The Second Sicilian Slave War, 104–100 b.c.

Abstract

The second major slave war that afflicted the Roman state was almost a carbon copy of the first Taking place a generation after the first war, it also occurred on the island of Sicily. The sequence of events and the actions of the main protagonists are so reminiscent of the first slave war that some modern historians have hypothesized that the Greek and Roman historians who told the story of the second war simply copied the narrative patterns of the first. The real differences between the two wars, however, are significant, and the similarities may be explained by imitative behavior—the slaves and their repressors had learned from the first great war—and by the similar social, economic, and geographic conditions in which the events happened.