now seem the tentative steps of Sulla. It was left only for Caesar, after the civil war, to apply these principles in Rome itself.60

  So they suggest that we view 71 BCE as a crucial date; Pompey gets a consulship the following year, that is, out of turn. Why was he allowed to acquire this? Because the Senate was terrified not only of Pompey’s army, but because the war against the slaves had only at that point been brought to an end.

  The starting-point for this decline for most commentators is the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus in 133 BCE. This coincides with the first Sicilian slave war, which was of course part of the motivation for Gracchus’ reforms anyway. Ancient writers described the slave wars as part of the disintegration of the system, as a symptom of the decline and indeed it may have been owing to this that they recorded them at all. They wanted to show the terrible dangers that the state had been in, and from which it had been rescued. Therefore they painted it in colours as dark as possible, which meant for once reporting the actions of slaves. That there were so many slaves was a direct result of the prosperity of the Romans, as Florus accurately described, as mentioned earlier.

  One of the problems of ancient history is that our remaining sources for the most part come from a very small segment of the total population and it is very difficult to reconstruct other voices and other opinions or alternative explanations. The Christians often took over the attitudes of their classical forebears but had strong reasons for sometimes providing a different interpretation of events. In Book 4 of the City of God, Augustine mentioned Spartacus, as he wanted to demonstrate what a great threat this rebellion was to the Romans. As he points out, the Roman Empire was at its height when a few gladiators threatened it:

  What I want to say is that when the Roman Empire was already great, when she had subjugated many nations and was feared by all the rest, t
his great Empire was bitterly distressed and deeply alarmed, and had the utmost difficulty in extricating herself from the threat of overwhelming disaster, when a tiny handful of gladiators in Campania escaped from the training school and collected a large army. Under three commanders they wrought cruel havoc over a wide area of Italy. Would our opponents tell us the name of the god who assisted them, so that from a small and contemptible gang of thugs they developed into a kingdom inspiring fear in the Romans for all Rome’s great resources and all her strongholds?61

  He goes on to say that the gladiators must have had divine help since:

  They broke the chains of their servile condition; they escaped; they got clean away; they collected a large and formidable army; and in obedience to the plans and orders of their “kings” they became an object of dread to the soaring might of Rome. They were more than a match for many Roman generals; they captured much booty; they gained many victories; they indulged themselves at will, following the prompting of every desire; in fact they lived in all the grandeur of kings, until their eventual defeat, which was only achieved with the greatest difficulty.62