He therefore proceeded to make war on the neighbouring Vaccaei tribe, without any pretext or authorisation from the Senate, and with the sole aim of plundering their towns and lands for his own enrichment.
[5] During his praetorship a young Roman knight (Eques), Titus Vettius led a slave revolt around the city of Capua in Campania.
[2] Vettius had fallen in love with a beautiful young slave girl and, promising to pay her owner the huge sum of seven Attic talents, had been permitted to take her.
[9][10] As a consequence of this, the Governor of Sicily, Publius Licinius Nerva, set up a tribunal and began the process of interviewing slaves claiming to be Italians and determining whether in fact they were telling the truth or not.
However, several wealthy landowners, most of whom depended on a large slave workforce to farm their extensive estates, soon became agitated and demanded that the Governor desist from his work immediately.
Nerva, after defeating one band of rebels, found others springing up wherever he turned and, with only a small militia at his disposal, quickly lost control of the situation.
[11][12] Salvius, now calling himself Tryphon, planned to respond to Lucullus' arrival by withdrawing into his fortress of Triocala and there hold out against the Roman siege.
Marching to meet Lucullus, the rebels encamped at Scirthaea, twelve miles distant from the Roman camp and, the next day, the two sides prepared for battle.
With thousands of slaves cut down in the rout, Diodorus estimates that, as night fell, around 20,000 rebels lay dead, half of Tryphon's army destroyed and Lucullus victorious.
Lucullus, however, was slow to follow up his victory at Scirthaea and it was not until nine days after the battle that he finally arrived outside the walls of the rebel stronghold and placed it under siege.
In Rome, seeing his failure to take Triocala as evidence of some indolence or incompetence, the Senate did not prorogue his command in Sicily and instead appointed Gaius Servilius to take his place when his term expired in 102 BC.
[13] Enraged at what he saw as a betrayal by the Senate, Lucullus, when he heard that his replacement had crossed the straits and landed in Sicily, ordered his army to burn their camp and destroy all their supplies and siege equipment before withdrawing from Triocala and disbanding completely.
[13] His successor, Servilius, with no army or fortifications, did indeed fail in his attempt to defeat the rebels and was unable to effectively contain the revolt for his entire year.
Servilius was replaced in 101 BC by Manius Aquillius, the junior consul of that year, who also brought several cohorts from the army of Gaius Marius in Gaul.
[18][19] This may have been because the Servilii, too, had family connections with the Metelli—Servilius Vatia being married to the daughter of Metellus Macedonicus, Numidicus's uncle—and so they were unable to favour either side in the trial.
When his two sons, Lucius and Marcus Lucullus reached their majority, they immediately sought revenge by impeaching their father's accuser, Servilius the Augur, whom they charged with misusing public funds.