Justin Butts HST 100 In the Roman Empire, slavery was a common place thing. In fact it became so common that handbooks were written telling farm owners how to maintain and handle their slaves (Shaw, 33). And throughout its course three large slave revolutions were led against slave owners and other wealthy Romans in neighboring cities. These revolutions became to be known as the Slave wars, each led during a different time in Roman history. They were never close in time, but each war was fought for nearly the same reason: injustice and abuse. Even with handbooks to help guide slave owners to treat slaves properly there were those that abused their slaves. One example being Damophilis. Damophilis severely maltreated his slaves and even worse than that, his wife Megallis would compete in abusing the slaves (Shaw, 82). After lengthy times of abuse the slaves would band together and form plans to …show more content…
According to Diodorus Siculus’s “The Second Slave War on the Island of Sicily: First Version” a major factor that caused the slaves to rebel was a promise for freedom to all slaves that had been freemen of allied states (Shaw, 111). At first Licinius Nerva the governor of Sicily began to free slaves, but the wealthy slave owners quickly approached him and persuaded him to quickly change his mind. (Shaw, 111). He began to send all slaves that came to him for freedom back to their owners, these slaves that were turned away fled and took refuge in the sanctuary of the Palikoi (Shaw, 111). These slaves banded together and fortified a position against the governor. These slaves were eventually defeated, but others in the land were fortifying positions as well. One of these groups were led by a man named Salvius who was appointed king (Shaw, 113). Yet another group formed on the island this one lead by Athenion, who was also able to tell the