Unlike the mostly rural residents of Italy, the plebs urbana lived entirely on wage labor. Work was principally in retail and trade as Rome became the great clearinghouse of imperial trade. The docks, warehouses, and shops teemed with life every single day. Slaves worked alongside wage laborers on large public works projects—aqueducts and roads—with new projects always started as old projects were completed. Since the city of Rome was a strictly cash economy and all food, lodgings, and fuel required coins, there was never desperate poverty. If you did not have money to live you either departed for the countryside or died in a back alley. Poverty was fatal.14
Politically, the plebs urbana hadn’t had a collective political identity since the now ancient Conflict of the Orders. Though the democratic Assemblies operated through the thirty-five tribes, all citizens domiciled in Rome were lumped together into just four of those tribes. So though they often outnumbered all other voters at an Assembly, they still only wielded four collective votes. But though their voting influence was limited, their very presence in the city made them a latent force in Roman politics. As the crisis over the
As the plebs urbana again found their political voice, they discovered they could demand aspiring politicians cater to their particular needs. Land redistribution did not particularly appeal to them—they were traders, artisans, and merchants, not farmers. But what did appeal to them was the promise of a stable supply of cheap grain. Since the plebs urbana could not feed themselves, they relied on the surrounding countryside to produce the grain that kept them alive. As every budding Roman politician would learn, what the plebs urbana really wanted was food security. They were all acutely aware that the supply was susceptible to sudden shortages caused by the weather, transportation mishaps, and crop failures. Or, for example, a massive slave revolt in Sicily.16
IN THE TIME of the Gracchi, the grain that fed Rome mostly came from Sicily. Ceded by the Carthaginians in 241, Sicily was the first overseas province acquired by Rome. The incredibly fertile island was an endless bounty waiting to be harvested. Roman owners flooded in, bringing with them slaves “driven in droves like so many herds of cattle.” The working conditions on the Sicilian estates were atrocious as slaves were “vilely beaten and scourged beyond all reason.” They were also so ill-provided-for that they took up banditry to survive, preying on native Sicilians who, like their cousins in Italy, were being squeezed by growing slave estates. Complaints rained in, but there were only a handful of junior Roman magistrates to administer the whole island—as long as the profits made everyone rich, there was little reason to reform the cruel system.17
Without hope, the Sicilian slaves began plotting rebellion. The man who emerged as the principal leader was a Syrian named Eunus. Eunus arrived in Sicily as a talkative and charismatic con artist. Claiming to be a prophet and fire-breather, he charmed his masters with tales that one day he would be their king. In 135, a group of slaves approached him secretly. They wanted to kill their masters and asked the prophet Eunus for advice. Eunus said the gods favored their plot, and soon four hundred armed men put themselves under Eunus’s command. That night they attacked the city of Enna. Contrary to his jovial promises, Eunus was not benevolent in victory. He rounded up the inhabitants of Enna, separated out skilled blacksmiths, and executed the rest. When word of the massacre spread it sparked a general uprising. Within weeks, ten thousand slaves had joined the rebellion. Eunus then fulfilled his own prophecy. Placing a stolen diadem on his head, he proclaimed himself King Antiochus of Sicily.18
In the wake of Eunus’s revolt, a second revolt erupted on the other side of the island just a few weeks later. A Cilician slave named Cleon heard about Eunus’s rebellion and launched his own insurrection, attracting five thousand men to his banner. Cleon’s army then overran the southern port of Agrigentum and sacked it. There was some hope among the beleaguered Sicilians that the two slave armies would come into conflict and destroy each other—and were horrified when Cleon instead bent his knee to “King Antiochus of Sicily.” Combined, the slave armies were now unbeatable.19
