Marius, recruiting for his eventually successful war against the Cimbri in Cisalpine Gaul, requests support from King Nicomedes III of Bithynia.

Additional troops are not supplied due to the claim that contracted Roman tax collectors had enslaved Italians unable to pay their debts.

Marius decrees that any allied/friendly Italian should be released if they are in Roman slavery.

Around eight hundred enslaved Italians are released from Sicily, frustrating many non-Italians who thought they would be released as well, and many of these abandon their masters, incorrectly believing to have been freed.

A rebellion breaks out when they are ordered back to servitude by the Governor.

A enslaved man by the name of Salvius, following in the footsteps of Eunus, fighting for his rights and elected leader of this rebellion, assumes the name Tryphon, from Diodotus Tryphon, a rebel general and Seleucid ruler.

He amasses an army containing thousands of trained and equipped enslaved men, including two thousand cavalry and twenty thousand infantry, and is joined by a Cilician named Athenion and his men from the west of Sicily.

The rebels occupy most of the open countryside and besiege the cities, defeating the first Roman army dispatched against them.