Syrian King and Syrian Goddess: Hellenistic Influences on the Ideology and Political Organization of the two Great Sicilian Slave Revolts

Sicily, the largest island in the Mediterranean and the ancient point of contact between Africa, Italy, Greece and the Eastern world, witnessed two massive slave uprisings in the 2nd century BC. Together with the later revolt of Spartacus in Italy in the 1st century BC, the movements of Eunus-Antiochus of ca. 140/135-132 BC, and that of Salvius-Tryphon and Athenion of ca. 104-100 BC form the triad of great slave wars such as were never seen in antiquity, before or since. Twice in the same century, during a period of several years, former slaves-built states of their own, states that controlled large portions of the island and exchanged blows with the Roman armies, with surprising success. Our main source, Diodorus of Sicily (books 34/5 and 36, preserved in excerpts and fragments), describes these new political structures as recreations of the Hellenistic kingdoms. This tendency is especially remarkable in the case of the First Slave War when rebel leadership brought about, at least outwardly, a Western replica of the Seleucid monarchy of Syria. Historians of the older generation took notice of these developments, though attempts at deeper analysis were rare. With one significant exception, the newer historiography has either ignored Hellenistic connections of the Sicilian slave revolts, or dismissed them as marginal. This paper argues that Hellenistic elements in the structure of the two ancient slave revolts are both substantial and historically significant. It was partly the case of simple ethnocultural affinity (the core of the rebels, including most of the leadership came from Syria and Asia Minor), but also of great practical necessity that political entities created by the former slaves took on the form of the military monarchy of the kind prevalent in the Hellenistic East.