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LEADERS OF SLAVE REVOLTS AS LATRONES
according to Diodorus, which enabled him to secure the delivery of basic
supplies to his army. 43 Organisation and discipline are themes which also
occur, in various forms, in other ‘bandit tales’. They belong under a general
heading which may be termed ‘the robber band as a state’. ‘Bandit states’
were particularly tightly run, based on the unconditional loyalty of their
subjects to their leaders and characterised by absolute discipline. Such were
the traits of, for example, the bandit states of Viriatus and Bulla Felix; 44 but
I will leave any general conclusions to be drawn from these until later.
Athenion had put himself and his troops under the command of Salvius-
Tryphon, in just the same way as Cleon had subordinated himself to Eunous.
In 102 bc, after Salvius’ death, the leadership of the slave war fell into
his hands. In the following year, Manius Aquillius, consul with Marius,
defeated him in a spectacular duel, general against slave. Despite his defeat,
the fact that Athenion was in a position to challenge a Roman consul to
single combat is a very real measure of his status as an enemy of Rome. His
glorious end contributed considerably to establishing his reputation as an
audacious hero. 45 That Athenion remained in people’s memories is evidenced
by the fact that contemporaries compared men of the Civil War period to
him. Sulla’s troops, for example, gave Fimbria the nickname ‘Athenion’. The
reason for this was that Fimbria was supposed to have attempted to assassinate
Sulla using a slave, promising him freedom as a reward. 46 Cicero
declared that Timarchides, the corrupt freedman of Verres, had exceeded
even Athenion as slave king of Sicily, ruling unchallenged for three years
over all the cities of the island. 47 Later, in 56 bc, Cicero paid Athenion the
compliment of comparing him with Clodius 48 who, as aedile, had promised
to take up the social position of slaves and freedmen. 49 In this context,
Cicero refers specifically to the festival of Cybele (‘Megalesia’), at which
Clodius, like Athenion before him, was supposed to have welcomed slaves
as spectators. This passing reference provides an otherwise unattested detail
of the internal working of Athenion’s slave state. Clearly, public games also
figured among those arrangements which gave this state – an artificial creation
– an authentic structure and helped bind it strongly together.
5 C. Titinius Gadaeus
We encounter a latro wholly different from Cleon and Athenion in another
protagonist in the second Sicilian slave war, C. Titinius Gadaeus. 50 A very
colourful character, at the start of the revolt he was employed by the provincial
governor, P. Licinius Nerva, to spy on the slaves. Two years earlier,
Gadaeus had been condemned to death on the grounds of serious and long
established felony. We do not know the crimes for which he was punished.
However, he had escaped the execution of his sentence by flight, and since
then had lived in the region as a bandit, killing many freeborn, but never –
so we are expressly told – attacking slaves. 51
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