piracy 177
Archaic-age Homer, obviously, was no admirer of city life, which he generally
dismissed as unmanly and soft. The Greeks of the classical era, however, felt differ-
ently. Urban life was life itself, to them. Clutching the shores of the isthmus and the
islands, they clung to the traditions and rituals of their poleis, identified with them,
and fought to preserve them. When they established their hundreds of colonies
throughout the sea—whether self-governing satellites (apoidikiai) or dependent trad-
ing outposts (empora)—they brought their attitudes with them and viewed pirates
with scorn as crude scofflaws who threatened not only trade but the civilizing process
itself. Thus, in the second century bce the grateful citizens of the Athenian colony on
Imbros dedicated an inscription in honor of one of their leaders:
who, when a group of troublemakers attacked our island, neither ignored nor shrank
from the danger but advanced manfully against it and soon brought us the news that he
had vanquished the pirates ... and therefore we decree that Lysanias of Deradiotai, the
son of Aristokratos, is to be honored. May he be crowned with a crown of gold! (cited
De Souza, 2002: 1, my translation)Piracy flourished in the Hellenistic eastern sea while Rome and Carthage were at
war in the west. The waters off the southern coast of Cilicia and the western coast
of the Balkans were notoriously infested with pirates. The preferred ship of the age
was the Illyrian lembos, a lightweight, single-decked ship capable of holding 50 men
in addition to the rowing crew. When Roman forces moved into the region, the
difficulty of bringing stolen goods or captives into the harbors was mitigated by the
pirates’ new stratagem not of selling captives as slaves but simply ransoming them
and absconding with the money. This was the context in 78 bce when pirates cap-
tured the young Julius Caesar, then aged 25, and held him for 50 talents of gold.
(The affair ended badly for the pirates, all 30 of whom Caesar later captured and
crucified.)
As far back as Roman evidence allows a view, piracy was associated with ship-
wreck and slavery; it may well have begun as a form of pre-emptive wrecking. By
longstanding custom, what came to be called the ius naufragii (right of shipwreck)
gave ownership of goods washed ashore either to the people who discovered them
or to whoever had jurisdiction over the coastline in question. Two notions informed
the custom: the assumption that the original owners of the goods had died in the
shipwreck, and the assumption that the bestowal of the goods on their coastal dis-
coverers was a gift from the heavens—either as a reward for their good behavior, or
as a fit punishment on the original owners for an unknown wickedness on their
part. In either case, ius naufragii was justified as an example of moral luck. The
Greek states, and then the Roman government, were no fans of the custom and
tried repeatedly to outlaw it. Antoninus Pius (r. 138–161) was the first Roman
emperor to condemn it, or was at least the earliest one cited in Justinian’s Corpus
iuris civilis. In this and in later condemnations, it was specifically the enslavement
of any survivors of the shipwreck that rankled—for this might be risking the moral
luck of the discovery. Perhaps heaven had spared this survivor, or group of survi-
vors, for a reason? If so, enslaving them could bring divine ire upon the inhabitants
of the coast. The Codex Theodosianus (c. 429), the Breviarium Alaricianum (c.
500), a decree by Theodoric the Great (r. 471–526), and the ninth-century Pactum
Sicardi all represent failed early efforts to stamp out the custom. Canon law fared