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He asked for a moment to collect his thoughts, covered his head with his cloak, and died of suffocation, in the hands of his guard and in sight of the general, before a compromising word had passed his lips. King Eunus was not made of such stern stuff.
There died of this disease, amongst those of the most ancient times, Acastus, the son of Pelias; of later date, Alcman the poet, Pherecydes the theologian, Callisthenes the Olynthian, in the time of his imprisonment, as also Mucius the lawyer; and if we may mention ignoble, but notorious names, Eunus the fugitive, who stirred up the slaves of Sicily to rebel against their masters, after he was brought captive to Rome, died of this creeping sickness.
And if one may mention those who have got a name, not for any good that they did, but in other ways, Eunus the runaway slave, who began the Servile war in Sicily, is said to have died of this disease, after he was captured and carried to Rome. XXXVII. Sulla foresaw his end, and even in a manner wrote about it, for he finished the twenty-second book of his Memoirs only two days before his death.
There were daily expectations that the armies of Eunus and Cleon would meet in conflict. But such hopes or fears were disappointed. Cleon put himself absolutely under the authority of Eunus and performed the functions of a general to a king. The junction of the forces occurred about thirty days after the outbreak at Enna, and the Cilician brought five thousand men to the royal standard.
Portions of food were handed him from the board, and the donors would ask that he should remember their kindness when he came into his kingdom. These were requests which Eunus did not forget. With such an influence in its centre, Enna seemed destined to be the spring of the revolt. But there was another reason which rendered it a likely theatre for a deed of daring.
When he heard of the success of Eunus, he deemed that the moment had come for raising a revolt on his own account. He gathered a band of followers, overwhelmed the city of Agrigentum and ravaged the surrounding territory. The terrified Siceliots, and perhaps some of the slaves themselves, believed that this dual movement might ruin the servile cause.
One of the two thrust a sword through his side, the other smote his head off with an axe. It was then the women's turn. Megallis's female slaves were given the power to treat her as they would. They first tortured her, then led her up to a high place and dashed her to the ground. Eunus avenged his private wrongs by the death of his own masters, Antigenes and Python.
When the slaves in Sicily, about a century and a half before our era, made a formidable insurrection, and avenged themselves in a cruel manner, for the severities which they had suffered, there was amongst them a Syrian named Eunus a man of great craft and courage; who having passed through many scenes of life, had become acquainted with a variety of arts.
The words of Eunus when, at the beginning of the revolt, he claimed Enna as the metropolis of the new nation, and the conduct of his followers in sparing the grandeur and comfort which had fallen into their hands, are sufficient proofs that the revolted slaves, in spite of their possession of the seaports of Catana and Tauromenium, had no intention of escaping from Sicily.
The scene in the theatre had perhaps revealed more than the desire for a systematised revenge. It may have shown that there was some sense of justice, of order in the savage multitude. And indeed vengeance was not wholly indiscriminate. Eunus concealed and sent secretly away the men who had given him meat from their tables. Even the whole house of Damophilus did not perish.
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