Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome (40 page)

Spartacus and his men, for example, freed mainly gladiators and rural

slaves; few of their followers came from the softer and more elite group

of urban slaves.

Occasionally there is a glimpse of what might have been a broader

ideology. Aristonicus’s revolt in Anatolia (133–129 BC) catches the eye

because he mobilized poor people, non-Greeks, and slaves, whom he

freed; he called them all Heliopolitae (“Sun citizens”).12 The Greek phi-

losopher Iambulus (possibly third century BC) had written about a uto-

pia called Heliopolis, “Sun City,” a caste society that possibly was free

of slavery; the few fragments of the work leave that unclear.13 Perhaps

Aristonicus himself had a utopia in mind, or perhaps he was simply

mobilizing propaganda to drum up support.

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It was also significant that Spartacus insisted on sharing loot equally

among his followers rather than taking the lion’s share. This might have

represented smart politics rather than incipient communism. Egalitari-

anism was not present in the Sicilian slave rebellions, whose leaders

declared themselves to be kings, complete with diadems and purple

robes. Spartacus took no kingship, but he did allow such trappings of

Roman republican high office as the fasces, symbol of the power to

command, including capital punishment.

A generalized hostility toward slavery on the part of rebels ought

not be ruled out entirely. Although it cannot be demonstrated in the

sources, those sources are full of holes and written from the masters’

perspective.14 Yet such an ideology is unlikely, because the pre-Christian

world of Greece and Rome tended to lack mobilizing ideologies of uni-

versal liberation. Nor did anything in antiquity combine, as Marxism

later would, a secular utopian vision with an international ideology.

Revolutions tended to be more local and parochial.

By the same token, they contained strong elements of messianism.15

Religion had always played an important role in ancient politics, from

Themistocles’ use of oracles to mobilize the Athenians at Salamis to

the Romans’ deification of their emperors. The leaders of slave revolts

went further, however, and made themselves the gods’ representative

on earth, if not gods themselves. When it came to ancient slave revolts,

charismatic leadership stood front and center.

One slave rebel with the gods on his side was Drimacus (probably

third century BC). He announced to the citizens of Chios that the slave

uprising was no mere secular event but rather the outcome of a di-

vine oracle. They agreed with him, at least posthumously. Drimacus’s

voluntary surrender to their demand for his execution brought only

frustration to the masters because it led to an upswing in rebel at-

tacks on their holdings. So they built a hero shrine to Drimacus in the

country side and dedicated it to the Kindly Hero. Four hundred years

later, in the second century AD, runaway slaves still dedicated to him

there a portion of whatever they stole. Meanwhile, Drimacus suppos-

edly appeared to free Chians in their dreams and warned them of an

impending slave revolt, after which they too made dedications at his

holy place.16

Slave Wars of Greece and Rome 193

The leaders of the First and Second Sicilian Slave Wars each claimed

a direct, personal pipeline to the gods. In the First War (135–132 BC),

Eunus, a Greek-speaking slave in the Sicilian city of Enna, encouraged

discontented slaves to revolt. A native of Syrian Apamea, he main-

tained that he had divine visions in his dreams, from which he recited

prophetic messages. His pièce de résistance was to go into a trancelike

state, breathe flames from his mouth (using a trick involving a hollow

shell and embers), and issue yet more prophecies. Chosen king by the

rebels, he took the throne name Antiochus, like a Seleucid monarch,

and had coins issued in that name. His coins display the image of a god-

dess, perhaps the Greek goddess Demeter or the immensely popular

Mother Goddess of the East—or both.

The rebels in the Second Sicilian Slave War (104–100 BC) chose as

their king one Salvius, known for playing ecstatic music on the flute at

women’s religious festivals and as a prophet. He took the throne name

Tryphon, reminiscent of a Cilician adventurer who had claimed the

throne of Syria around 140 BC, which no doubt appealed to the many

Cilicians in the island’s slave population. Another leader of that revolt,

Athenion, was known for his skill as an astrologer.

Dionysus also loomed large in slave revolts. In addition to being the

god of wine and theater, Dionysus was the god of liberation. He was

unwelcome to the Romans. In 186 BC the Roman Senate claimed that

Italy’s widespread Dionysiac groups masked a conspiracy. In a frenzied

atmosphere, the Senate drove Romans out of the cult and permitted

only women, foreigners, and slaves to worship the god. Dionysus was

left to the powerless of Italy, and they embraced him. In 185–184, the

slave shepherds of Apulia, the heel of the Italian “boot,” revolted, and

the sources hint that they claimed Dionysus as their patron. Both Sicil-

ian slave revolts invoked Dionysus.17 Mithridates VI Eupator of Pon-

tus, who rebelled against Rome in 88–63 BC, called himself the “new

Dionysus” and minted coins showing Dionysus and his grapes on one

side and the cap worn by a freed slave on the other.

Spartacus’s revolt (73–71 BC) combined Dionysus and prophecy with

an added touch of star power. As a gladiator, Spartacus cut an impos-

ing figure. He was a man “of enormous strength and spirit,” which was

probably more than a boilerplate description: gladiators were selected

194 Strauss

for size and power and Spartacus was a
murmillo
, that is, a heavyweight.18

He was also a Thracian, a people known for their intimidating size.

Thracians also had a reputation for religious fervor, and Spartacus

did not disappoint. He had a Thracian “woman” (either his wife or girl-

friend) who went into trances inspired by Dionysus.19 A flexible deity,

Dionysus was, in one of his many guises, the national god of Thrace.

No doubt this added credibility to the prophecies that Spartacus’s

woman uttered. When Spartacus was first sold into slavery at Rome, a

snake wrapped itself around his face while the man slept; or so it was

said. Since snakes do not wrap themselves around sleeping men’s faces,

it was either a dream or a miracle. In either case, the Thracian woman

announced it as “a sign of great and fearful power” and predicted that

Spartacus would come to a lucky (or, in some manuscripts, unlucky)

end.20 There may be an echo of the Thracian woman’s propaganda in

the statement of a later Roman poet that Spartacus “raged through ev-

ery part of Italy with sword and fire, like a worshipper of Dionysus.”21

From Chios to Sicily to Italy, charisma inspired the rebel chief ’s fol-

lowers. They needed inspiration indeed, because ancient slave rebel-

lions always represented the triumph of hope over realism. Because

the enemy had the resources of a state at its disposal, the insurgents

had little chance of success in the long run against a determined foe.

By employing surprise and unconventional tactics, however, they could

score short-term victories, sometimes spectacular ones. Spartacus and

his men, for example, sneaked down from their camp on Mt. Vesuvius

by clinging to ropes that they wove from the local wild grapevines,

then took a poorly guarded Roman army camp by storm.

It also came with the territory that the rebels went after soft targets —

that is, civilians. Revenge was a powerful motive, leading to the sexual

abuse, torture, mutilation, and murder of masters who had mistreated

slaves. Greed was a motive, too, causing very widespread looting and

destruction of property.

The rebels usually lacked weapons, food, and other supplies. The

Sicilian slave leader Eunus, for example, armed his men with farm-

ing implements such as axes and sickles; Spartacus’s followers be-

gan their revolt with kitchen knives and cooking spits. Both groups

went on to make such homemade weapons as vine-woven shields and

Slave Wars of Greece and Rome 195

fire-hardened spears; later they looted weapons from Roman prisoners

and corpses. They also melted down their chains and hammered them

into arms and armor. Less poetically, Spartacus’s men bought iron and

bronze for weapons.

Although more than a few slaves had military experience, since

many were ex-prisoners of war, rebel armies lacked the cohesion that

comes of training together. They often represented linguistic or ethnic

heterogeneity, which hampered communication, let alone solidarity.

They also faced the problem of setting up camp in hostile territory

without a walled, urban base.

Since the enemy usually mustered well-armed and well-trained men

who were used to fighting together and ready to wage pitched battles,

they represented a force that the rebels could not hope to defeat in

regular combat. More accurately, they could not hope to defeat them

in the long run. Rebel armies could in fact win victories in pitched bat-

tle at first, while they outnumbered the Romans and faced untrained

legions. In Sicily, for example, the governor’s two legions were more

constabularies than fighting forces. It took reinforcements from the

mainland, led by a consul, to stand up to the rebels. In Italy, Spartacus

and his men faced scratch troops at first. They were even able to beat

consular armies. No mean feat, this pays tribute to Spartacus’s tactical

skill, but it also reflects the absence of Rome’s veteran troops, who

were abroad fighting wars in Spain, the Balkans, and Anatolia.

The best tactic for the rebels, therefore, was usually raiding. Guer-

rilla warfare and unconventional tactics were the staples of slave

revolts. That often presented a military problem to the masters, com-

pounded by a political predicament and an economic paradox. Their

heavy-armed infantry was ill-equipped to defeat hit-and-run raiders.

They found it hard to counter the rebels’ local knowledge of the hills

and mountains that were the habitual terrain of slave rebellion.

For the masters, retooling themselves for counterinsurgency was

frustrating and time-consuming, and besides, they rarely wanted to.

There was little glory in suppressing a slave rebellion and little dignity

in fighting in what they perceived as contemptible styles of combat. A

slave war, says one Roman, “had a humble and unworthy name.”22 The

ideal solution was getting most of the rebels to surrender, preferably

196 Strauss

after killing their leaders, so as to cut off the shoots of future rebellion.

Laying siege to rebel strongholds was a preferred tactic. In the First

Sicilian Slave War, for example, the Roman consul Publius Rupilius laid

siege successfully in 132 BC to the two main rebel strongholds of Tauro-

menium and Enna.

Knowing as they did these realities, wise insurgent leaders had three

possible strategic goals: (1) to tire out the enemy sufficiently that he

let the rebels maintain a runaway settlement in the hills—what in later

days was called a community of maroons (from a Spanish word mean-

ing “living on mountaintops”), (2) to break out and escape abroad, or

(3) to find allies among the free population, either from abroad or from

discontented groups at home.

Drimacus, rebel slave leader in Chios, probably in the third century

BC, applied the maroon strategy successfully. After fleeing to the hills

and becoming leader of the fugitive slaves, Drimacus attacked Chian

farms and beat back armed Chian attempts to defeat him. He offered

a truce that promised to limit future looting and to return runaway

slaves who could not demonstrate maltreatment by their masters. The

Chians accepted these remarkably pragmatic terms, and supposedly

they indeed led to a decline in the number of runaways. But the Chians

found the situation intolerable in the end and put a reward on Drima-

cus’s head. The story goes that in his old age, Drimacus had his lover

kill him and decapitate the corpse in order to collect the reward money.

It was only afterward that he became divine in Chian eyes.

Less realistic, no doubt, Sicily’s slave leaders claimed to set up their

own kingdoms, complete with monarchs, councils, and assemblies.

Having driven Carthage from the island, Rome was not about to let a

group of slaves take it over. Perhaps the insurgents took undue encour-

agement from the support of some of Sicily’s population of free poor

people. Now, the sources for the Sicilian Slave Revolts are so very inad-

equate and confused that one scholar argues they weren’t slave revolts

at al but rather nationalist uprisings.23 This theory is more clever than