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LEADERS OF SLAVE REVOLTS AS LATRONES
display. There was a lofty stage set, meant to represent Etna. At the top of
this was Selourus, fettered; at its foot were cages of wild animals. The
structure was made to collapse in such a manner that parts fell away smashing
the bars of the cages and carrying off Selourus into the depths, where
the beasts tore him to pieces. 110 The drama was rightly seen as a symbolic
representation of an eruption of Etna which transformed the sign of the
power of Selourus into the instrument of his annihilation: Etna vomited
out her own son. 111 Such a killing was not just the fantastical execution of
a condemned felon, and amounted to more than the symbolism described
above. Given that the danger of a new slave war had been averted, Selourus’
end was, in its occasioning if not in its form, the equivalent of a human
sacrifice, meant to rid people of fear. 112
8 Conclusion
For slave leaders to be termed latrones and slave uprisings to be called latrocinia,
more or less the same conditions applied as in the case of rebellions involving
the freeborn. The terms latrones and latrocinia could be at once a legal
categorisation – designating an irregular enemy and the guerrilla warfare
that was his means of combat; an expression of contempt for a foe of low
social status; and, finally, a reflection of the fact that in slave uprisings the
rebels also resorted to robbery and plundering.
The leaders of slave rebellions corresponded to those types of latrones that
we have seen embodied in, for example, Viriatus and Tacfarinas. On the
other hand, the arbitrary way in which slave leaders were seen as belonging
to other types is revealed in the contrast between Eunous and Salvius –
‘decadent Hellenistic monarchs’ – and Cleon and Athenion – ‘common
bandits’.
Spartacus provides a particular example of the fact that different authors
could designate one and the same historical personality to both of the basic
robber types, the ‘noble’ and the ‘despicable’. This again confirms the observation
that the bandit is a stock theme of literature, not a social type.
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