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. 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. These Syrians in a foreign land
already, like their predecessors, seemed to themselves not unworthy
to be governed by kings, as were their countrymen at home; and--
parodying the trumpery king of their native land down to the very
name--they placed the slave Salvius at their head as king Tryphon.
In the district between Enna and Leontini (Lentini) where these bands
had their head-quarters, the open country was wholly in the hands of
the insurgents and Morgantia and other walled towns were already
besieged by them, when the Roman governor with his hastily-collected
Sicilian and Italian troops fell upon the slave-army in front
of Mo