The court went earnestly to work; in a short time decision was given in eight hundred processes against the slave-owners, and the number of causes in dependence was daily on the increase.

The terrified planters hastened to Syracuse, to compel the Roman governor to suspend such unparalleled administration of justice; Nerva was weak enough to let himself be terrified, and in harsh language informed the non-free persons requesting trial that they should forgo their troublesome demand for right and justice and should instantly return to those who called themselves their masters.

Those who were thus dismissed, instead of doing as he bade them, formed a conspiracy and went to the mountains.
The governor was not prepared for military measures, and even the wretched militia of the island was not immediately at hand; so that he concluded an alliance with one of the best known captains of banditti in the island, and induced him by the promise of personal pardon to betray the revolted slaves into the hands of the Romans.

He thus gained the mastery over this band.

But another band of runaway slaves succeeded in defeating a division of the garrison of Enna (Castrogiovanni); and this first success procured for the insurgents-- what they especially needed--arms and a conflux of associates.
The armour of their fallen or fugitive opponents furnished the first basis of their military organization, and the number of the insurgents soon swelled to many thousands.