Slavery and Rebellion in Second-Century BC Sicily

This is the first book dedicated to the events known as the two Sicilian Slave Wars. These second-century BC revolts are commonly included among the largest slave revolts in world history and are key events in the history of Roman slavery. In this book, it is argued that these events should be understood as examples of collective responses to the socio-economic and political difficulties caused by the Roman-backed status quo on Sicily, not slave revolts. The book is built on three pillars: 1) a focus on the evidence left by the rebels themselves, a small collection of coins and slingshots, to understand how they viewed the conflict; 2) analysis of the stories told about the wars by ancient slave owners in terms of how they used and developed pre-existing stories; 3) comparison of the Sicilian Slave Wars with better-documented slave revolts in the USA, Brazil, and the Caribbean.