On his return to Rome, Marius was accorded a well-deserved triumph, in which he nevertheless insisted that Catulus should share.[c]
THE SECOND SLAVE WAR
[102-101 B.C.]
While the arms of the republic were thus triumphant in averting external peril, the fertile province of Sicily was again a prey to the desolating horrors of a slave war.
After the former war had been happily concluded by Piso and Rupilius, several indications of similar troubles appeared in Italy itself. At Capua, a spendthrift knight armed four thousand slaves and assumed the diadem. But by prompt measures the insurrection was put down.
The rising in Sicily might have been checked with no less ease. It originated thus: Marius had been commissioned by the senate to raise troops in foreign countries to meet the difficulties of the Cimbrian War. He applied to the king of Bithynia, among other persons; but the king answered that he had no soldiers, the Roman tax-gatherers had made slaves of them all. The senate, glad to have an opportunity of censuring the equites, passed a decree that all persons unduly detained in slavery should be set free. In Sicily the number of such persons was so large that the prætor suspended the execution of the decree. Great disappointment followed. A body of slaves rose in insurrection near Agrigentum, and beat off the prætor. Their numbers swelled to twenty thousand, and they chose one Salvius, a soothsayer, to be their king. This man showed himself fit to command. He divided his followers into three bodies, regularly officered. He enforced strict discipline. To restrain his men from wine and debauchery, he kept them in the field. He contrived to provide two thousand with horses. When his men seemed sufficiently trained, he laid siege to the city of Murgantia. But the slave-masters of Morgantium offered freedom to all slaves who would remain faithful, and Salvius saw himself compelled to retire. The promise, however, was not kept, and numbers of the deceived men flocked to the insurgent camp.
This success in the east of Sicily gave birth to a similar rising in the west, which was headed by a Cilician slave named Athenion, who pretended to read the future in the stars. He soon found himself at the head of ten thousand soldiers, well found with arms and provisions. He gave out that the stars declared his sovereignty: he therefore forbade all robbery; for, said he, “the property of our masters is now ours.” He now rashly laid siege to the impregnable fortress of Lilybæum; but finding its capture impossible, he drew off, alleging that an impending danger had been revealed to him.
Meanwhile Salvius, who had assumed the name of Tryphon, fixed the seat of his sovereignty at the fortress of Triocala, which had fallen into his hands, and sent orders to Athenion to repair in person to that place. Athenion obeyed the orders of King Tryphon, and appeared at Triocala with three thousand men. The king now occupied himself with adding to the strength of his new capital. He chose a senate out of his followers. On public occasions he wore the toga prætexta of a Roman magistrate, and was attended by the due number of lictors.
The Romans seemed unable to make head against the insurgents, till, in 101 B.C., M. Aquillius, the colleague of Marius in his fifth consulship, took the command. Meanwhile, Tryphon had died, and Athenion had become chief of the insurgents. Aquillius brought them to an engagement, in which he encountered the brave Athenion hand to hand. The consul was severely wounded, but the slave leader was killed. Aquillius remained as proconsul in Sicily for another year, in the course of which time he crushed the last embers of the war. After the fall of Athenion, the insurgents dwindled away to a band of one thousand desperate men commanded by one Satyrus, who at length surrendered to Aquillius, and were by him sent to Rome to serve as gladiators. The story of their end is very touching. Being brought out into the arena to fight with wild beasts, they slew one another at the foot of the altars which stood there; and Satyrus, being left alone, fell upon his own sword.
It is manifest, from the humanity and discipline observed by these unhappy men in their power, that their chiefs must have been originally men of station and education, reduced to slavery by the horrid practice of ancient warfare. The story of their death presents a picture not flattering to Roman civilisation.