Although pockets of civilization
inhabited the continents of Africa, Asia, Europe, and the
Americas long before, great cities of the ancient
world emerged about five millennia ago and merchants
in one urban center established trading links in another.
When the first pirate attack occurred remains a mystery,
but surviving historical records pinpoint these sea
raiders in the Mediterranean. Ancient Egyptian
and Minoan writings include tales of their raids at sea
and on land. The earliest recorded incident – inscribed on
a clay tablet while Akhenaton, an Egyptian pharaoh,
reigned – depicts pirates attacking a ship in 1350 BCE.
Another early account provides details of Ramses
III’s attack against the Sea
Peoples, whom the Egyptians called the Nine Bows, in
1190 BCE. Their raids on the Nile Delta were so
devastating the land no longer sustained life. The bloody
battle between Ramses’ forces and the Nine Bows
involved archers and hand-to-hand combat, but the latter
were eventually defeated. An inscription at Medinet
Habu, the pharaoh’s mortuary temple at Thebes,
records this battle and shows the Nine Bows’ vessels with
prows shaped like birds’ heads and sails rather than oars.
Scholars trace the origins of
“pirate” to the Ancient Greeks,
who first incorporated it into their language around 140
BCE. Peirato referred not to the sea
robbers we associate with “piracy,” but to mercenaries who
allied themselves with one political faction or city state
against another faction or city state. These fighting men
were led by an archipirata (sometimes
translated as archpirate, but meant “pirate captain”). For
example, Plutarch
wrote around CE 100:
The power of the
pirates [peiratiki] had its seat in Cilicia
. . . until they no longer attacked navigators only, but
also laid waste islands and maritime cities. And
presently men whose wealth gave them power, and whose
lineage was illustrious, and those who laid claim to
superior intelligence, began to embark on piratical [peiratike] craft and share their enterprises, feeling
that the occupation brought them a certain reputation
and distinction . . . Their flutes and stringed
instruments and drinking bouts along every coast, their
seizures of persons in high command, and their ransoming
of captured cities, were a disgrace to the Roman
supremacy.” (Rubin, 8-9)
Plutarch,
however,
lived during Rome’s supremacy, and, while his
view conformed to that of an earlier age, the Romans saw
these “pirates” as enemies because they endangered the Roman
State and the senate declared “war against the
Pirates.” Even so, the Latin meaning of “pirate” still
differs from our concept of the word, for they deemed the
pirates “enemies” rather than “outlaws.”
Roman
Merchant Ship, CE 250
Merchant ships of the
ancient world never ventured far from land in going from
one destination to another, so pirate enclaves grew up
along rocky shores that provided shelter and kept them
hidden from view until it was too late for their victims
to escape. Although not specific to this period, these
safe havens or bases of operation had several things in
common:
1.
Close proximity to trade routes maritime shipping used.
2. Native peoples who were either in decline or friendly
to pirates.
3.
Isolated
locations that discouraged pursuers from following.
4.
A pleasant climate.
5.
A trading post and/or tavern where pirates obtained
supplies and spent their ill-gotten gains.
In the Antalya Province of
present-day Turkey was the ancient land of Lycia,
and some Lycians were pirates.
Their coastline contained many coves and inlets where they
could lie in wait for merchant ships that passed on a
regular basis. The Lycians swooped down on their prey,
plundered the ship, and returned from whence they had
come. In 1194 BCE, Ramses III of Egypt destroyed these
havens, but eventually the pirates returned and played an
instrumental role in helping Xerxes
invade Greece in 480 BCE. Several times the Romans also
tried to suppress these pirates before finally succeeding
in 67 BCE. Once the Roman Empire fell, Lycia again became
a haven for pirates, and this time they attacked passing
ships into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries until
British warships began to patrol the coast.
Another area rife with pirates
was Cilicia,
located on the southern shore of Asia Minor (Turkey) near
the trade route that connected Syria to Italy and Greece. In
addition, its proximity to Egyptian and Palestinian sea
lanes and many rocky inlets, jutting headlands, and hidden
anchorages proved ideal for the raiders. Cilicia became the
most notorious pirate haven of ancient times and was home to
one of the largest enclaves of pirates in history.
Other
ancient bases included Corfu, Santa Maura, Cephalonia,
Miletus, Ephesus, Smyrna, the Balearic Islands, and
Sicily. The last refuge for pirates of this time period
was in the Adriatic. Dalmatia’s coast made it difficult
for pursuers to hunt down pirates. When Rome annexed Dalmatia
in CE 9, it ceased to be a haven for pirates.
Mediterranean pirates sailed
in galleys
of various sizes with sleek, narrow hulls. (Galleys would
continue to be used in these waters through the 1700s.)
Although such a vessel often had a single sail, her
primary means of propulsion came from oars. This meant men
were needed to row, thus raids on villages provided slaves
to do this job. The more warlike galleys of the Ancient
Greeks and Romans – triremes – had long battering rams
attached to the bows and up to 170 slaves, seated on three
tiers of benches, who propelled the galleys through the
water. Painted eyes adorned the prows so those aboard
could “see” their prey.
Egyptian Galley 1600
BCE
Greek War Galley 500 BCE
During the winter, piratical
activity subsided, but with spring the pirates set sail
once again. One favorite tactic was to attack during
festivals, times when people lowered their guards against
attack. Another tactic was to pose as honest traders. At
other times, pirates boldly sailed into port and attacked.
A navy has always been somewhat
of a deterrent to pirates. The first ruler to keep such a
force was King Minos of Crete. His ships patrolled the
eastern Mediterranean, allowing trade to flow and
restraining piracy. When Thera erupted around 1400 BCE,
however, the resulting tsunami wiped out the Minoans and
the pirates returned.
Circa 200 BCE
Rhodes came to the fore in curbing piracy. Her traders
armed their vessels and fought off attacks. Ships
regularly protected maritime commerce around the Aegean
Islands. The government also entered into treaties with
other countries. One such treaty was made with
Hieraphytna, Crete. The citizens of that town promised to
help Rhodes suppress piracy. Any captured pirates and
their vessels were turned over to Rhodes. The two groups
evenly split the proceeds from captured booty, and if
pirates attacked Hieraphytna, Rhodes came to its defense.
THE GREEKS
Greece
wasn’t a unified country with a single government in ancient
times. Rather it was a collection of city-states. Pirates
collected tributes for these individual governments and, in
times of war, utilized their skills and ships as navies to
fight their battles. Sometimes these pirates wished to
acquire greater wealth, so they attacked coastal villages on
their own. The frequency of such raids eventually led the
inhabitants to move their homes and businesses farther from
the coast. When they rebuilt their cities in these new
locations, they also fortified them.
Aristotle
equated piracy to hunting or fishing. Thucydides,
a Greek historian, said of it, “This employment did not yet
involve any disgrace, but rather brought with it somewhat of
glory.” (Lewis, 15)
When Alexander the Great
asked a captured pirate “what he meant by keeping hostile
possession of the sea,” the pirate answered: “What thou
meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with
a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it
with a great fleet art styled emperor.” (Augustine, De Civitate Dei). By 331 BC piratical raids
had become such a problem Alexander decided to do something
to stop them. He ordered Admiral Amphoterus to deal with the
problem, and he did. The pirates did not resurface until
after Alexander’s death.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Albania, Serbia, and Montenegro
were once the kingdom of Illyria,
which was ruled by Queen Teuta, who ordered her navy to
attack ships and coastal towns along the Adriatic and Ionian
Seas. She considered anyone not Illyrian her enemy and
sometimes led the attacks against them. One time she and her
men, laden with large clay jugs, approached the gates of
Epidamnos and begged entry into the city to fill the jugs
with water. Since the gatekeepers saw no weapons, they
heeded the request. Once inside, Teuta and her men broke the
jars and grabbed the weapons concealed in them. The
Illyrians slew the guards, but reinforcements soon arrived
and drove them from the city.
So powerful did the Illyrians
become that by 230 BC no honest traders wished to
participate in maritime commerce. The Roman
Empire, however, did little to stop the attacks, in
part because their military might was concentrated on land
targets, rather than the sea. After Illyrians attacked a
convoy of Roman ships laden with grain in the Adriatic Sea,
Rome
reevaluated this tendency. Two Roman envoys – Gaius
and
Lucius Coruncanius – visited Queen Teuta and asked that her
men cease their attacks. During the meeting, one brother
lost his temper and threatened the queen. Unafraid of the
Romans and insulted by the envoy’s tactlessness, she had him
killed. The murder outraged Roman senators, who decided to
teach Teuta a lesson. Consul Gnaeus Fulvius sailed for
Illyria with two hundred ships, while Consul Aulus Postumius
and 20,000 soldiers marched overland. Along their route,
various city-states, that Teuta ruled, offered their loyalty
to Rome in exchange for protection from the Illyrians. These
combined forces overwhelmed the Illyrian forces, but she
fled to Rhizon. When Teuta finally surrendered in 228 BC,
she agreed to pay an annual tribute to Rome and relinquish
most of her territories. Rome only permitted her the use of
two unarmed galleys whenever she put to sea.
The next major infestation of
and danger from pirates came from Cilicia, located between
present-day Syria and Armenia. Since the pirates supplied
much needed slaves,
many Roman ports welcomed the Cilicians and their plunder.
The demand for slaves became so great that small piratical
bands began to work together to supply captives of all ages
and sexes. Finally, the towns from which these citizens were
taken offered to pay the pirates to protect against such
raids. The Cilicians often accepted the money, but didn’t
always cease their attacks.
In 78 BC a
band of Cilician pirates attacked a merchant galley bound
for Rhodes. One of the passengers was a young Roman named Julius
Caesar, who sat and read while his fellow passengers
cowered before the sea robbers. When the pirate captain
named the amount of Caesar’s ransom – twenty talents (about
£1,200) – Julius was offended. He deemed himself worth at
least fifty talents (about £3,000). While the Cilicians
waited for that amount of ransom to arrive, Caesar remained
with them at Parmacusa. Payment arrived about five weeks
later, and Caesar vowed to return and slay his captors. To
that end he acquired the services of four galleys and 500 legionnaires
to track down the Cilicians. About 350 pirates were
captured, but the Roman Praetor Junius didn’t wish to upset
his fragile relationship with them. Knowing Junius would
release them once they paid a stiff fine, Caesar secretly
seized thirty Cilicians, slit their throats, then crucified
them. He also recovered the ransom money.
At the height of their power,
these pirates almost crippled Ancient Rome’s maritime trade.
Then in 69 BC, they attacked Delos,
the legendary birthplace of Apollo
and Artemis
and an important commercial center in the Aegean, even
though the port was also a principal market for slaves the
pirates captured.
Aware that
such power could well destroy the empire, Rome decided to
destroy the Cilicians. The Senate granted Gnaeus
Pompeius, or Pompey the Great, never before seen
powers to accomplish this. For three years, he had total
control over the Mediterranean from the sea to fifty miles
inland. His twenty-five assistants held senatorial rank and,
according to Plutarch, Pompeius amassed 6,000 gold talents,
500 warships with sailors to crew them, 120,000 soldiers,
and 5,000 cavalry to accomplish the task.
After securing the routes that
supplied food to Rome, he began his campaign against the
Cilicians. He divided the Mediterranean and Black Seas into
thirteen regions, each under the command of one of his
officers. Their orders: destroy all pirate strongholds and
force the Cilicians to surrender. Historical documents
record that Pompeius captured at least 400 vessels while
destroying more than 1,000 others. Ten thousand pirates died
in battle, while twice that number surrendered.
Captured pirates were often
beheaded, crucified, or thrown to the lions, but Pompeius
chose neither to imprison nor execute the Cilicians. Instead
he distributed them and their families throughout the empire
to inland locations where they could farm or conduct an
honest livelihood. Although the Senate gave him three years
to accomplish all that he did, he achieved his goals in only
forty-nine days.
Unless governments are willing
to maintain navies, though, the pirates will return. Such
was the case in Ancient Rome. After
Julius Caesar’s death, civil wars led to an upsurge in
piracy. Sextus Pompeius (Gnaeus Pompeius’ son) decided to
take on Caesar’s heir, Octavian, because he was the better
man to rule Rome. Sextus built a fleet
of ships and with the help of pirates and escaped slaves, he
attacked. Not as adept at tactics and strategy as his
father, Sextus was defeated in 36 BC. Thereafter, the
Mediterranean enjoyed three centuries of freedom from
piratical attacks.
For additional information on Ancient
Piracy, I recommend the following:
Age
of the Galley: Mediterranean Oared Vessels since
Pre-Classical Times. Chartwell, 2000.
Ancient
Greek Trireme
[http://www.richeast.org/htwm/Greeks/kapost/ship.html --
link no longer active 7/27/2015]
Atauz, Ayşe Devrim. Eight Thousand Years of Maltese Maritime
History: Trade, Piracy, and Naval Warfare in the Central
Mediterranean.
University Press of Florida, 2008.
Bunson, Margaret R. Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt. Fact on
File, 2002.
Bustamante, Sebastián Ignacio
Donoso. “How the Greatest of All Romans was Captured by
Pirates,” No Quarter Given XIII:5
(September/October 2006),
4-5.
Casson, Lionel. “Ancient
Naval Warfare,” Quarterly Journal
of Military History 4:1 (Autumn 1991), 74-81.
Culver, Henry B. The
Book
of Old Ships: From Egyptian Galleys to Clipper Ships.
Dover, 1992.
De Souza, Philip. Piracy
in the Graeco-Roman World. Cambridge, 1999. (Excerpt)
Dionysus
Druett, Joan. She
Captains: Heroines and Hellions Of The Sea. Simon
& Schuster, 2001.
Gosse, Philip. History
of Piracy. Rio Grande Press, 1995.
Illyrian
Piracy: Ancient Endemic or Historical Construct?
The Incursions of the Sea
Peoples
[http://nefertiti.iwebland.com/sea_peoples.htm -- link no
longer active 7/27/2015]
Julius
Caesar
Klausmann, Ulrike, Marion
Meinzerin, and Garbriel Kuhn. Women Pirates
and the Politics of the Jolly Roger. Black Rose
Books, 1997.
Lycia
Lycia and
the Lycians
Mediterranean
Ship Types
[http://nefertiti.iwebland.com/sea_peoples.htm -- link no
longer active 7/27/2015]
Ormerod, Henry A. Piracy
in the Ancient World: An Essay in Mediterranean History.
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.
Pirates
of
the Mediterranean
Pitazzi, Michael. The
Navies of Rome. Boydell & Brewer, 2009.
Rauh, N. K., R. W. Townsend,
M. Hoff, and L. Wandsnider. Pirates
in
the Bay of Pamphylia: an Archaeological Inquiry.
[https://www.clarku.edu/activelearning/departments/vpa/townsend/townsend.cfm
-- link no longer active 7/27/2015]
Sea
Peoples and the Phoenicians
Selinger, Gail. Complete
Idiot’s
Guide to Pirates. Alpha, 2006.
Ships of
Ancient Greece
Tunis, Edwin. Oars,
Sails
and Steam: A Picture Book of Ships. World
Publishing, 1952.
Warzeski, Jeanne Marie.
“Ancient Sea-zures,” Circa 2:1
(Spring/Summer 2009), 4-5.
Pirates
and Privateers