When we talk about a slave rebellion in Ancient Rome, the name of Spartacus inevitably comes to mind. It is logical for several reasons, from the dimensions of the revolt -which came to threaten the capital itself- to the legendary tone that it reached thanks to novels and movies, through the fact that it occurred at a very opportune stage in history -with the participation in the events of characters as relevant as Crassus and Julius Caesar-. But Spartacus was not the first to strike fear into the Romans by raising the outcasts of society in arms; in fact, neither was he the second, as we shall see. Eunoo did it before anyone else.
As with Spartacus, very little we know for sure about Eunoo's (or Euno's) life. Just that it came from Apamea, a city located near the Syrian river Orontes, whose magnificent ruins are still preserved today and which was the germ of the current Qal`at al-Madhīq, in Syria, which at that time had not yet been annexed by Rome . We are talking about the first quarter of the 2nd century BC. but without specifying because the date of birth of the character is unknown.
However, whoever masters Ancient History will have noticed the context:the Servile Wars that plagued the Republic and ultimately led to a series of important changes in the course of that people. Spartacus led what is known as the Third Servile War between 73 and 71 BC. As I said at the beginning, it is the best known and the one that put the Republic in the greatest danger:a revolt of gladiators that gradually increased and spread throughout much of the Italian peninsula until it was finally crushed by the legions. 
Twenty-nine years earlier, from 104 to 100 BC, the Second Servile War had taken place, led by Trypho and Atenion, and caused by a curious paradox:the liberation of eight hundred slaves from Sicily by the consul Gaius Marius to send them to Bithynia and get change the support of their king Nicomedes II in the fight against the Cimbri, given the scarcity of available troops. As the owners protested, the Senate backed down on the initiative, outraging the frustrated beneficiaries, who took up arms and managed to gather an army of twenty thousand infantrymen plus two thousand horsemen, whose number increased over time. The uprising, which caused a famine among the Romans by abandoning the Sicilian fields, was finally subdued by Manius Aquillius, who would share the consulship with Marius.
But these two insurrections had a precedent a few decades earlier, between 135 and 132 BC, which shows that beyond the condition of their protagonists or specific reasons such as the one mentioned above, in the background there was an entire economic system that was doing Water. In that sense, the Rome of the second century B.C. He was a giant with feet of clay, as has been said on occasion, contrasting that fragility with his incontestable military power, which had just mercilessly crushed the threat of the Carthaginian Hannibal. And it is that, despite the fact that it already controlled almost all of North Africa and received rich tributes, its complex political organization, designed to prevent a return to the monarchy by dividing the territories into consular provinces and senatorial provinces, together with an unequal social stratification, had led to an impoverishment of the small owners, who had to leave the countryside to go to the city and survive by selling their political vote or their services to the candidates of the wealthy classes (patricians and equestrians) in a patronage relationship.
That rural emptiness was filled with slaves, abundant thanks to continuous victories in wars throughout the Mediterranean. There were as many as two million between the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, in spite of the law that required a minimum percentage of salaried workers for each certain number of slaves. No small landowner could compete with the large landowners, so the trend was to worsen the situation, so that in many places there was more slave labor than free, which constituted an obvious risk in case they rebelled. It was what was being done considering the abuses in the treatment of people who, after all, were considered mere objects.
Sicily was one of those territories that could be considered at special risk; It was not for nothing that it was known as the granary of Rome. To begin with, the island had been taken from Carthage during the First Punic War, which resulted in a series of inevitable changes:all the Carthaginian owners had to leave, selling their land and estates to the Roman conquerors when they did not lose them directly. by official seizure. Sicilian society was thus polarized, with one faction of the population benefiting, the Romans, while the other was condemned to poverty. In addition, the first resorted to the massive introduction of slaves to work the large farms, giving rise to a situation like the one described above.
The discontent forged as soon as one of those messianic leaders capable of dragging the masses appeared. It was Eunoo and he claimed to have both magical and prophetic gifts. Of the former, it was said that he was capable of expelling fire through his mouth (a trick he used to apply to entertain his companions) while the latter would come to him through visions induced by the goddess Atargatis (Derceto in Greek), a Syrian divinity represented in the form of the classic sirens, which would have announced the success of the insurrection. The four hundred slaves on the estate of Damophilus, famous for his cruelty (Diodorus of Sicily says that he did not bother to feed them or provide them with clothing), rebelled and put everyone to the sword (although they forgave Damophilus's daughter for having shown always kind).
As the flame spread to the other corners of Sicily (Taormina, Messina, Catania, Syracuse...), with the help of the Greek slave Achaeus they formed a colossal army that some authors number up to two hundred thousand troops. That number is supposed to include women and children, but even the most modest estimates, those restricted to warriors, are huge:around sixty thousand men. However, despite what could be expected, they did not proceed to burn down the villas and only attacked the large estates, respecting the small owners and tenants; in the cities it was different, yes, because the urban sub-proletariat that joined them sowed chaos.
Roman authors, such as Diodorus Sicilia, Lucio Aneo Floro or Posidonio, give Eunoo charisma and cunning but not military expertise, which would be the work of his assistant Cleón, also a slave but from Cilicia (a coastal region of Anatolia). Cleon led another rebel focus in Agrigento but, contrary to what the Romans expected, he recognized Eunoo as leader after the conquest of the city of Enna, carried out as Atargatis had ordered. Enna was in the center of the island, located on top of a hill and therefore with good natural defenses. It was a place with a bloody recent past, where the Romans savagely exterminated the population of Punic origin and where, according to mythology, Proserpina was kidnapped by Pluto. After defeating the Roman praetor Lucius Hipseo, Enna fell into the hands of the rebels, inflamed by the thaumaturgical demonstrations of Eunoo, who once the victory was obtained was crowned king.
His new status led him to change his name to Antiochus, which was a traditional appellation among the Seleucid monarchs of his native country. In fact, Eunoo presented himself as just another Syrian sovereign and even called the soldiers his Syrians (As we saw a few lines above, twenty-eight years later one of the leaders of the Second Servile War would imitate him, exchanging his initial grace of Salvio for that of Trypho, another Seleucid). However, he created a popular assembly and a council of wise men to develop the government, in addition to minting currency, while the news of the events flew and incited similar movements in Greece and Asia Minor.
The illusion lasted as long as it took for the Roman legions not to arrive but to organize themselves in a disciplined way, since until then they had been negligent, as had happened in Hispania before Scipio established order. After a first failure of Fulvio Flaco, seventy thousand men under the command of Governor Marco Perpenna, solved the problem following the orders of the successive consuls:Lucius Calpurnius Piso first and Publius Rupilio later, being during the term of the latter when the the revolt (on his return to Rome, Rupilio was awarded a triumph by the Senate).
The slaves barricaded themselves in Enna as the last redoubt but Rupilio was able to take the city, which was practically destroyed and never raised its head again. Cleon was killed in combat while Eunoo and some of his followers tried to get to safety by hiding in a cave located about eight kilometers through which, according to mythology, Pluto entered and left his subterranean kingdom. They were unable to escape and ended up imprisoned, although it seems that Eunoo, perhaps wounded, died before his expected execution.