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This paper examines a line of argument in modern historiography that tends to discredit the historical value of the Diodorean narrative of the Sicilian Servile Wars by conceiving its author as resembling a novelist. We critici that perspective by analysing the Diodorean notions of the truth, candour, and accuracy. We show that, although Diodorus is not only interested in factual truth, he is strongly committed to it. On the other hand, the context in which he wrote his account, a period in which there was already a bibliographical production concerning the revolts, makes it difficult to imagine that Diodorus had a wide margin for fictional manoeuvre. Moreover, it is supported by what can be compared with Florus, an author presumably of Livian tradition, whose depiction of Eunus' magical and divinatory qualities is equally negative in terms of fraud. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this text we address the problem of existing sources and their analysis methodologies for the study of the great slave revolts in the Roman Republic. Our aim is to elucidate the different types of available sources we have and their states of conservation; pointing out the difficulties and heuristic possibilities they present; and analyzing them from a historiographic point of view. Although most of them, and the literary ones in their totality, come from the citizen elite, and consequently they express the point of view of the winners, hostile to the servile revolt, and it imply partiality, distortion and concealment in the historical record, we argue that it is not convenient to exaggerate their bias as a limiting factor of the knowledge of the facts. On the one hand, it is possible to extract valuable information about the rebel slaves from the narrative sources; on the other hand, some material sources produced by the rebels are also preserved. All of which allows us to at least glimpse the vision of the vanquished. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]