Still worse, as may be conceived, was the state of the provinces.

At the great slave-market at Delos and in the Attic silver-mines about the same period the revolted slaves had to be put down by force of arms.
The war against Aristonicus and his "Heliopolites" in Asia Minor was in substance a war of the landholders against the revolted slaves.( 14) But worst of all, naturally, was the condition of Sicily, the chosen land of the plantation system.

Brigandage had long been a standing evil there, especially in the interior; it began to swell into insurrection.

Damophilus, a wealthy planter of Enna (Castrogiovanni), who vied with the Italian lords in the industrial investment of his living capital, was attacked and murdered by his exasperated rural slaves; whereupon the savage band flocked into the town of Enna, and there repeated the same process on a greater scale.

The slaves rose in a body against their masters, killed or enslaved them, and summoned to the head of the already considerable insurgent army a juggler from Apamea in Syria who knew how to vomit fire and utter oracles, formerly as a slave named Eunus, now as chief of the insurgents styled Antiochus king of the Syrians.