Slave Revolts in Antiquity

by Urbainczyk, Theresa;

  91.

  Timothy Duff, Plutarch’s Lives: Exploring Vice and Virtue (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 270. He goes on to point out that Plutarch appears to contradict the lives in his comparison by elevating Crassus’ military exploits and finding things to praise in them. It could surely be the case that Romans are allowed to be superior in military matters and that it would not look good if the comparisons were totally one-sided. Plutarch does try to be even-handed on the surface. However, there is no doubting the fact that he has contempt for Crassus. See also C. Pelling, “Plutarch and Roman Politics”, in Essays on Plutarch’s Lives, B. Scardigli (ed.), 319–59 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 322–3, on the Life of Crassus.

  92.

  “Most Lives also utilize ‘internal comparisons’ whereby the hero is compared with other leading figures in the narrative” (J. L. Moles [trans. with intro. and comm.], Plutarch: The Life of Cicero [Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1988], 19).

  93.

  Οὐ μόνον φρόνημα μέγα καὶ ῥώμην ἔχων ἀλλὰ καί συνέσει καὶ πρᾳότητι τη̑ς τύχης ἀμείνον καὶ του̑ γένους ἑλληνικώτερος. Τούτῳ δε λέγουσιν, ὅτε πρω̑τον εἰς Ῥώμην ὤνιος ἤχθη (Plutarch, Life of Crassus, 8, Shaw’s translation in Spartacus and the Slave Wars). The sentence before is ἀνήρ Θρα̣̑ξ του̑ νομαδικου̑ γένους [Spartacus was a Thracian, born among a pastoral nomadic people]. Konrat Ziegler, “Die Herkunft des Spartacus”, Hermes 83 (1955), 248–50, argues that the Greek text should read Μαιδικου̑ rather than νομαδικου̑, so that we should read this as that he was from the Maidi tribe in Thrace. Zivka Velkova, “Der Name Spartakus”, in Spartacus, Danov and Fol (eds) (1981), 195–8, gives information on other instances of this typically Thracian name, which occurs in a surprising number of places, and is also the name of some Bosporean rulers (see Diodorus, 12.31.1, 12.36.1, 14.93.1, 20.100.7), although on inscriptions and coins the name is spelled “Spartokos”. Jähne, Spartacus, 173, for instance, refers to Theodor Mommsen’s theory that Spartacus came from Bosporus (Römische Geschichte, Book 5 [1885]). T. Todorov, “De l’Origine de Spartacus”, in Spartacus, Danov and Fol (eds) (1981), 199–201, argues that Spartacus was not Maidic but Odrysian. J. Kolendo, “Comment Spartacus devient-il esclave?”, in Spartacus, Danov and Fol (eds) (1981), 71–7, suggests that Spartacus had been a mercenary soldier in the auxiliary troops of the Roman army but fell foul of the authorities and became a slave.

  94.

  In the Life of Cato the Elder, 23, Plutarch describes Cato’s contempt for Greeks and their culture. Plutarch says “he was opposed on principle to the study of philosophy, and because his patriotic fervour made him regard the whole of Greek culture and its methods of education with contempt”. He also did not trust Greek physicians and treated himself and his family with his own methods. Plutarch describes these and then adds mischievously, “However his self-sufficiency in these matters seems to have been justly punished, for he lost both his wife and his son by disease” (ibid., 24). A little earlier his brutal nature was revealed in the callous way he treated his slaves and Plutarch ends this chapter with a damning note on his character: “But he certainly went too far when he ventured once to declare that the man who deserved the highest praise, indeed who should be honoured almost as a god, was the one who at the end of his life was found to have added to his property more than he had inherited” (ibid., 21). This is discussed by Pelling, “Plutarch: Roman Heroes and Greek Culture”, 214–15.

  95.

  The killing of his horse is discussed by Stampacchia, La Tradizione della guerra, 146–7 in connection with religious sacrifice, and see also Antonio Guarino, Spartakus: Analyse eines Mythos, B. Gullath (trans.) (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch, 1980), 66.

  96.

  This is highlighted by the way Plutarch describes the death of this pair: Spartacus died fighting and his body was never found; Crassus’ body on the other hand suffered maltreatment after his undignified death, and his head was used as a prop in a production of Euripides’ play, the Bacchae at the Parthian court. See Plutarch, Life of Crassus, 31–3.

  97.

  On Appian’s work see Emilio Gabba, Appiano e la Storia delle Guerre civili (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1956); P. J. Cuff, “Prolegomena to a Critical Edition of Appian BC 1”, Historia 16 (1967), 177–88; and Alain M. Gowing, The Triumviral Narratives of Appian and Cassius Dio (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1992).

  98.

  Appian, Civil Wars, 1.14, 116.

  99.

  Mount Vesuvius was a suitable place, perhaps, because the revolt is rather like a volcano, a comparison made by Orosius in his account of the second Sicilian war. Florus says that Vesuvius was suitable for such ravening monsters (“prima sedes velut rabidis beluis mons Vesuvius placuit”) (Florus, Epitome of Roman History, 2.8), but H. T. Wallinga, “Bellum Spartacium: Florus’ Text and Spartacus’ Objective”, Athenaeum 70(80) (1992), 25–43, esp. 31–4, points out that Vesuvius is hardly suitable since it was seen as a paradise, being so fertile.

  100.

  Shaw, Spartacus and the Slave Wars, 140 n.6, writes that Appian is confused: the praetor Gaius Claudius Glaber was sent out.

  101.

  Appian, Civil Wars, 1.14.119.

  102.

  Ibid., 1.14.119.

  103.

  See Marshall, “Crassus’ Ovation in 71 BC”, on Crassus’ attitude to Pompey, and Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, 5.6.20–23, on Crassus’ crown of laurel.

  104.

  Grünewald’s dismissal of our accounts is too extreme: “when it came to dealing with bandits Roman historians became novelists … The latro was no more than an imaginary character in this imaginary state, a character who had never actually drawn breath, a myth” (Bandits in the Roman Empire, 164–6). While it may be true that some of the heroic features are overdrawn, it is not true to say that there were no individuals who performed the actions of Eunus, Salvius or Spartacus. Rather than rejecting all our sources as fiction, it is more productive to ask why such favourable pictures were drawn and what role these heroes play in the representation of Roman history.

  105.

  Richard J. A. Talbert, “The Role of Helots in the Class Struggle at Sparta”, Historia 38 (1989), 22–40, esp. 30.

  106.

  Hesychius of Alexandria, Hesychii Alexandrini Lexicon, 2 vols, K. Latte (ed.) (Haunia: Ejnar Munksgaard Editore, 1953, 1966). This word occurs in vol. 2, p. 676.

  107.

  Talbert, “The Role of Helots”, 39.

  108.

  Michael Whitby also challenges the conventional view of the Spartans as constantly afraid of their own workforce, who rebel on every conceivable opportunity: “I prefer the alternative of a Sparta whose citizens were sufficiently arrogant to believe the myths of their own superiority” (“Two Shadows: Images of Spartans and Helots”, in The Shadow of Sparta, A. Powell & S. Hodkinson [eds], 87–126 [London: Routledge, 1994], 111). His argument is that although the Spartans may have cruelly exploited their helots, they were not afraid of them. Unfortunately for him as well, this means disregarding virtually all the ancient evidence, including the testimony of Thucydides and Aristotle, no mean opponents as he himself admits: “Thus the two most intelligent ancient sources, Thucydides and Aristotle, support the negative interpretation. But intelligent judgments need not be right or universally valid and this may be true of Sparta” (ibid., 108). He doubts the reality of the slaughter of 2,000 helots related by Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War (Whitby, “Two Shadows”, 98) and refers to Talbert, “The Role of Helots”, as if the latter had some arguments in favour of his view apart from the fact that he did not believe it. In fact, all Talbert writes is: “Assuming that the story is to be credited at all” (“The Role of Helots”, 24).

  109.

  The Bacchanalian conspiracies mentioned by Livy in his account of
the early second century may be apposite here. The authorities viewed them as religious groups, but also involving slaves.

  5. The ideology of the slaves

  1.

  Similarly, modern scholars have marvelled at the lack of prospects for the Nat Turner rebellion: “Although Nat may not yet have recognised it, his rebellion was already disintegrating … In fact, few uprisings have ever been so ill prepared and unplanned” (T. C. Parramore, “Covenant in Jerusalem”, in Nat Turner: A Slave Rebellion in History and Memory, K. S. Greenberg [ed.], 58–76 [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003], 61). For a general discussion of the dismissal of this rebellion see Egerton, “Nat Turner in a Hemispheric Context”.

  2.

  Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 5.102. The Melians, of course, were then annihilated by the Athenians, but most readers understand the reasoning for their holding out. And, in fact, they are successful at first.

  3.

  οἱ ἄνθρωποι ἐπιθυμου̑σι μὲν ἐλεύθεροι ἐ̑ιναι μάλιστα πάντων, καὶ φασι τὴνἐλευθερίανμέγιστοντω̑νἀγαθω̑ν, τὴνδὲδουλείαναἰσχιστονκαὶδυστυχέστατονὑπαρχειν (Dio Chrysostom, On Slavery and Freedom, 1.1).

  4.

  W. L. Westermann, “Between Slavery and Freedom”, American Historical Review 50(2) (1945), 213–27, quotes Abraham Lincoln observing the same thing, and he points out that things have not improved since 1864 and that we still mean different things by it. “There are few words more vague in their connotations, more expansible and more subject to distortion than these two – freedom and slavery” (ibid., 213).

  5.

  Genovese, From Rebellion to Revolution, starts with the rousing statement: “Enslavement in any form has figured as the antithesis of that individual autonomy considered the essence of freedom in modern societies. The revolt against slavery thus emerged as the basic assertion of human dignity and of humanity itself” (ibid., 3). Few today would disagree with this formulation of the issue. Jean-Jacques Rousseau started The Social Contract with a discussion of slavery, with the assumption that this was bad and freedom was good: “Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains” (The Social Contract, M. Cranston [trans.] [Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968], 1.1). He goes on: “To renounce freedom is to renounce one’s humanity, one’s rights as a man and equally one’s duties” (ibid., 1.4). See Paul Cartledge, The Greeks: A Portrait of Self and Others, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 156–66, on Greek ideas of freedom. Kurt A. Raaflaub, The Discovery of Freedom in Ancient Greece, rev. and updated, R. Franciscono (trans.) (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004) gives an idea of the complexity of the topic. For some caustic remarks on the importance of the contribution of the Greeks to our notion of freedom see Goody, The Theft of History, 55–8.

  6.

  See Price, “Maroons and their Communities”, which gives a brief overview of the violent rebellions in this period before going on to talk about maroons and their communities. Rout, The African Experience in Spanish America, ch. 4, gives a fascinating list and description of the continual slave uprisings, some impressively large and longlasting, in South and Central America in the same period. See also Schwartz, Slaves, Peasants and Rebels, 106–7, for a list of maroon communities in Bahia, Brazil 1614–1826.

  7.

  See Weiler, Die Beendigung des Sklavenstatus, 115–45, on the wish for freedom, and the assumption among the owners that this is what slaves wanted. Price remarks: “During the past several decades, historical scholarship has done much to dispel the myth of the ‘docile slave’” (“Maroons and their Communities” 608).

  8.

  Plato, Republic, Book 9, 578e–579b.

  9.

  In the dialogue Gorgias Plato puts into the mouth of Callicles the sentiments expressed in Book 1 of the Republic: that justice is a trick played on the stronger, whereas nature intended the stronger to win, not be restrained by rules and convention. He goes on to say:

  But I fancy, when some man arises with a nature of sufficient force, he shakes off all that we have taught him, bursts his bonds and breaks free; he tramples underfoot our codes and juggleries, our charms and laws which are all against nature; our slave rises in revolt and shows himself our master, and there dawns the full light of natural justice.

  (Plato, Gorgias, 484A)

  Earlier, Callicles had asked: “For how can a man be happy if he is a slave to anybody at all?” (ibid., 481E).

  10.

  Xenophon, Hiero, 3.4.5. The Greek word is πίστις, the primary meaning of which is trust in others.

  11.

  πολι̑ται γὰρ δορυφορου̑σι μὲν ἀλλὴλους ά̇νευ μισθου̑ ἐπὶ τοὺς δούλους (ibid., 3.4.3).

  12.

  Lysias, Speech 7, emphasis added.

  13.

  See Seneca, Epistulae, 47.5, and Macrobius, Saturnalia, 1.11.13, discussed by J. Christes, “Sklaverei in griechischen Sprichwörtern und Sentenzen”, in Funfzig Jahre Forschungen zur antiken Sklaverei an der Mainzer Akademie 1950–2000: Miscellanea zum Jubiläum, H. Bellen & H. Heinen (eds), 429–46 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2001), 442.

  14.

  “Quos viceris amicos tibi esse cave credas. Inter dominum et servum nulla amicitia est” (Quintus Curtius Rufus, History of Alexander, 7.8.28).

  15.

  Vogt, Ancient Slavery and the Ideal of Man, 130.

  16.

  “Among domestic slaves in particular, there were many who reciprocated their master’s good will and concern for them by industrious and dedicated work; there were always slaves who were dependable” (ibid., 129–45, esp. 130). Fridolf Kudlien, Sklaven-Mentalität im Spiegel antiker Wahrsagerei (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1991), similarly emphasizes this aspect of slavery; his work is discussed carefully by McKeown, The Invention of Ancient Slavery?, 30–41.

  17.

  Vogt quotes a passage from Velleius Paterculus’ Roman History that says that the wives of the proscribed were very loyal, the freedmen quite loyal, the slaves fairly loyal but the sons not at all: “id tamen notandum est fuisse in proscriptos uxorum fidem summam, libertorum mediam, servorum aliquam, filiorum nullam” (2,67,2). Velleius’ main point is that the sons were treacherous, not that the slaves were not.

  18.

  One might see a similarity with the fate of women in antiquity, whose voices are also not heard. When one reads Pliny the Younger’s description of the devotion of his wife, it is not difficult to imagine that his own wife may not have used the same terms to describe her own feelings:

  She is highly intelligent and extremely frugal; she loves me, which is a sign of chastity. Her love for me has made her take up books. She reads and rereads my writings and even memorises them … When I read my own work aloud, she sits discreetly behind a curtain and soaks up the praise. She accompanies herself on the lyre as she sings my verses, with no instructor but love, the best teacher of all. (Letters, 4.19)

  19.

  For a useful collection of the sources on Spartacus, see Stampacchia, La Tradizione della guerra. See ibid., 163–7, for the passages by Cicero.

  20.

  Aristotle, Politics, 1.3, emphasis added. This is discussed by Giuseppe Cambiano, who writes: “The opponents of slavery did not hold a current opinion: in that sense their view was paradoxical. Almost certainly they were either isolated intellectuals or members of some exclusive group; nor is there any evidence to show that they were slaves themselves” (“Aristotle and the Anonymous Opponents of Slavery”, in Classical Slavery, M. L. Finley [ed.], 28–52 [London: Cass, 1987], 29). And yet this group was rather more numerous than the group that thought that women might have had some intellectual capacities, judging by the relative space Aristotle devoted to a defence of slavery and to the situation of women. He felt no need to explain or justify this latter phenomenon and it seems to me that he would not have spent as much
time as he did on slavery if these “isolated intellectuals” had not raised the issue. See also Nicholas D. Smith, “Aristotle’s Theory of Natural Slavery”, in A Companion to Aristotle’s Politics, D. Keyt and F. D. Miller (eds), 142–55 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991) on Aristotle’s theory of natural slavery, and Malcolm Schofield, Saving the City: Philosopher-Kings and Other Classical Paradigms (London: Routledge, 1999), 115–50, esp. 133–7, on the opponents of slavery. Schofield, however, is more interested in Aristotle’s argument than in what the passage may tell us about other views.

  21.

  Plutarch, Comparison of Lycurgus and Numa, 1.5. This idea of a golden age when men had no slaves and had been happy was a commonplace in antiquity; see Vogt, Ancient Slavery and the Ideal of Man, 27–8. Dawson gives details of some utopias without slaves; see for instance Cities of the Gods, 135–6, 142, 158 n.50, 152, 178. See Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, rev. and expanded (Oxford: Oxford University Press [1957], 1970), 187–90, on the ancient background to the millenarianism of the Middle Ages. Virgil’s fourth eclogue and Horace’s sixteenth epode both evoke the age of Saturn, where men are delivered from all evils, and nature supplies all human needs, and in Aeneid Book 6, Virgil has Anchises prophesy the new golden age brought in by Augustus. N. A. Mashkin, “Eschatology and Messianism in the Final Period of the Roman Republic”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 10(2) (1949), 206–28, argues that during the period of the late Republic, doctrines of the end of injustice with the miraculous coming of happier times flourished, and it was documents such as these that Augustus had destroyed when he came to power. Suetonius tells us that “Augustus collected all the copies of Greek and Latin prophetic verse then current, the work of either anonymous or unrespected authors, and burned more than two thousand. He kept only the Sibylline books and edited even these” (Life of Augustus, 31). Augustus seems to have been fond of book-burning. Appian tells us that in 36 BCE, after defeating Sextus Pompeius, he commanded that all records of his earlier career be burned (Roman History, 5.132.548).