Even though the revolt of the would-be slave-king Eunus ended in bloodshed and defeat for the slaves of Sicily, the dreams and possibilities of breaking the shackles the Romans bound them in remained. Very little changed in terms of material conditions on Sicily between the end of the First Servile War and the start of the Second, nor did anything change when it came to the fundamental arrogance Roman masters felt towards their slaves.
Crisis and Opportunity in Rome
The previous Sicilian Slave Rebellion had been successfully put down by the Roman Republic in 132 BCE. Despite this victory and the subsequent return of the status quo, tensions remained on the island just as they did before. The lives of slaves were worth less than whatever monetary value could be extracted from their forced labor. Slave owners were unsurprisingly still intensely cruel and vicious towards the enslaved. Rome still denied the humanity of anyone in bondage. Even with nearly 30 years since the freedom dreams of a Syrian prophet ended in bloodshed, trouble remained in Sicily for as long as the same systems and problems existed.
As was nearly always the case, Rome was in a state of war with its neighbors as 105 BCE dawned. Early Germanic migrations into the periphery of the Republic in the Alps and into parts of Roman Gaul were causing quite a bit of trouble for Rome. An estimated 800,000 people, with a mix of Germanic and Celtic origins, were migrating due to conflict in Germania and Helvetia, with just under half of that vast number being armed and willing to fight.
In the years before 105, Rome suffered several brutal defeats at the hands of this alliance of Celts, Helvetians, and Germanic tribes. At this point, three entire armies had been crushed and scattered to the winds, with a death toll possibly exceeding 80,000 legionaries. With plans to invade parts of northern Italy proper, the Senate was deeply concerned and looked for alternative sources to gather an army.
One of the consuls in 104 was a deeply ambitious general and war hero of the Jugurthine War — Gaius Marius. A major untapped avenue for fresh men to expand his own personal army of veterans was to recruit from allies, one such ally being the Kingdom of Bithynia. When Marius dispatched an emissary to enlist volunteers, King Nicomedes III protested and said that any fighting-age man was a slave in Roman territory. The Senate responded to this by decreeing that citizens of allies could not be held in bondage and were to be set free immediately.
On the island of Sicily, the governor of the province, Publius Licinius Nerva, sought to enforce the edict and determined that many of the slaves on the island were likely to be citizens of an ally and therefore had to be set free immediately. After managing to liberate 800 slaves, Roman landowners protested Nerva’s actions and complained about the loss of labor. Fearing alienating such important officials and notables, Nerva agreed to suspend the enforcement of the edict.
As could have been predicted, the slaves were deeply unhappy with this and some rose up in revolt. The initial rebellions were short-lived and swiftly put down, but the metaphorical genie was out of the bottle.
More and more rebellions started popping up until finally the provincial militia Nerva was using was destroyed in battle, giving the rebel slaves a cache of weapons and armor. The size of the revolt dramatically increased every day as slaves chose to risk it all for freedom and revenge.
Contemporary sources allege that even a large number of female slaves took part in the fighting and uprisings. Just as had happened in the First Servile War, an assembly was called among the slaves to elect a king. Their chosen nominee was a slave by the name of Salvius, who, similar to Eunus 30 years ago, was a fortune-teller and performer. Rather than fire-breathing, however, his talents lay in playing the aulos, a flute-like instrument.
Much like Eunus, Salvius’s seemingly close ties to the gods and apparent ability to divine their will granted him much respect and authority. With the election of a new king, the war truly began and what seemed to be isolated pockets of resistance, transformed into another critical threat to the existence of the Roman Republic.
A New King is Crowned
After his crowning, Salvius sought to assert control of the island and gather more to the cause. He primarily achieved this by recruiting an army of around possibly 22,000 according to sources such as Diodorus. Nerva responded by launching an invasion of the rest of the island via Morgantia. The ensuing battle was a humiliating defeat for Rome. The forces of Salvius were already proving themselves to be as dangerous to the stability of Rome as Eunus had been 30 years prior.
More and more slaves joined Salvius’s kingdom, although a divide existed between the urban slaves of Morgantia and those in the countryside. The former sided with their masters based upon the promise of freedom immediately rather than freedom if they succeeded in overthrowing them, as promised by the rebels at the gates of the city. The latter were eager to join and the ex-slave armies continued to expand, although a later revocation of the liberty decree by Nerva ensured that the possible urban versus rural divide between slaves briefly vanished, although it would resurface in just a short few years.
But kings cannot be in two places at once and frequently have to delegate vital tasks to subordinate generals to win their wars for them. While Salvius himself was a good leader of men, he needed a second in command. The man he chose to be his top general was a Cilician whose slave name was Athenion. It is said that just like Eunus and Salvius, Athenion was a soothsayer and fortune-teller in contact with the gods through visions and the ability to interpret omens. In his case, this was primarily through divining the meaning of the stars.
Athenion quickly proved himself to be a popular general with his knack for swiftly earning loyalty from his men and recruiting more to the cause. A defeat, especially one dealt by the Romans could be fatal to one’s standing and cause. However, although Athenion was defeated once in battle by a vengeful Nerva, he was able to recover his men and meet up with Salvius to begin their next move, demonstrating a flexibility and stubbornness that can at times be difficult to find in desperate situations.
Just as Eunus did 30 years prior, Salvius sought legitimacy in turning the slave rebellion into an actual sovereign kingdom. Just as Eunus proclaimed himself King Antiochus in a sanctuary to Ceres, so too did Salvius harken to the Seleucid Empire. Upon entering a sanctuary of a pair of local Sicilian gods called the Palici, he offered them a sacrifice and was then ceremonially crowned by his followers as king.
Just as Eunus did before him, Salvius took a new regnal name for himself and he took inspiration from the Seleucids. If Eunus was King Antiochus, Salvius was King Tryphon. This was not only a means of creating a link of legitimacy and sovereignty to the Seleucids, but also to the Kingdom of Western Syrians. Now Salvius had named himself after the successor to the previous Antiochus, just as Diodotus Tryphon, his namesake, had succeeded Antiochus VI. The dreams of freedom espoused and fought for 30 years earlier were alive and well in the kingdom of Tryphon. The heart of Tryphon’s kingdom would be the city of Triocala, not far from the coast but still just distant enough to not be liable to get attacked by an amphibious landing.
In spite of their successes and the increasing numbers of slaves joining the rebellion, trouble was brewing in the court of the king. Athenion was popular among his men and had long claimed divinations foretold that he would be king of Sicily one day.
To make matters worse for the general, disagreements on strategy further soured Tryphon’s views of the man. When Athenion sent his loyal men out to raid the countryside for supplies and to gather more slaves to join the ranks of their cause, Tryphon had his own loyalists arrest the general and throw him in a cell. This would prove to be unwise, as control was lost of Athenion’s men. Tryphon may have been the king and held loyalty over the rest of his fledgling kingdom, but those who owed their loyalty to their now-imprisoned general were free to wreak havoc across Sicily.
The Republic Stutters
Both in Sicily and in Rome itself, hunger soon became the biggest consequence of the revolt. Not enough people were working the fields and producing the necessary foodstuffs and cereals required to feed the island, let alone the city of Rome. Additionally, the invasions of the Germanic tribes from the north had yet to abate themselves. The crisis that had started the revolt was far from over and now Rome was facing threats of invasion, famine, and popular unrest in the heart of the republic. The Senate had to respond, and swiftly, if the situation was to be salvaged.
Nerva gave an account to the Senate in late 102 BCE about the status of the slave revolt. His primary frustrations with being incapable of suppressing the slaves stemmed from the understanding that the Senate had up to this point declined to grant Nerva the disciplined and well-stocked armies he required. Roman arrogance and refusal to acknowledge their slaves as humans had cursed them to suffer defeat and disaster once more.
To rectify the situation, Nerva was able to hand the crisis over to the incoming new governor of Sicily, a man by the name of Lucius Licinius Lucullus, and the Senate granted him control over the armies deemed necessary to restore order.
Lucullus’s army was a force of 14,000 strong veterans with more able to be recruited as he marched south. When he landed in Sicily, these numbers had expanded to an impressive 25,000 soldiers. Once Tryphon received word of the size of the army sent to end the rebellion, he grew nervous. After debating with his council, Tryphon reluctantly agreed to release Athenion, their best general, and grant him control of the 40,000-strong army they had in their possession. Athenion agreed, although only after a second debate raged about what the best strategy to take would be.
Tryphon, anxious and paranoid, believed it prudent to act defensively and force the Romans to march on their capital in Triocala, whereas Athenion supported taking the fight to the Romans and catching them off guard. Tryphon reluctantly agreed and the king, his generals, and their army marched on the Romans.
What ensued was a brutal and bloody battle. As it raged, countless veterans fell on both sides with no end or possibility of a victory in sight. What eventually decided the battle was the apparent death of Athenion, who was (incorrectly) thought to have perished in the heat of combat. With his top general seemingly dead, Tryphon despaired and ordered a retreat with only half of his troops remaining. Whether the battle could have been won by Tryphon had he remained steadfast is of no matter. Lucullus had crippled the massive slave army and shattered their morale.
The survivors agreed to fight a last stand rather than submit to Roman mercy. Athenion managed to make his way back to Triocala in advance of the march of the Roman army on the capital of the slave kingdom. Lucullus’s luck ran out and he was forced to return to Syracuse to resupply and regroup. Tryphon, Athenion, and their fledgling kingdom lingered on for just a while longer.
As Lucullus sought to recover from this setback and began laying the groundwork for a protracted siege against the slaves once more, intrigues in Rome saw him removed from his position by the Senate and replaced by another, a man called Gaius Servilius.
Lucullus, bitter at his sudden removal and the fact that this Servilius would be able to take all the credit for the hard work he had actually achieved, spitefully had all of the siege towers, trenches, defensive structures, catapults, and battering rams destroyed. Beyond this, he took all looted wealth and taxes accrued through his brief tenure on the island and used it to pay his troops before sailing away with all 17,000 of them and dismissing them from service, leaving Servilius without a ready army.
The Kingdom of Hades Beckons
In Triocala, Tryphon was not able to breathe a sigh of relief as he passed away shortly after Lucullus left — possibly from illness or wounds suffered in battle. The ever-popular Athenion was swiftly elected and crowned king. He spent a brief respite as Servilius was preparing to march south, reorganizing the army and raising morale while trying to seize control of the rest of the island. While not always successful in taking cities, he was successful in seizing even more of the countryside than even Eunus’s kingdom had 30 years prior.
Servilius’s army was obliterated in 102 by Athenion’s army. The high spirits of the slave rebels would not last, however. By 101 they had still failed to capture any cities and Rome was sending yet another army, this time under the command of consul Manius Aquillius.
When the consul landed, it was clear it was the end. Slaves from across the island desperately sought refuge in the sanctuary of Triocala. Perhaps they hoped it would be safer there with the remains of the army and the defensive structures in place. Perhaps they hoped the superstitious Romans would hesitate at savagely slaughtering those in a divine sanctuary. These hopes and dreams of freedom and salvation were swiftly crushed when Aquillius and his men were let into the city by traitors opening the gates. The army systematically killed everyone inside, not even bothering with symbolically re-enslaving anyone. The city was burned to the ground.
The few surviving slave rebels who were outside the city were hunted down and killed as soon as they were found by the victorious Roman army. Legends state that Athenion, the final king of the rebel slaves, died in personal combat with Aquillius, only passing on after giving the consul a terrible injury of his own. Rome was triumphant once more.
Bibliography
Barce, N. 2020. Rome’s Sicilian Slaves: The Revolts of Eunus & Salvius 136-132 & 105-100 BC. Yorkshire: Pen & Sword Books Ltd.
(Special thanks to the above book, the majority of the recounting of material comes from here.)
Bradley, K. 1983. “Slave Kingdoms and Slave Rebellions in Ancient Sicily.” Historical Reflections 10:435-451.
Pfunter, L. 2015. “Reading Diodorus Through Photius: The Case of the Sicilian Slave Revolts.” GRBS 55:256-272.
Pritchard, R. “Land Tenure in Sicily in the First Century.” Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 18:545-556.
Verbrugghe, G. 1972. “Sicily 210-70 B.C.: Livy, Cicero, and Diodorus.” TAPA 103:535-559.
