des before the gates, the town was lost; but they preferred
to accept the gift of freedom in legal form from their masters, and by
their valour helped them to save the town--whereupon the Roman governor
declared the promise of liberty solemnly given to the slaves by the
masters to be void in law, as having been illegally extorted.

Athenion

While the revolt thus spread after an alarming manner in the interior
of the island, a second broke out on the west coast. It was headed
by Athenion. He had formerly been, just like Cleon, a dreaded
captain of banditti in his native country of Cilicia, and had been
carried thence as a slave to Sicily. He secured, just as his
predecessors had done, the adherence of the Greeks and Syrians
especially by prophesyings and other edifying impostures; but skilled
in war and sagacious as he was, he did not, like the other leaders, arm
the whole mass that flocked to him, but formed out of the men able for
warfare an organized army, while he assigned the remainder to peaceful
employment. In consequence of his strict discipline, which repressed
all vacillation and all insubordinate movement in his troops, and his
gentle treatment of the peaceful inhabitants of the country and even of
the captives, he gained rapid and great successes. The Romans were on
this occasion disappointed in the hope that the two leaders would fall
out; Athenion voluntarily submitted to the far less capable king
Tryphon, and thus preserved unity among the insurgents. These soon
ruled with virtually absolute power over the flat country, where
the free proletarians again took part more or less openly with the
slaves; the Roman authorities were not in a position to take the field
against them, and had to rest content with protecting the towns,
which were in the most lamentable plight, by means of the militia of
Sicily and that of Africa brought over in all haste. The administration
of justice was suspended over the whole island, and force was
the only law. As no cultivator living in town ventured any longer
beyond the gates, and no countryman ventured into the towns, the most
fearful famine set in, and the town-population of this island which
formerly fed Italy had to be supported by the Roman authorities
sending supplies of grain. Moreover, conspiracies of the town-
slaves everywhere threatened to break out within, while the insurgent
armies lay before, the walls; even Messana was within a hair's breadth
of bein