The miners in the Attic silver-mines rose in revolt, occupied the promontory of Sunium, and issuing thence pillaged for a length of time the surrounding country.

Similar movements appeared at other places.
The Second Sicilian Slave-War But the chief seat of these fearful commotions was once more Sicily with its plantations and its hordes of slaves brought thither from Asia Minor.

It is significant of the greatness of the evil, that an attempt of the government to check the worst iniquities of the slaveholders was the immediate cause of the new insurrection.

That the free proletarians in Sicily were little better than the slaves, had been shown by their attitude in the first insurrection;( 8) after it was subdued, the Roman speculators took their revenge and reduced numbers of the free provincials into slavery.

In consequence of a sharp enactment issued against this by the senate in 650, Publius Licinius Nerva, the governor of Sicily at the time, appointed a court for deciding on claims of freedom to sit in Syracuse.