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LEADERS OF SLAVE REVOLTS AS LATRONES
cheap tricks on the people of his acquaintance supposedly as proof of his
supernatural powers, trying to persuade them that he was under the special
protection of the ‘Syrian goddess’, i.e., Atargatis-Astarte, who had promised
him kingship. 27 Eunous subsequently indeed became a king, of the slave
rebels of Sicily, an office which, according to Diodorus, he held by virtue
of neither his courage nor his warlike abilities, but rather because of the
attention which he had drawn to his person, because it was he who had
stimulated the rebellion and because of the hopeful expectations inspired by
his name – ‘the Benevolent’ – among the repressed. 28 By means of carefully
chosen forms of expressing his monarchy (such as a diadem, royal dress, a
princely household and a luxurious lifestyle), by the assumption of the Seleucid
royal name of Antiochus, rich in tradition, and through the designation of
his ‘subjects’ as ‘Syrian’, Eunous gave his slave state the outward appearance
of an Hellenistic monarchy, the power of which, without doubt, affected
both its internal operation and the way in which it was received externally. 29
It is clear that, at least by the time of Diodorus’ description of his capture,
the slave king did not escape being labelled a latro because he was more
respected than his comrade, Cleon. According to Diodorus, Eunous, the
wonderworker and monarch, panicked and hid himself away in some hole.
Run down in his lair, he was dragged out into the light of day in the
company of four others: his cook, his chef, his masseur and his fool. 30 It was
not that Eunous was better than a latro; rather, he was simply transferred
to another category, that of the degenerate Hellenistic monarch, which in
Roman eyes was just as despicable as that of ‘bandit’.
4 Salvius and Athenion
As in the first, so in the second slave war the leadership of the rebellion
rested with two men. Salvius, 31 its commander-in-chief, is depicted straightforwardly
as a second Eunous and thus as no latro. The similarities between
the two start with the former’s skills in divination and his Hellenistic/
oriental royal household, and extend, by way of his formal proclamation as
king, to his assumption of a suggestive regal name, Tryphon. 32 Apart from
the correspondence of their both having chosen Hellenistic royal names,
Eunous and Salvius are also alike in respect of their original names. Eunous
means ‘The Benevolent’ and Salvius has a positive connotation as ‘The
Saviour’. As we have already seen, there is direct evidence that the slaves of
the first revolt considered the name Eunous as favourable, portending a good
ruler. We may therefore suppose that those of the second revolt were likewise
ready to seize on various types of omens. They too may have perceived
a lucky sign in ‘Salvius’, even though it was a common slave name, to which
under normal circumstances no one would have attached any particular meaning.
We do not know how Eunous came by his name. Similarly, we know
nothing about who Salvius got his name from, or whether he exploited its
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