The Sicilian landowners emulated their Italian brethren; and it was their tyrannical conduct that led to the frightful insurrection which reveals to us somewhat of the real state of society which existed under the rule of Rome.
In Sicily, as in lower Italy, the herds are driven up into the mountain pastures during the summer months, and about October return towards the plains. The same causes which were at work in Italy were at work, on a smaller scale, in Sicily. The city of Enna, once famous for the worship of Demeter, had become the centre of a pastoral district; and of the neighbouring landowners, Damophilus was the wealthiest. He was famous for the multitude of his slave herdsmen, and for his cruel treatment of them, and his wife Megallis emulated her lord in the barbarities which she practised on the female slaves. At length the cup was full, and four hundred of his bondsmen, meeting at Enna, took counsels of vengeance against Damophilus.
At Enna there lived another rich proprietor, named Antigenes; and among his slaves was a Syrian, known by the Greek name of Eunus. This man was a kind of wizard, who pretended to have revelations of the future, and practised a mode of breathing fire, which passed for a supernatural power. At length he gave out that his Syrian gods had declared to him that he should be king hereafter. His master treated him as a jester, and at banquets used to call him in to make sport for his guests; and they, entering into his humour, used to beg him to remember them when he gained his sceptre. But to the confederate slaves of Damophilus, Eunus seemed in truth a prophet and a king sent to deliver them. They prayed him to become their leader, he accepted their offer; and the whole body entered the city of Enna, with Eunus at their head breathing fire.
The wretched city now felt the vengeance of men brutalised by oppression. Clad in skins, armed with stakes burned at the end, with reaping hooks, spits, or whatever arms rage supplied, they broke into the houses, and massacred all persons of free condition, from the old man and matron to the infant at the breast. Crowds of slaves joined them; every man’s foes were those of his own household. Damophilus was dragged to the theatre and slain. Megallis was given over to the female slaves, who first tortured her, and then cast her down the crag on which the city stands.
Eunus thus saw the wildest of his dreams fulfilled. He assumed the diadem, took the royal name of Antiochus, and called his followers Syrians. The ergastula were broken open, and numbers of slaves sallied out to join him. Soon he was at the head of ten thousand men. He showed no little discretion in the choice of officers. Achæus, a Greek, was made general of the army, and he exerted himself to preserve order and moderate excesses.
A few days after the massacre at Enna, Cleon, a Cilician slave, raised a similar insurrection near Agrigentum. He also was soon at the head of several thousand men.
The Romans in Sicily, who had looked on in blank dismay, now formed hopes that the two leaders might quarrel—hopes soon disappointed by the tidings that Cleon had acknowledged the sovereign authority of King Antiochus. There was no Roman magistrate present in Sicily when the insurrection broke out. The prætor of the last year had returned to Italy; and his successor now arrived, ignorant of all that was passing. He contrived to collect eight thousand men in the island, and took the field against the slaves, who by this time numbered twenty thousand. He was utterly defeated, and the insurrection spread over the whole island.
Æsculapius