This was in 202 B.C.; fifty-six years later the city of Carthage was finally destroyed, after a siege that lasted three years, during which the Romans built a stone wall across the harbour, and ultimately walled in the doomed city. Such resistance shows well enough that even the defeat at Zama had not destroyed the resources nor the vitality of the great Phoenician nation.
During the time which intervened between the two wars, the south was going through those slow changes which led to the wars of the revolted slaves, from the moral effect of which Sicily never altogether recovered, and which were the first beginning of a certain lawlessness among the country population which is felt at the present day. I am not aware that any writer has taken this point of view, but it is a reasonable one, nevertheless. Reviewing the whole previous history of the island, it is clear that until the Roman conquest was completed, the Sicilians had never been united. Not only had the Phoenician element been in opposition and often at war with the Greek, but both had been, from time to time, at odds with the Sicelians, who, though hellenized like the Sicilian Phoenicians, preserved, like them, the prejudices and characteristics of a distinct race. Besides these there were the Mamertines, the descendants of a wild band of discharged mercenaries, who were responsible for the outbreak of the first Punic war, and who would not naturally live on good terms with the other three divisions of the population. All these were made one by force under the Roman domination, and the condition of a common subjection united all those who did not profit by it in that common hatred of authority which is the mainspring of the Mafia to‑day. It is hardly necessary to say that the great majority of those who were oppressed were slaves, and that the numbers were constantly increasing at a time when the slave trade was immensely profitable. In Delos, the central slave market of the Aegean, ten thousand slaves were bought and sold in a single day. They were collected from all the shores of the Mediterranean, and often from far up the interior of Africa. Pirate vessels of all sorts engaged in the business, as being easier under most circumstances than robbery on the high sea, besides being perfectly legal.
It seems impossible to form an estimate of the number of slaves owned in Sicily, still less in Italy, at any one time. Holm, who has collected information from every quarter and has probably left no source unexplored, says that there were Carthaginians who owned as many as twenty thousand slaves. A freedman of Augustus, whose property was reduced, left over four thousand at his death. The usual authorities state that two hundred were a fair number for an ordinary citizen. There were, of course, a good many small farmers in the interior of Sicily, who owned very few, and worked in the fields themselves; but the general tendency was towards extensive culture as contrasted with intensive culture, and towards those very large holdings which have continued to exist in the south to the present day. The Nelson property in Sicily, inherited by Lord Bridport, Duke of Brontë, is now •eighty miles round, and there were doubtless even larger estates under the Romans, worked altogether by slaves, at a time when there were no free tenant farmers. It is safe, I think, to assume that, at the very least, two-thirds of the whole population were slaves at the time of the slave wars.
No one can suppose for a moment that any moral authority could control such a body of bondsmen, many of whom were doubtless rough men of great strength and savage instincts, who feared nothing but pain and starvation, and respected nothing but the master’s display of force. We do not know on what principle they were selected for different occupations, but it is certain that those who suffered most were ordinary farm labourers, who worked in irons under ruthless overseers, receiving a pound of barley or wheat daily, with a little oil and salt, for their fare, and being lodged in wretched quarters, often under ground. In Rome, only runaways were branded like thieves, on the principle that in trying to escape they were stealing themselves from their masters; but in Sicily all were branded alike with their owner’s marks, like cattle. It is certain, however, that the slaves who herded cattle were mounted, and armed for the defence of herds and flocks, like the mounted herdsmen of the present time in the Roman Campagna; and to this day the southern herdsman invariably carries a small axe, a very dangerous weapon nearly of the size and model of an Indian tomahawk. It is a privilege peculiar to him, in a country where it is a punishable offence for a labourer to carry a pointed knife.
Holm argues acutely that the only possible way in which a slave could improve his condition was by turning highwayman. He had no other choice, since, being branded in the face, he could not possibly pass for a freeman anywhere in the known world at that time. It is a singular fact that modern Sicilians of the lower classes, with whom I have talked long and familiarly, attribute the ineradicable tendency to brigandage to the oppression of the large landholders, saying in Holm’s own words that when the peasant can no longer live he has no choice but to turn robber. This is of course not universally true, but it indicates a surprising duration of the same conditions under widely different institutions. Between the state of the slave in the Roman times and that of the legally oppressed small tenant of to‑day there is not much to choose, in theory; in practice, there is the difference between the lash and the law.
Now in ancient Sicily a singular position of affairs was soon reached. Slaves ran away and formed bands of brigands, but they very naturally attacked the weak and almost defenceless small farmers and left the rich and powerful unmolested. Many of the runaways were slaves of Roman knights, and the authorities let them alone, because if any one but the owner punished a slave, the owner could bring an action to recover damages for a personal injury. On the other hand, when the brigands had murdered a small farmer and plundered his land, they immediately disappeared into the mountains, and the nearest rich man found it convenient to appropriate the ownerless property; so that there may even been an understanding between the great landlords and the brigands, such as has been seen in Sicily in our own times, between the bandits and small landlords, for the purpose of plundering the rich.
The first outbreak of the first slave insurrection had its origin in Henna, now Castrogiovanni, which rises from the great valley of the interior like a volcano, opposite its twin height, Calascibetta. There, in a palace that was half a stronghold, dwelt a rich man called Damophilus with his wife Megallis. Their great estates lay far below, cultivated by thousands of slaves, and in the city there were others perhaps as rich and powerful as themselves. These two, however, were known throughout the country for the splendour of the state they kept and the barbarous cruelty with which they treated their human chattels. They had one daughter, their only child, of a temper very different from theirs, for she was kind and gentle. Now among the slaves of another master in Henna there was one Eunus, a Syrian of some education and skilled in the tricks of Oriental magic. It is hard to judge of the man’s character from the account Diodorus has left us [XXXIV‑XXXV.2.5‑18]. Among the many oppressed he was an enthusiast for liberty, where all were ignorant he possessed a little learning, where there was no hope he pointed to a far-off glimmer of freedom. To his companions he seemed half a god, to his masters he appeared to be a clever conjurer; he had learned the secret of eating fire and blowing it from his mouth, and among his fellow-slaves he enhanced the solemnity of his utterances by this means, and they listened with reverence and awe to prophecies that were accompanied by such a portent. The great men of Henna, when they feasted in company, used to send for him and make him exhibit his skill; and with an earnestness which amused them and convinced the slaves who were present in the hall, he used to prophesy amidst a shower of sparks that he should one day be king. Then the guests laughed and jestingly implored that he would treat them graciously when he should come to his kingdom; and he answered with much dignity that he would show mercy to all present. So they, being well pleased, gave him choice titbits from the feast and bade him remember thereafter that they were his friends.
At this time, when he had attained to a great reputation, the suffering slaves and of Damophilus and Megallis came to
him secretly and inquired whether the gods would be gracious to them if they revolted. Eunus consulted the oracles of the future for them, and bade them revolt at once. In an incredibly short time four hundred slaves under the command of the fire-eating soothsayer set the whole city in an uproar; thousands of slaves joined them as soon as their intentions were understood, and before night the streets of Henna ran with the blood of the slave-owners, of their wives and of their children. For the rabble spared no living thing, and when Damophilus and his wife were found in one of their country houses, for the revolt had begun in their absence, a band of slaves brought them with their hands bound behind them into the city and led them to the theatre to be judged. The master died an easy death, for while he was pleading his own cause two of his own slaves sprang upon him with swords, and as the one stabbed him to the heart the other struck off his head at a blow. But the lady Megallis was given over to her own female slaves, and they tortured her as she had tortured them and worse, and when there was little life in her they threw her, still breathing, from the cliff. Her daughter was not hurt. These things being done to the full satisfaction of the multitude, the word of Eunus was fulfilled, for they elected him forthwith to be their king. His first royal act was to order a general massacre of slave-owners, and with his own hand he slew his own masters; but, strange to say, he kept his word to those who, when guests at their table, had treated him kindly. The only free men who were spared in Henna were the armourers, whose skill was needed in order to supply the insurgents with weapons, and who were now themselves made slaves. Eunus took the title of Antiochus, and in three days raised a nondescript force of six thousand men, armed chiefly with slings, axes, scythes, skewers, and pointed staves hardened in the fire.
It has already been said that the Roman power was maintained in the island more by the fear of Rome’s name than by the presence of any military force. The Sicilian freemen had well-nigh forgotten the use of arms in the long peace, there were few troops in the island, and these were stationed at such places as Lilybaeum, Panormus, and Messina. The Sicilians were taken by surprise, and before they could organize any means of defence the rising had assumed the most dangerous proportions. A Cilician named Cleo, who had been a highway robber in his home, but was engaged in horse-breeding in Sicily, was attracted by the prospect of plunder, raised five thousand men as well disposed as himself, in the neighbourhood of Agrigentum, and proceeded to join forces with Eunus, leaving a broad tract of destruction behind him as he went up the interior. The junction was effected before the praetor of the island was able to get together a force of eight thousand men. The slave army met him, twenty thousand strong, and he was defeated. Soon afterwards no less than two hundred thousand slaves were in arms.
The indifference of the great landholders to the safety of the small free farmers, whose little possessions they coveted, has been already explained. It had produced its natural result, and the free farmers soon saw that if they joined themselves to the insurgent slaves they could have ample revenge. They rose in great numbers, and the insurrection speedily became a general revolution of poverty against wealth. As often happens in such cases, this meant anarchy. The poor freemen of the city, wholly ignorant of the condition of the small farmers, whom the slaves regarded as their allies, plundered them wholesale, and the result was a sort of general and indiscriminate guerilla warfare.
It was evident that the Roman garrison of Sicily was totally unable to cope with the difficulty; moreover, slaves revolted at the same time in Greece and Macedonia and in other places; it was said that a slave conspiracy was on foot in Rome itself.
This state of things had already lasted the greater part of six years before the Romans succeeded in gaining a decided advantage. Publius Rupilius, the consul in 132 B.C., who had begun life himself as a tax-gatherer in Sicily, finally quelled the first outbreak. He besieged the slaves in Tauromenium, and reduced them to such straits that they devoured their women and children, and at last began to eat each other. Their commander was a certain Comanus, a brother of Cleo, the horse-breeder. Slavelike, he abandoned his comrades and escaped from the city, but was taken and brought before the consul. Being asked questions about the state of the city, he bent down, drawing his over his head as if to shade his eyes and collect his thoughts, and then, for he was a very strong man, he set his hand to his throat and crushed his windpipe in his own grip, so that he fell dead at the consul’s feet. Soon afterwards the city was betrayed to the Romans by a Syrian, and the greater part of the slaves were hurled from the cliff. Last of all Cleo and Eunus retired to the impregnable city of Henna, where the outbreak had begun. Being almost starved to despair Cleo had the courage to attack the Romans in the open, but he was beaten and the city surrendered. Untold thousands of slaves were massacred, but Eunus escaped with less than a thousand men only to be hunted down by the Romans at last. His companions killed each other; but Eunus himself, his cook, his baker, his bath servant, and his jester, were taken alive by the Romans, and it is said that Eunus was condemned to be bitten to death by vermin in a dungeon. So ended the first slave war.
The wars of the slaves in Sicily were not isolated attempts to obtain freedom, to be referred to local causes only. Whether any understanding existed between the oppressed classes throughout Rome’s dominions, to bring about a general revolution, it is impossible to determine. In times of insurrection and change, it often seems as if many movements were directed by one leader, when there is, in fact, no leader at all, but when the natural understanding in different parts of the world has been produced by the spreading of an idea which brings about similar results in similar conditions. The same thing happens in the domain of science. Newton, Leibnitz, and Descartes invented almost simultaneously, but in very different ways, the method which goes by the name of the Differential Calculus. Great minds reach similar conclusions in similar circumstances; the mind of a people may be considered to be a great mind made up of millions of units, almost all insignificant, if taken separately, but superlatively logical when acting as a whole. If this were not true, representative government would be nothing but the rule of ignorance or, at best, of mediocrity. But the instinct of a nation is almost as unerringly logical as the instinct of a wild animal. It is not necessary to suppose that between the years 139 B.C. and 99 B.C. there was any general and secret understanding by which the slaves of the Romans agreed to rebel at the same time, from Asia Minor to Sicily, while the Gracchi attempted to overthrow the aristocracy in Rome itself.
On the other hand, those who have lived in India and the far East know how far news travels among the people in countries where there is either no telegraph at all, or where it is certainly not at the service of the agricultural population. I recollect that when Sir Louis Cavagnari was murdered in Kabul, in 1879, the news was told in the bazaar at Allahabad before the English authorities received it by the telegraph, which then covered more than half the whole distance between the two places. The conditions in the outlying parts of the Roman propositions were more like those of India than is generally realized, and it should not surprise any one to learn that news often travelled from point to point at the rate of several hundred miles a day. Such a possibility implies a much more rapid exchange of ideas than might at first be expected, and it must not be forgotten, in the case of the slaves, that they had relatives and friends in Asia, in Africa, and in Spain, from whom they had been forcibly carried off into servitude, and who must have used every means which affection could suggest for communicating with them. Merchants came and went in their ships, soldiers were ordered to different provinces, and back again, slaves themselves accompanied their Roman masters on long journeys, and took messages to the friends of their fellow-slaves, and brought back news on their return. Thus there was constant communication between the oppressed classes from one end of the Roman dominions to the other, and a constant sympathy between them was maintained thereby, which could not fail to manifest itself sooner or later in more or less simultaneous action.
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p; It seems credible, too, that something of the spirit of the Pythagorean brotherhoods may have survived, though the majority of the slaves probably never heard of the philosopher himself; and that they may have used signs and may have had peculiar customs by which they recognized each other. ‘Thieves’ slang’ still serves thieves as a certain mission of recognition, and every one who has lived in Sicily knows that the ‘Mafiusi’ use special names for a number of familiar objects and articles of daily use.
It is at all events certain that the movement of the slaves was very extensive throughout the Roman world, and that they displayed tactics which, though not of the highest order, imply the existence of organization. This was notably the case during the second slave war in Sicily. Before the first was over, and when Henna was still in the hands of the insurgent, an outbreak took place in Asia Minor which may be regarded as more or less accidental, for it was not begun by the slaves themselves. Attalus, king of Pergamus, had bequeathed his kingdom to the Roman people by will. His son, considering himself deeply wronged, attempted to rouse the nobles to a revolution, and failing to do so, appealed to the slaves and the poor, promising them freedom and riches. He was, of course, conquered by the Romans. The insurrection of Vettius in Campania in 104 B.C. seems to have been more closely connected with the real slave movement. Vettius was a Roman knight of some wealth, living on his estates in the south. In an evil hour he was attracted by a beautiful slave girl, and what was at first the mere caprice of an idle country gentleman grew by degrees into one of those uncontrollable passions that breed in the feverish air of the south. The girl was faithfully devoted to her slave people, and dreamt of winning their liberty. Her lover might have given his own bondsmen freedom for her sake, but she wanted more than that, and she began to persuade him that the slaves of Italy would make him their king if he would lead them, and face the Romans if he would fight with them, and that the empire of the world was almost within his grasp. In the privacy of his Campanian villa, absolute lord of all he saw, Vettius listened to the lovely Greek girl day after day, and he watched the sturdy slaves going about their work, and he saw that they would make good soldiers, who would fight to the last breath for their liberty. Secluded from the world, everything seemed possible, and all that he heard by the voice he loved seemed sure, for there was no one to answer the woman. So he got together a great quantity of arms and gave them to his slaves, bidding them free their fellows throughout Italy; and they made him their king. But he appointed one of them, a Greek called Apollonius, to be his general, and this dastard betrayed him to the Romans, and he slew himself rather than fall into their hands.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1423