Bucoli Revolt

anti-Roman uprising in Egypt during the reign of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius in A.D. 172 (according to other data, in 174 or 175). The participants in the uprising, the Bucoli, were so named after Bucolia, a barely accessible swampy locality in the Nile Delta where from the middle of the second century, peasants used to take refuge from excessive taxation and labor conscription. Led by the priest Isidorus, the Bucoli beat the Roman legions, seized all of Lower Egypt, and got as far as Alexandria. The Romans had to call in the general Avidius Cassius from Syria, who, by taking advantage of differences among the insurgents, suppressed the Bucoli revolt.