The Second Servile War was an unsuccessful slave uprising against the Roman Republic on the island of Sicily. The war lasted from 104 BC until 100 BC. It was one of three Servile Wars, spaced approximately 30 years apart.
Background
The consul Gaius Marius was recruiting soldiers for the war against the Cimbri and Teutones in the North. He requested support from King Nicomedes III of Bithynia near the Roman province of Asia; but Nicomedes refused, on the grounds that every able-bodied man in Bithynia had been enslaved by Roman tax-gatherers for being unable to pay their dues. The Senate replied by issuing orders that no slaves were to be taken from among allies of Rome, and that all such slaves should be immediately freed.
The propraetor Publius Licinius Nerva, in obedience to the edict, at once freed (that is, manumitted) around 800 slaves in his province of Sicily. Aside from awakening discontent among slaves from other nationalities who were not freed, this had the effect of alienating the Sicilian plantation owners who saw their human chattels unceremoniously being taken out of their hands. Alarmed, Nerva revoked the manumission, which provoked the slave population into revolt.
Battle of Scirthaea
When Salvius Tryphon, the Slave King, heard of Lucullus‘ arrival he wanted to hold out against the Romans inside Triocala. His general Athenion, however, persuaded him not to hide but instead face the Romans in open battle. Marching to meet Lucullus, the rebels encamped at Scirthaea, twelve miles distant from the Roman camp and, the next day, the two sides lined up for battle. According to Diodorus, Tryphon's host numbered around 40,000. Lucullus did this to render the task harder for his successor, Gaius Servilius the Augur; Lucullus intended, by ensuring the failure of his successor, to prove his own innocence from any alleged incompetence.
Other
According to Deipnosophistae (early 3rd-century AD), referring to Posidonius, making mention of large slave revolt happened in Mines of Laurion around the times of the second servile war in Sicily.
Athenion
In 102 BC Athenion, who had succeeded as slave-king after Salvius' death (he had passed after the earlier battle) was able to take Gaius Servilius's camp by surprise; Servilius' army was routed and dispersed, undoing all of Lucullus' previous success.
Revolt suppressed
Finally, in 101 BC, the Roman consul Manius Aquillius was given the command against the insurgents in Sicily. The Senior Consul, Gaius Marius, donated several cohorts from his army in Gaul to Aquillius. With these and the troops he recruited, equipped and trained en route he succeeded in defeating Athenion's slave army upon arrival. He supposedly killed Athenion by his own hand. The revolt was quelled, and 1,000 slaves who surrendered were sent to fight against beasts in the arena back at Rome for the amusement of the populace. To spite the Romans, they refused to fight and killed each other quietly with their swords, until the last flung himself on his own blade.