Gracchi Marius and Sulla | Page 7

the condition of the
Roman slave was sufficiently miserable. [Sidenote: The horrors of
slavery culminated in Sicily.] But doubtless misery reached its climax
in Sicily, where that system was in full swing. Slaves not sold for
domestic service were there branded and often made to work in chains,
the strongest serving as shepherds. Badly fed and clothed, these
shepherds plundered whenever they found the chance. Such brigandage
was winked at, and sometimes positively encouraged, by the owners,

while the governors shrank from punishing the brigands for fear of
offending their masters. As the demand for slaves grew, slave-breeding
as well as slave-importation was practised. No doubt there were as
various theories as to the most profitable management of slaves then as
in America lately. Damophilus had the instincts of a Legree: a Haley
and a Cato would have held much the same sentiments as to the rearing
of infants. Some masters would breed and rear, and try to get more
work from the slave by kindness than harshness. Others would work
them off and buy afresh; and as this would be probably the cheapest
policy, no doubt it was the prevalent one. And what an appalling vista
of dumb suffering do such considerations open to us! Cold, hunger,
nakedness, torture, infamy, a foreign country, a strange climate, a life
so hard that it made the early death which was almost inevitable a
comparative blessing--such was the terrible lot of the Roman slave. At
last, almost simultaneously at various places in the Roman dominions,
he turned like a beast upon a brutal drover. [Sidenote: Outbreaks in
various quarters.] At Rome, at Minturnae, at Sinuessa, at Delos, in
Macedonia, and in Sicily insurrections or attempts at insurrections
broke out. They were everywhere mercilessly suppressed, and by
wholesale torture and crucifixion the conquerors tried to clothe death,
their last ally, with terror which even a slave dared not encounter. In the
year when Tiberius Gracchus was tribune (and the coincidence is
significant), it was found necessary to send a consul to put down the
first slave revolt in Sicily. It is not known when it broke out. [Sidenote:
Story of Damophilus.] Its proximate cause was the brutality of
Damophilus, of Enna, and his wife Megallis. His slaves consulted a
man named Eunous, a Syrian-Greek, who had long foretold that he
would be a king, and whom his master's guests had been in the habit of
jestingly asking to remember them when he came to the throne.
[Sidenote: The first Sicilian slave war.] Eunous led a band of 400
against Enna. He could spout fire from his mouth, and his juggling and
prophesying inspired confidence in his followers. All the men of Enna
were slain except the armourers, who were fettered and compelled to
forge arms. Damophilus and Megallis were brought with every insult
into the theatre. He began to beg for his life with some effect, but
Hermeias and another cut him down; and his wife, after being tortured
by the women, was cast over a precipice. But their daughter had been

gentle to the slaves, and they not only did not harm her, but sent her
under an escort, of which this Hermeias was one, to Catana. Eunous
was now made king, and called himself Antiochus. He made Achaeus
his general, was joined by Cleon with 5,000 slaves, and soon mustered
10,000 men. Four praetors (according to Florus) were defeated; the
number of the rebels rapidly increased to 200,000; and the whole island
except a few towns was at their mercy. In 134 the consul Flaccus went
to Sicily; but with what result is not known. In 133 the consul L.
Calpurnius Piso captured Messana, killed 8,000 slaves, and crucified all
his prisoners. In 132 P. Rupilius captured the two strongholds of the
slaves, Tauromenium and Enna (Taormina and Castragiovanni). Both
towns stood on the top ledges of precipices, and were hardly accessible.
Each was blockaded and each was eventually surrendered by a traitor.
But at Tauromenium the defenders held out, it is said, till all food was
gone, and they had eaten the children, and the women, and some of the
men. Cleon's brother Comanus was taken here; all the prisoners were
first tortured, and then thrown down the rocks. At Enna Cleon made a
gallant sally, and died of his wounds. Eunous fled and was pulled out
of a pit with his cook, his baker, his bathman, and his fool. He is said to
have died in prison of the same disease as Sulla and Herod. Rupilius
crucified over 20,000 slaves, and so quenched with blood the last fires
of rebellion.
Besides the dangers threatening society from the discontent of the poor,
the aggressions of the rich, the multiplication and ferocious treatment
of slaves, and the social rivalries of the capital, the