Piracy in the Early Roman Mediterranean

The Cilician Pirates, Their Origins, Methods and Downfall

Oct 10, 2009

Piracy against the Spanish Empire was not without precedent: it mirrors the piracy in the Roman Mediterranean in the Second Century BCE.

In the century following the Roman wars against Carthage – the Punic Wars – the Roman Empire increased dramatically in size. The administrative structure did not quite grow apace. In the newly conquered areas were still lawless. Furthermore, in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Hellenistic Kingdoms descended from the Empire of Alexander the Great were weakened by warfare, and sometimes used contracted pirates – essentially early privateers – to enforce their law on the sea. A loose association of pirates in the Cilician region of Anatolia grew in Roman times to become a massive and immensely powerful pirate navy and a huge liability to Roman and Hellenistic sea commerce.

Imperial Foundations and Maritime Trade

The Roman Empire’s dramatic increase in size meant that maritime shipping was the only practical way of uniting the Empire. The market for exotic goods from all ends of the Empire, not to mention the massive grain and other agricultural productions from Spain and Africa drove the evolution of a merchant class in Rome, as well as giving landholding senators something to re-invest their fortunes in.

Social Impact of Maritime Trade

At the same time, it also added to a class of slaves and labourers who the Roman nobility and nouveau riche merchants had do much of the front-line dealing as well as actually sailing the ships. Rome’s hierarchical privilege As one would expect, discontent in the lower ranks with the brutal and unequal discipline lead easily to sailors throwing in their lot with pirates.

Life in Piracy

The pirating life was much more egalitarian: captaincy was an elected position, plunder and labour were divided evenly, and they had safe ports and old Cilician fortresses in which to carouse after time at sea; shades of Blackbeard, Morgan, and the other pirates whose names live clear in modern memory.

The Pirate Threat

Cilician pirate cabals in Anantolia eventually numbered hundreds of ships and thirty thousand sailors. The scale of Imperial commerce was such that the pirates were able to do very well. Ultimately, they began attacking ports and even inland settlements in Italy itself. Famously, a young Julius Caesar was kidnapped and ransomed by Cilician pirates. They would sometimes hire themselves as mercenaries to the Hellenistic States, often against the Roman Empire. They showed their contempt for those of higher class by brutal taunting and execution; oddly enough, unlike the Caribbean pirates of the Early Modern era, the ancient Mediterranean pirates actually did make prisoners walk the plank.

Pompey’s Campaign and the Defeat of Cilicia

In 67 BCE the Senate appointed one of their most noted generals, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (also called Pompey the Great), a friend and rival of Julius Caesar, to eradicate piracy from the Mediterranean. He divided the sea up regionally, and over the next three months, with 270 ships and 120,000 soldiers at his disposal, he swept the sea east to west, slowly but surely penning the pirates in at their Cilician strongholds. Several pirates went to the bottom of the sea, but most surrendered, and Pompey granted them land in the Anatolian region, turning them into useful citizens.

Legacy

The rise and decline of Mediterranean piracy in the Roman age bears an uncanny resemblance to the rise and fall of the Caribbean Buccaneers of nearly two thousand years later. It seems that where a young, growing Imperial economy rises, those at the periphery, or squashed out from under the lowest wrung of society, must inevitably have their moment to rage against the machine, and for the growing machine to ultimately roll over them.

Simon Anglim, Phyllis G. Jestice, Rob S. Rice, Scott M. Rusch and John Serrati, Fighting Techniques of the Ancient World: 3000 BC – 500 AD: Equipment, Combat Skills and Tactics, St. Martin’s Press, 2002.

Nicholas K. Rauth, Merchants, Sailors and Pirates in the Roman World, Tempus Publishing Ltd., 2003.

The copyright of the article Piracy in the Early Roman Mediterranean in Roman History is owned by Alex Graham-Heggie. Permission to republish Piracy in the Early Roman Mediterranean in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.