The revolution was now passing into civil war. When the Senate asked for help against the Cimbri from the eastern kings allied with Rome, Nicomedes of Bithynia replied that all men of military value in his kingdom had been sold into slavery to satisfy the extortions of the Roman tax collectors. Preferring an army for the moment, the Senate decreed that all males enslaved for unpaid taxes should be freed. Hearing of this order, hundreds of slaves in Sicily, many of them Greeks from the Hellenistic East, left their masters and, gathering before the palace of the Roman praetor, demanded their freedom. Their owners protested, and the praetor suspended the operation of the decree. The slaves organized themselves under a religious impostor, Salvius, and attacked the town of Morgantia. The citizens there secured the loyalty of most of their slaves by promising to liberate them if they repelled the attack; they repelled it, but were not freed; and many of them joined the revolt. About the same time (103), some 6000 slaves in the western end of the island rose under Athenion, a man of education and resolution. This force defeated army after army sent against it by the praetor, and moving eastward, merged with the rebels under Salvius. Together they mastered an army dispatched from Italy, but Salvius died in the moment of victory. Still other legions crossed the straits, under the consul Manius Aquilius (101); Athenion engaged him in single combat and was killed; the leaderless slaves were overwhelmed; thousands of them died in the field, thousands were returned to their masters, hundreds were shipped to Rome to fight wild beasts in the games that celebrated Aquilius’ triumph. Instead of fighting, the slaves plunged their knives into one another’s hearts until all lay dead.
A few years after this Second Servile war all Italy was in arms. For almost two centuries now Rome—a tiny nation between Cumae and Caere, between the Apennines and the sea—had ruled the rest of Italy as subject states. Even some cities close to Rome, like Tibur and Praeneste, had no representation in the government that ruled them. The Senate, the assemblies, and the consuls meted out decrees and laws to the Italian communities with the same high hand as to alien and conquered provinces. The resources and man power of the “allies” were drained by wars whose chief effect was to enrich a few families in Rome. Those states that had remained loyal to Rome in the ordeal with Hannibal had received scant reward; those that had helped him in any way had been punished with so servile a subjection that many of their freemen joined the slave revolts. A few rich men in the cities had been granted Roman citizenship; and the power of Rome had everywhere been used to support the rich against the poor. In 126 the Assembly forbade the inhabitants of the Italian towns to migrate to Rome; and in 95 a decree of the jealous capital expelled all residents whose citizenship was not Roman but merely Italian.
A member of the aristocracy paid with his life for trying to improve this situation. M. Livius Drusus was the son of the tribune who had rivaled Tiberius Gracchus; since his adopted son became the father-in-law of Augustus, the family bound the beginnings of the revolution with its end. Elected tribune in 91, he proposed three measures: (1) to divide more state lands among the poor; (2) to restore to the Senate its exclusive jury rights, but at the same time add 300 equites, or businessmen, to the Senate; and (3) to confer Roman citizenship upon all the freemen of Italy. The Assembly passed the first bill with pleasure, the second with indifference; the Senate rejected both and declared them void. The third never reached a vote, for an unknown assassin stabbed Drusus to death in his home.
Aroused to hope by Drusus’ bill, and convinced by his fate that neither the Senate nor the Assembly would ever peaceably consent to share its privileges, the Italian states prepared for revolt. A federal republic was formed, Corfinium was named the capital, and the government was vested in a senate of 500 men chosen from all the Italian tribes except the Etruscans and Umbrians, who refused to join. Rome at once declared war upon the secessionists. All parties in the capital co-operated in what seemed to them a defense of the union; and every Roman dreaded the revenge the rebel states would take if they won this fratricidal “Social War.”I Marius emerged from his solitude, took command, and won victory after victory while all other Roman generals but Sulla met defeat. In three years of war 300,000 men fell, and central Italy was devastated. When Etruria and Umbria were on the verge of going over to the rebels, Rome pacified them by a grant of full Roman citizenship; and in 90 the Roman franchise was offered to all Italian freemen or freedmen who would swear fealty to Rome. These belated concessions weakened the allies; one town after another laid down its arms; and in 89 this ferocious and costly war ended in a sullen peace. The Romans nullified the franchise they had granted by enrolling the new citizens in ten new tribes, which voted only after the existing thirty-five, and therefore usually to no use; besides, only a few of the new citizens could attend the assemblies in Rome. The deceived and desolate communities bided their time. Forty years later they would open their gates in welcome to a Caesar who offered them citizenship in a democracy that was dead.