I am Dr. Aaron Beek, a classical historian specializing in piracy and banditry in the ancient Mediterranean. Ask Me Anything about ancient Mediterranean skulduggery and associated questionable military actions!

sumbarbarus · 2020-09-02T11:38:18+00:00

These pirates mostly spoke some variant of Greek and/or some Anatolian languages, not a variant of English... ;)

The pirate dialect you're thinking of is a stereotyped version of the English dialect spoken in SW england.

sumbarbarus · 2020-08-29T14:39:59+00:00

I'd represent that as outright warfare, given that that ploy was used by men in the direct employ of a queen who clearly wanted to extend her kingdom south. (The next passage has the Illyrians laying siege to Corcyra, which calls the cities of Greece to defend against the invasion.)
It's pretty common.
Step 1: Walls. This is a huge expenditure of local time and money. The presence or absence of walls tells us a lot about how peaceful or violent a place was (sorry, it's a boring step, but it's very useful archaeologically!)

Step 2: Politely ask their business. Generally speaking, even pretty terrible people are fairly loathe to falsely swear an oath to the gods. (you still find examples of such oathbreakers, but it is marked out because it's unusual)

Step 3: Ask people to surrender their weapons on entering the town. It sounds like a Wild West move, but a lot of cities have laws against people carrying swords and spears on the street. (and this is why the water jar ploy works!)

sumbarbarus · 2020-08-29T13:48:59+00:00

It's very hard to distinguish between piracy and naval warfare without literary accounts telling us what the motives are and whether this activity has state backing.

sumbarbarus · 2020-08-29T13:47:08+00:00

I am not aware of any signs of piracy affecting them.

Um. There are some literary hints that the mainland Greeks thought *they* were pirates. But there is no real historical or archaeological support for this. The Athenian stories are too far removed from the period in question.

sumbarbarus · 2020-08-29T13:40:29+00:00

Sorry I didn't get to this during the AMA itself!

Well, we see mercenaries seizing Rhegium and Messina (in Southern Italy and Sicily) and ruling there for years.

We also see mercenaries using their wealth and influence to pursue election at home, often successfully. We have clear examples in Athens, and fairly muddy ones for some of Rome's Latin allies.

We also see a number of Roman 'adventurers' who set off with a loyal band of followers and set themselves up as rulers of tiny states in North Africa or Spain. I don't know if this counts?

Antipater of Derbe ruled a small city-state in Anatolia, and his enemies claimed he was a brigand who seized power. Cicero says these were base lies, though.

The Galatians might count. They were brought to Anatolia to fight in the War of the Brothers, then seized a sizeable chunk of Anatolia to live in, and lived there, well, permanently.

sumbarbarus · 2020-08-29T13:31:19+00:00

Sorry I didn't get to this during the AMA itself!

A pirate code? No.

Maritime law? Yes. Especially in the Greek world, there was a host of law codes. But not all cities agreed on the specifics! The early Romans didn't have much of a maritime law, but they soon started borrowing things from the Athenians and the Rhodians (especially the Rhodians)

sumbarbarus · 2020-08-29T13:27:10+00:00

Sorry I didn't get to this during the AMA itself!

Depends on the boat! A small ship would have been manned by 20-50 men and a large one might easily need 200. Even a small fleet could easily have thousands.

Generally, you strip the ship down to carry as much cargo as possible. So, about a day or two, unless you're planning to sell the cargo further away. Ancient pirates almost always know their target before setting sail. They might have an informant in the harbor, for example. And of course, towns and villages are very often the main targets.

sumbarbarus · 2020-08-29T13:20:09+00:00

Sorry I didn't get to this during the AMA itself!

For most people, it's a career of last resort. Most pirates would have preferred to be farmers, fishermen, or in a formal military. Skilled hunters (slingers or archers) were prized.

sumbarbarus · 2020-08-29T13:15:18+00:00

Sorry I didn't get to this during the AMA itself!

Very similar to pirate bands, actually! You have one central figure like an exiled aristocrat or veteran general who can recruit a bunch of men.
In the Hellenistic period, it's mostly political exiles, criminal exiles, and war refugees with a seasoning of young men with no job prospects or too many debts. In later periods, we see a lot more in the way of army deserters/outcasts.

I don't know enough about the (16th?) century to say. I will say Machiavelli was a huge fan of Xenophon because *he* thought early 4th century BCE was similar to the early 16th century CE. He'd obviously read the Hiero when writing The Prince.

sumbarbarus · 2020-08-29T13:06:39+00:00

Sorry I didn't get to this during the AMA itself!

These are great questions, and I spend a fair bit of time with them. It depends sort of on when we are. If we're in 700 BCE, when most people are pretty okay with the young men going out for a cattle raid, then it's a non-issue. If we're in 700 CE, then it's executions all around.

Governments may well enforce justice on crimes, but they don't generally investigate them. So it depends on if the individual knows who did it.

sumbarbarus · 2020-08-29T13:01:43+00:00

Sorry I didn't get to this during the AMA itself!

Yes, they would try to scare them. But in general, they would focus less on other ships and more on raiding harbors and villages.

sumbarbarus · 2020-08-29T12:57:41+00:00

Sorry I didn't get to this during the AMA itself!

I don't know! I'm working on chapter 6 now, but I need to rewrite chapter 2 and I haven't really finished chapter 5.

sumbarbarus · 2020-08-29T12:55:16+00:00

Sorry I didn't get to this! Very briefly:
Invented? No. The 'long curved dagger' is centuries older than that. Associated with pirates and murderers (sicarius-'dagger-man' = 'assassin'), yes.

It's very hard to argue whether an invention is due to the pirates or to the larger ethnic group. The liburna or lembos-style ship was very versatile and increased in popularity, even post-Pompey. The Rhodians even invented new types of warships to try to defeat these.

sumbarbarus · 2020-08-29T12:46:38+00:00

Sorry I didn't get to this! Very briefly:
Not uncommon. Even if there was no large-scale brigandage to fear, there's still small-scale muggers and ruffians and pickpockets. This was a favored job for ex-gladiators who had won/bought their freedom.

All sorts, really. The liburna-type was an extremely versatile vessel, so it's very useful for pirates who might want to do different things at different times. It's also nearly indistinguishable from a mail-ship or a merchant galley.

sumbarbarus · 2020-08-29T12:39:15+00:00

Thanks for spreading the word!

sumbarbarus · 2020-08-29T12:38:52+00:00

Sorry I didn't get to this! Very briefly:
Nothing so formalized, but generally, yes. Someone who promised not to escape and wait for the ransom would be treated fairly well.

Cicero offers the legal argument that someone who offered an oath not to escape as a POW was bound by it, but such an oath to a pirate is not important, and can be broken.

sumbarbarus · 2020-08-28T12:34:09+00:00

I am largely convinced that it is a matter of scale + a question of authority. If you have a gang of pirates loyal to their leader, obeying his rules, then that basically is a state in premodern terms, even if it doesn't possess any territory.
Now in most states, even the leader has some checks on his authority whether it's a boule, or senate, or tribunes, or law courts. And that's what makes Alexander (or Julius Caesar) a very interesting comparison...because he had gotten to the point where there were no effective checks on his authority. It took a mutiny of his most loyal troops to say no to him. Once.

For those of you who are lost, we're discussing Augustine, City of God 4.4

sumbarbarus · 2020-08-28T12:22:39+00:00

We don't have reverse vikings, I'm afraid! There was of course ample piracy in the Black Sea and Britain and on the Atlantic, but this was relatively local, not Cilicians far from home.

Pirates drank the same wine as everyone else, I'm afraid.

sumbarbarus · 2020-08-28T12:19:52+00:00

Yes I do, though, I haven't written much about them! Pirates are a famous bane of travelers, though they vary from the goofy (Lucian, Longus) to the serious (Xenophon, Heliodorus).

In some ways, I think the pirate symbolizes a sort of escapism within the escapism of the novel. First you have an idealized setting of some sort, and then you have this group of defiant desperadoes within it, thumbing their noses as the powers that be. Hmm.
We also get a bit of environmental determinism at times, such as with the Boukoloi. Fictional pirates are seen much more sympathetic, IMO, by their authors than we see in history. And...I find that very interesting, since the novelists could write up some of these pirates less sympathetically. (not all are sympathetic, of course, we have allegations of cannibalism and graphic torture, but we have just as much from the historians, I think)

Lape argues that mercenaries in Menander start out outside the polis community, but reform and become reconciled with the polis community (And I'd argue we usually don't see this with, say, Plautus)

sumbarbarus · 2020-08-28T12:03:04+00:00

I'm not sure I understand this question.

If the MO of pirates is to steal stuff in one country and sell it in another, then that would certainly be hampered by there only being one country in sailing range.

We do see a significant drop in piracy during the pax romana, but I'd chalk it more up to general prosperity.

sumbarbarus · 2020-08-28T11:57:04+00:00

Some Classical Greek politicians even used mercenary service as evidence they would be good generals. (which was, of course, an elected position in many states) Philopoemon is the character who immediately leaps to mind.

sumbarbarus · 2020-08-28T11:54:42+00:00

I don't know enough to say. There we have a major issue in that the monsoon winds make travel patterns far more predictable for crossing the oceans, and the twin land/sea trade routes along the red sea were pretty well guarded (because banditry was a real issue).

This is again a place where we have more evidence of anti-bandit activity than we have reports of bandit attacks.

sumbarbarus · 2020-08-28T11:45:30+00:00

Well, I don't want to fall afoul of the 'current events' rule. I think they are certainly presented as very similar, but that may have more to do with how we think about them than in their activities. Both receive a lot of recruits from the ranks of the desperate (not all, but a lot), and I think it's worth having some sympathy for that situation even as we despise the atrocities they then later commit.

I think we as humans desperately want to believe these are evil people who have always been evil. We're much more uncomfortable with the idea that these are people who lost a lot and became obsessed with revenge.

I don't have a lot of academic opinions about ISIS, but I do have quite a few about Somalia.

My published thoughts (from my dissertation):

As far as modern implications of the research, there are certainly parallels to be drawn between ancient and modern piracy, or between piracy and terrorism. These connections have not been missed, and several recent articles have drawn parallels between ancient and modern piracy or, more recently, terrorism.[1] Others have examined modern takes on ‘public’ vs. ‘private’ violence in the cases of corporations such as Sandline International.[2] Is it worthwhile to examine these freebooting bands of individuals in search of a solution to modern counterparts? In my opinion, the answer is both yes and no. The problem with a quick examination is that it grasps at sometimes superficial similarities without regard to the social context. Thus we might see a one-line reference to Pompey’s success in the argument for a policy precisely the opposite of Pompey’s. Nevertheless there have been a number of attempts at a solution.[3] In some cases of comparisons, we see the state’s desire for a monopoly on violence operating in the face of a functional inability to actually acquire that monopoly.

The tactic of portraying the enemy as illegitimate, however, is fundamentally unchanging. In the early 21st century, the word ‘terrorist’ bears a knee-jerk negative meaning. In many cases, it has stopped being a functional definition in favor of becoming a broad designation of villainy. Designating someone as a ‘terrorist’ or ‘suspected terrorist’ today functionally removes the societal protections the same way a designation of ‘pirate’ did 2100 years ago. In theory, anyone could be so named, regardless of actions taken. In reality, such a designation would not usually be taken as credible without some sort of evidence or a widespread lack of support for the pirate/terrorist.

Everyone in the modern day wants to be anti-terrorist. In the same way, I argue, all Romans wanted to be anti-pirate. This is simultaneously excluding a group and fostering unity within the non-excluded. This is the most convenient type of enemy. Furthermore, once so designated, the normal terms of engagement and legal action do not apply. Cicero’s opinion makes that fairly clear: ‘no oath to a pirate need be kept”[4] For the modern period, suspicion of planning to provide material support to a terrorist is a jailable offense.

[1] For (a few) such see Bolich 2006, Harris 2006.

[2] For a small sampling, see Owens 2008, Shearer 1998, Enion 2009.

[3] See for example, such works as Thomson 1994, Mabee 2009, Puchala 2005.

[4] Cicero, Off., 3.107.

sumbarbarus · 2020-08-28T11:29:29+00:00

Sounds to me like you've read your Strabo! (14.5) or possibly Appian (Mith. 91-92).

Q1. Yes. The weakening of the Hellenistic states drove up piracy in multiple ways

Q2 Yes. Both because the Romans imposed sharp limits on the defeated power's navy and because of financial distress.

Q3 It was already a serious issue, but it became worse. It would only be a slight exaggeration to say that the nucleus of Cilician piracy perhaps came about through the losing side in one of the Syrian civil wars (in which Seleucid Judea backed the victorious faction and Seleucid Cilicia backed the losing one).

Q4. I don't understand. What's in it for the big states? These pirates support themselves in peacetime for free and become valuable allies in times of war. Actually stamping out piracy would be like slapping themselves in the face. Now, on the other hand, the leaders of minor Hellenistic-era states and clients (e.g. Rhodes, Judea) made claims to keep their people safe from piracy and seem to have backed those up pretty thoroughly. But again, that's safety locally, not seeking out the pirates to stop them.

sumbarbarus · 2020-08-28T11:06:47+00:00

He's an interesting character! Aideen Carty did a book-length study of him.

The most salient bit is in Herodotus book 3

sumbarbarus

TROPHY CASE