Slave Rebellion Causes

The slave rebellions in Sicily, where the result of maltreatment of slaves by their rich masters. However, there were many underlying factors that contributed to the burst of the rebellions. For instance, in the first slave rebellion, the Roman governor in Sicily failed to punish the slave gangs and to enforce the laws which contributed to the spark of the war. In the case of the second slave rebellion, according to Diodorus, the war was caused by a decree instituted by the Roman senate in response to a recruitment crisis for the Roman army. This decree was passed to protect those who were born free citizens in Rome provinces from being wrongfully forced to become slaves. Inevitably the decree caused a commotion and created false expectations …show more content…
Consequentially, this led the slave population to enraged and to fight for equality and better treatment by means of violence and retribution. Another reason that might have contributed to the development of the first slave rebellion was the inability of the Roman governors to take action and to prevent the growth of slave gangs in Sicily. The governors because of fear of retribution from the rich equites, who were the jurors of the courts convicting governors and the master of the slaves, let loose slave gang members. On the other hand, in the second slave rebellion, according to Diodorus the main reason that the rebellion sparked was caused by a Roman senate decree which stated that no free person from an allied state should remain enslaved in a province of Rome. However, this decree proved to be ineffective since the Sicilian governor influenced by rich equites did not enforce the …show more content…
According to Diodorus, common people from the Sicilian community felt no sympathy when they witness the suffering and torturing of the rich slave master. Additionally, free common people took advantage of the free runaway slave and used it as an excuse to pillage and plunder the possessions of the rich. At the beginning of the rebellion, Rome responded to the situation as it was a minor provincial conflict and it wasn’t after serious military defeats that they took matters seriously. The Romans gained the upper hand in the wars only when they implement aggressive war strategies and starved and forced the rebels to live in detrimental