Slave Revolts in Antiquity

by Urbainczyk, Theresa;

  Augustine had started Book 4 saying that even though the Roman Empire was longlasting it did not mean the gods favoured it, so he wanted to depict the troubles they had. He also wanted to show that the Roman Empire may have been big and it may have lasted a long time but it existed without justice (because it was pagan). Before mentioning the great achievements of the gladiators, he has a short chapter commenting that empires without justice are simply criminals on a large scale, which many today might find a sympathetic judgement. He illustrated his point with the following story:

  For it was a witty and truthful rejoinder which was given by a captured pirate to Alexander the Great. The king asked the fellow, “What is your idea, infesting the sea?” And the pirate answered, with uninhibited insolence, “The same as yours, in infesting the earth! But because I do it with a tiny craft, I’m called a pirate: because you have a mighty navy, you are called an emperor.”63

  Notes

  1. The significance of slave revolts

  1.

  It is commonplace but worth stating again that none of our ancient evidence comes from slaves. Jean Andreau and Raymond Descaut comment at the start of their recent work that we only hear about slaves from their masters and then they only talk about those they know personally. They remark that slaves are some of the forgotten people of history (Esclavage en Grèce et à Rome [Paris: Hachette, 2006], 9). This is true, but in the case of slave revolts even our small amount of evidence is not given the attention it deserves.

  2.

  Although see Keith Bradley’s invaluable Slavery and Rebellion in the Roman World 140 BC–70 BC (London: Batsford, 1989), to which I shall refer many times in the course of the following examination. The size of my debt to his work will be apparent and if I disagree with some of his observations, the scholarship contained in his volume has made my own task much easier.

  3.

  This might remind some readers of the observation in the UK Home Office White Paper Crime, Justice and Protecting the Public, Cm 965 (London: HMSO, 1990) that it was “unrealistic to construct sentencing arrangements on the assumption that most offenders will … base their conduct on rational calculation. Often they do not” (quoted by Phil Harris in his An Introduction to Law, 7th edn [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007], 328).

  4.

  Niall McKeown, The Invention of Ancient Slavery? (London: Duckworth, 2007).

  5.

  Ibid., 29. McKeown’s warnings about our preconceptions colouring our approaches are apposite but they should clarify our thoughts not paralyse us. It is not a question of taking the middle ground between those who accept the reports by the masters of their own good behaviour and those who see ill treatment everywhere. With regard to questions such as whether slaves were well or badly treated (see e.g. McKeown, The Invention of Ancient Slavery?, 30–51), it must be that some masters treated their slaves well; it may be that vast numbers of them did. This, however, does not make the institution of slavery more acceptable. What interests me are the actions of those slaves who fought against their masters, and therefore against slavery, in open armed warfare, and how the reports of those actions have been passed down to us today.

  6.

  For similar difficulties in the study of the modern phenomenon, see John Bracey’s foreword to Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts, 6th edn (New York: International Publishers, [1943] 1993), 3–10.

  7.

  Moses I. Finley, “Was Greek Civilisation Based on Slave Labour?”, Historia 8 (1959), 145–64, esp. 160; reprinted in his (edited) Slavery in Classical Antiquity: Views and Controversies, 53–72 (Cambridge: Heffer, 1960).

  8.

  The Communist Manifesto starts:

  The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

  It seems that many modern commentators on slave wars subscribe to this view since they say that the slave wars resulted in no change of society, and therefore are not significant. On the other hand, the ancient sources, as discussed in Chapter 6, did see the slave wars as part of a process in the Roman Republic that certainly did end in a revolutionary reconstitution of society, the principate. The approach here is, less ambitiously, a re-examination of these episodes as worth studying in their own right.

  9.

  Finley, “Was Greek Civilisation Based on Slave Labour?”, 160 (Slavery in Classical Antiquity, 68). On the other hand, the subject has been ignored by some historians because they have seen the important class struggle as being between poor and rich, not slave and free. For example, de Ste Croix quotes a passage from the preface to the second German edition of 1869 of Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: “In ancient Rome the class struggle took place only within a privileged minority, between the free rich and the free poor, while the great productive mass of the population, the slaves, formed the purely passive pedestal for these conflicts” (quoted in G. E. M. de Ste Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World: From the Archaic Age to the Arab Conquests [London: Duckworth, 1981], 61). Ste Croix professes not to subscribe to this definition but in this work gives surprisingly little attention to the fight between slave and free.

  10.

  Eugene Genovese, From Rebellion to Revolution: Afro-American Slave Revolts in the Making of the Modern World (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1979), xix.

  11.

  Ibid., xiv, xxi.

  12.

  Ibid., xviii.

  13.

  Jacky Dahomay, “Slavery and Law: Legitimations of an Insurrection”, in The Abolitions of Slavery: From the L. F. Sonthonax to Victor Schoelcher, 1793, 1794, 1848, M. Dorigny (ed.), 3–16 (Oxford: Berghahn, 2003), 4.

  14.

  Ibid., 12. See also David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1975), 137–48, on events in St Domingue. Although the ideological background is so different, one can see parallels with the late Republic, since France was involved in both internal and external wars thus offering an opportunity to the slaves, which they took.

  15.

  Finley, “Was Greek Civilisation Based on Slave Labour?”, 159 (Slavery in Classical Antiquity, 67).

  16.

  Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), vii.

  17.

  Kevin Bales, Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), 3.

  18.

  Ibid., 8. See also Kevin Bales, Understanding Global Slavery: A Reader (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005) and Ending Slavery: How We Free Today’s Slaves (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007). Estimates vary and people dispute the conditions that justify the term slavery, but no one denies that people around the world are being deprived of their liberty illegally and that this is very profitable. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime announced the launch of its Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking in March 2007. Andreau and Descaut start their study of ancient slavery by distinguishing ancient legal slavery from the modern illegal condition (Esclavage en Grèce et à Rome, 7–8).

  19.

  Genovese, From Rebellion to Revolution, 11–12. I have adapted his words to fit the ancient context. He expressed the conditions thus:

  (1) The master–slave relationship had developed in the context of absenteeism and depersonalization as well as greater cultural estrangement of whites and blacks; (2) economic distress and famine occurred; (3) slaveholding units approached the average size of one hundred to two hundred slaves, as in the sugar colonies, rather than twenty or
so, as in the Old South; (4) the ruling class frequently split either in warfare between slaveholding countries or in the bitter struggles within a particular slaveholding country; (5) blacks heavily outnumbered whites; (6) African-born slaves outnumbered those born into American slavery (creoles); (7) the social structure of the slaveholding regime permitted the emergence of an autonomous black leadership; and (8) the geographical, social and political environment provided terrain and opportunity for the formation of colonies of runaway slaves strong enough to threaten the plantation regime.

  He carries on to observe

  the list may be extended, refined and subdivided but taken together, these conditions spelled one: the military and political balance of power. Slave revolts might anywhere, anytime flare up in response to the central fact of enslavement; no particular provocation or condition was indispensable. But the probabilities for large-scale revolt rested heavily on some combination of these conditions. (Ibid., 12)

  20.

  Paul Cartledge, “Rebels and Sambos in Classical Greece: A Comparative View”, reprinted in his Spartan Reflections, 127–52 (London: Duckworth, 2001) took these factors and applied them to Greek history. In his discussion of the first point, Cartledge remarks: “We are plunged straight into the fundamental but predictably contentious area of slave ideology and psychology” (ibid., 135). Later he returns to this and, after commenting that Genovese had not ranked these items in order of importance, remarks: “But I think he would not be unwilling to accept that (1) the factor that may be shortly summarised as slave ideology was at bottom the most decisive of them all” (ibid., 146). As we shall see, this is not the view put forward here.

  21.

  For a full discussion of the issue, see Ingomar Weiler, Die Beendigung des Sklavenstatus im Altertum. Ein Beitrag zur vergleichenden Sozialgeschichte (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2003), 73–111.

  22.

  Mark Golden, “The Uses of Cross-cultural Comparison in Ancient Social History”, Classical Views/Echos du monde classique 36(11) (1992), 309–11, esp. 311. Keith Bradley, Slavery and Society at Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 180, makes a similar point.

  23.

  Orlando Patterson, “Slavery and Slave Revolts: A Socio-Historical Analysis of the First Maroon War, Jamaica 1655–1740”, Social and Economic Studies 19(3) (1970), 289–325, esp. 289.

  24.

  Genovese, From Rebellion to Revolution, 1–50. For those not familiar with the history of these slave societies, the success of some maroon communities, that is, groups of runaway slaves living independently of their masters, may seem remarkable. For an overview, see Richard Price, “Maroons and their Communities”, in The Slavery Reader, G. Heuman & J. Walvin (eds), 608–25 (London: Routledge, 2003), and Stuart B. Schwartz, “Resistance and Accommodation in Eighteenth-century Brazil”, also in The Slavery Reader, 623–34. For slave revolts in Latin America see Leslie B. Rout, The African Experience in Spanish America: 1502 to the Present Day (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 99–125. On Brazil, see also Stuart B. Schwartz, Slaves, Peasants and Rebels: Reconsidering Brazilian Slavery (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 103–36. The maroon community of Palmares lasted virtually for the whole of the seventeenth century, 1605–94, and is thought to have been made up of more than 20,000 people. One might think that the authorities must have turned a blind eye to its existence but in fact it fought to survive and was attacked yearly for some of its history. Despite the apparent defeat of the community at the end of the seventeenth century, fugitive slaves headed there as late as 1746 (ibid., 124). For forms of resistance including maroons in Bourbon in the second half of the eighteenth century, see Prosper Ève, “Forms of Resistance in Bourbon, 1750–1789”, in The Abolitions of Slavery: From the L. F. Sonthonax to Victor Schoelcher, 1793, 1794, 1848, M. Dorigny (ed.), 17–39 (Oxford: Berghahn, 2003).

  25.

  Genovese, From Rebellion to Revolution, 7. Involved in this question is the issue of how slaves were treated. Those wishing to put a favourable gloss on what might be considered a shameful episode in the history of the United States had argued that the American masters treated their slaves better than masters in the Caribbean or Brazil. However, Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts, revealed that there were continual attempts on the part of slaves to resist their slavery, rather as Patterson had described being the case in Jamaica. Genovese’s contribution was to point to the different ratio of slaves to free in these societies.

  26.

  Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts, 150–61. Winthrop D. Jordan’s Tumult and Silence at Second Creek: An Inquiry into a Civil War Slave Conspiracy (Baton Rouge. LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1993) is an excellent example of how evidence of rebellious slaves can remain hidden, and yet what a fascinating story can be told if a historian has the will to investigate. I am grateful to Kevin Bales for alerting me to this work.

  27.

  Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts, 161. It is far less likely that there are records of outbreaks from antiquity that are completely unknown. But it seems probable that many instances were never recorded or, if they were, these records are now lost.

  28.

  Ibid., 374.

  29.

  Kenneth S. Greenberg (ed.), Nat Turner: A Slave Rebellion in History and Memory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), xi, emphasis added.

  30.

  Digest, 1, 5; Thomas Wiedemann, Greek and Roman Slavery (London: Routledge, 1981), 15.

  31.

  For discussion see Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, 38–45.

  32.

  Moses I. Finley, Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980), 113–14. He goes on to write that the reason for the ancient wars was the crisis of Roman society and the presence of newly enslaved men, many educated and of high enough social status to be leaders. This restriction of slave wars to the three in the Roman Republic is echoed by many scholars. For instance, Peter Green remarks: “The Roman slave revolts of the second and first centuries BC were unique. Nothing like them had ever happened before, and after the final suppression of Spartacus in 70 BC no comparable uprising ever took place again” (“The First Sicilian Slave War”, Past and Present 20 [1961], 10–29, esp. 10). Joseph Vogt has a similar start to his chapter on slave rebellions: “Everyone who considers the great slave revolts of the ancient world will be struck by the fact that they all occurred in the relatively short period of time between 140 BC and 70 BC” (Ancient Slavery and the Ideal of Man, T. Wiedemann [trans.] [Oxford: Blackwell, 1974], 39). And Keith Bradley introduces his book on the topic with the following remark:

  In the seventy years between 140 BC and 70 BC Rome was confronted by three major insurrections of slaves.… This series of events was unique in Rome’s history, for slave uprisings on such a dramatic scale had never been known beforehand and similar episodes were never to recur despite the long endurance of slavery in the Roman world. (Slavery and Rebellion, xi)

  It is by no means clear that this is the case since one could argue that our knowledge of these events merely reflects the survival of a limited number of ancient texts.

  2. Preparing for revolt

  1.

  See Geoffrey Rickman, The Corn Supply of Ancient Rome (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 104–6, on the importance of Sicily as a supplier of corn for Rome during this period and later. Even before this time, in the first half of the second century BCE in Italy, there had been a series of incidents that had involved slaves, to quell which Rome had sent several armies. There is not much evidence remaining, however, only some paragraphs in Livy (Livy, History of Rome, 32.26.4–18; 33.36.1–3; 37.2.1, 6–7; 37.50.13; 38.36.1; 39.8.3–9.1, 17.4–6, 18.7; 39.29.8–9; 39.41.6–7; 40.19.9–10) and an inscription (Corpus Inscripionum Latinarum [CIL] [Berlin: Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1863–], I2, no. 581). Maria Capozza wrote a study of early revolts for which we have evidence from the period 501–184 BCE: Movime
nti servili nel mondo romano in età repubblicana. I. Dal 501 al 184 a. Cr., Università degli Studi di Padova, Istituto di Storia antica, 5 (Rome: Università degli Studi di Padova, 1966). She looked at eight uprisings that took place in 501, 460, 419, 259, 217, 198, 196 and 185–4 BCE.

  2.

  The state of Diodorus’ text, however, is not unproblematic. See Chapter 6 for the state of Diodorus’ narrative about the slave wars and its preservation, albeit in abbreviated form, in the ninth century CE by Photius and in the tenth by the composers of the Excerpts of Constantine. The Loeb edition of Diodorus’ Bibliotheca (or Library of History), volume 12 (for Books 33–40), indicates which passages come from which summary.

  3.

  Diodorus, 34/35.2.1.

  4.

  Discussed by Karl Bücher, Die Aufstände der unfreien Arbeiter 143–129 (Frankfurt: C. Adelmann, 1874), 121–32. See also Green, “The First Sicilian Slave War”, 28–9, with a reply by W. G. G. Forrest and T. C. W. Stinton, “The First Sicilian Slave War”, Past and Present 22 (1962), 87–92. Brent D. Shaw, Spartacus and the Slave Wars: A Brief History with Documents (Boston, MA: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2001), 79, accepts Green’s preference for 135 BCE, and Bradley, Slavery and Rebellion, 59, does not commit himself.

  5.

  Diodorus, as reported in the Excerpts of Constantine, narrates that naked slaves approached their brutal master, Damophilus to ask him for clothing and he suggested that they take supply themselves by taking their clothes from those travelling through the country! (Diodorus, 34/35.2.36).

  6.

  Diodorus, 34/35.2.3.

  7.

  See, for instance, F. R. Walton’s note in Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, 12 vols, F. R. Walton (trans.), Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), vol. 12, 57 n.2, and Shaw, Spartacus and the Slave Wars, 81, n.1. Appian, Civil Wars, 1.22, describes the reforms.