this scourge of trade.
In his Life of Pompey, the historian Plutarch
paints a vivid picture of the scale of the challenge
facing the general:
Their flutes and stringed instruments and
drinking bouts along every coast, their seizures
of persons in high command, and their ran-
soming of captured cities, were a disgrace to
the Roman supremacy. For, you see, the ships
of the pirates numbered more than a thousand,
and the cities captured by them four hundred.Accordingly, Pompey undertook a series of raids
against the main pirate strongholds in the Medi-
terranean. Although thousands died at the hands
of Pompey’s troops, those that surrendered were
THREATS TO
ROMAN TR ADE
AROUND 75 B.C. Cilician pirates were a formidable threat to
the trade routes of Rome. These pirates operated from the
southern coast of Anatolia (modern Turkey) where Cilicia’s
rugged coastline offered excellent harbors and hiding places.
Protecting the trade routes that crisscrossed the sea became
a priority to Rome, which began dedicating more resources
to combat the scourge of piracy and bring more of the Medi-
terranean coastline under its aegis. Following Pompey’s war
on piracy, Cilicia became a Roman province in 67 b.c., Syria
followed in 64 b.c., and Judaea and Egypt fell increasingly un-
der Roman control. As Roman political and economic power
grew more ubiquitous around the Mediterranean, large-scale
piracy decreased.