bout de papier, Vol. 24, No. 3 (2009) — Summer/Fall 2009 // Été/Automne 2009, pp. 24–27
The twenty-first century is, by no means, the only time that great powers have found themselves seemingly stymied by pirates. Around 70 BC, it was brought home to the Romans that the Mediterranean — what they liked to call Mare Nostrum (our sea) — was no longer exclusively theirs. Pirates, mainly based in Pamphylia, “rough” Cilicia — the lawless south coast of Asia Minor, and Crete, were becoming ever more brazen. Two Praetors (senior magistrates) and their entourage were kidnapped as they travelled along the via Appia; a pirate flotilla had sailed into Rome’s port, Ostia, and burned several warships. Worse, the grain ships from Sicily and North Africa, on which Rome’s urban masses depended, were becoming increasingly unwilling to put to sea, causing severe food shortages. Earlier efforts to pursue the pirates to their bases had enjoyed mixed results.
rom time to time Roman proconsuls were sent out to F attack the pirates; but most, after capturing a few pirate ships, taking some strongholds and amassing enough booty to decorate their hoped-for Triumphs, were anxious to hurry home to further their political careers. Civil disorder in Italy and preoccupations in other theatres also meant that counter-piracy operations were largely dependent on locally-raised military and naval levies. Some more venal proconsuls used this as a pretext to levy contributions from local cities, ostensibly to support the anti-pirate effort, but in fact were pocketing the proceeds. More humiliating, Marcus Antonius “Creticus” (father of Cleopatra’s Mark Anthony), sent out in 72 BC to end the Cretan pirate threat, died after suffering a serious defeat at the hands of the island’s war-like population. The only bright spot was the initiative of a young Roman noble, Gaius Julius Caesar. Kidnapped by pirates off the coast of Asia Minor, after raising his ransom, he had hired some local warships to hunt down and crucify (as he had promised them) his erstwhile captors.
The situation was largely of Rome’s own making. The rise of Cilician pirates is linked with the decline of the Selucid monarchy, which the Romans had done much to hasten. The Selucids had been forced to withdraw from Asia Minor, leaving a power vacuum north of the Taurus Mountains. This had been exacerbated by a series of wars of succession among claimants to the dwindling Selucid realm (now largely confined to northern Syria), which gave even more scope to those who made their living by piracy and brigandage. Traditionally much of the task of protecting the eastern Mediterranean sea-lanes had been assumed by the island state of Rhodes whose prosperity depended on sea-borne commerce. In 168 BC Rhodes had offended the Romans with an ill-timed peace initiative in the midst of a war between Rome and Macedonia. The Romans retaliated by making the island of Delos a free port, diverting much of Rhodes’ trade, and costing her dearly in lost revenues. (Delos also became a major slave emporium, where the pirates could sell off their captives.) Not only was its ability to maintain an anti-piracy fleet compromised, but when Rhodes did mount a punitive expedition against pirates based in Crete, the Romans forced a ceasefire, leaving the pirates there — free to continue and indeed flourish. The long drawn out wars between Rome and King Mithridates of Pontus further destabilized the eastern Mediterranean and gave the pirates greater freedom to operate, as well as the opportunity to hire out their services to one side or the other.
In antiquity, and indeed right up to the 19th century, the distinction between of a pirate (a freelance maritime brigand) and a privateer who had received an official license from a state to wage a guerre de course against its enemies, was largely a matter of circumstances, or perception. In Elizabethan times, Sir Francis Drake was regaled as a national hero in England, but reviled as a ruthless marauder in Spain. To defray expenses, some Greek states, such as cash-strapped Athens in the 4th century BC, encouraged (or at best did little to discourage) their warship captains’ plundering activities. Excuses could run pretty thin. An Athenian embassy bound for Caria (on the southwest coast of Asia Minor), aboard a state galley, encountered and seized a rich Egyptian merchant ship, an act which one might assume was incompatible with their diplomatic status — not so, the Athenians deemed the act legitimate, justifying the attack because Egypt was in rebellion from Persia, with which Athens was at peace (but was, by no means, an ally). The Athenians also brushed off Macedonian complaints about the plundering activities of one of its admirals (despite the fact that Athens and Macedonia were at peace) on the grounds that he needed supplies for his troops.
Effective piracy was normally a capital and manpower intensive business. While some pirates such as the Balearic islanders and tribes along the Red Sea made do with rafts, most pirates used light, undecked galleys, usually with 30 to 50 oars. While costly to build and operate, such vessels could run down and overpower most sailing vessels, yet outrun any larger warships sent against them. Piracy tended to flourish on rugged, heavily indented coastal regions or archipelagoes with good harbours and ample timber in the hinterland, reserves of poor but predatory manpower and weak political structures — Dalmatia, Crete and the south coast of Asia Minor were all notorious pirate lairs, as indeed had been Italy before the Romans united the peninsula. Such regions’ poor and rugged terrain made them hard to subdue, while the lack of any unified state structure made it difficult to find an interlocuteur valable with whom to negotiate a halt to such activities.
According to Plutarch (writing two centuries after the event, and no doubt with a healthy dose of hyperbole), the Cilician pirates had 1,000 warships, and some were so rich that they gilded their woodwork, made sails of purple cloth and sheathed their oars in silver. As well as preying on merchant shipping, they raided coastal settlements for slaves and plundered the treasuries of many temples in the Aegean and on the Ionian coast. Their pervasiveness and brazen behaviour was calling into question Rome’s ability to protect its clients in the eastern Mediterranean.
In 69 BC, following Marcus Antonius’ debacle, the Senate did send a seasoned ex-Consul, Quintus Caecilius Metellus, to reduce Crete. The Metelli family produced a long line of rather pedestrian but very thorough generals, who got the job done, if not as quickly as the Roman masses might have wished. This is indeed what Quintus Caecilius achieved. In the course of a three-year campaign, working from west to east, he systematically reduced Crete’s city-statelets and pirate lairs. He was opposed by the pirate chief Lasthenes, who had defeated Marcus Antonius, with a hardened force of 24,000 archers.
Even so, Metellus’ campaign only addressed part of the pirate problem; the Cilician pirates remained unsubdued, nor was the western Mediterranean free of pirate bands. In 67 BC one of the Tribunes of the Plebs, Aulus Gabinius, proposed the appointment of what today might be called an anti-piracy Czar. The college of 10 annually elected Tribunes was a uniquely Roman institution established in the early days of the Republic to protect the interests of the Plebeians against the Patrician families, who then monopolized political power. Protected by immunity during their term of office, they could bypass the Senate by putting legislative proposals directly to the popular assembly, and veto any action by the Consuls, the Senate, or even fellow tribunes. Gabinius proposed a plebiscite appointing an ex-consul with full powers — overriding any provincial governors (Imperium Maius) — to raise troops and levy ships to combat pirates throughout the Mediterranean and 90 kilometres inland. The command would last for three years. Gabinius did not name a nominee to this post but it was clear that his (and the people’s) choice was Gnaeus Pompieus Magnus. Pompey “the Great” was the wunderkind of Roman politics, adored by the people and loathed by his senatorial peers. During the civil wars of the 80s, barely in his twenties, and with no legal authority whatsoever, he had raised a private army of three legions to assist Sulla’s seizure of power. On behalf of Sulla he had retaken Sicily and north Africa and later had gone on to Spain to put down the rebel general Sertorius who had defeated all previous efforts to suppress him. Finally, as he returned to Italy, he defeated the last remnants of Spartacus’ slave revolt. Pompey had done all this as a private citizen, never having held any magisterial post (normally a pre-condition to any
Only once did Pompey have to fac unfortunately for him — was Julius
in 48 BC, Pompey, despite his lar where his hosts military command). He rectified this omission by being elected Consul in 70 BC, again leap-frogging the lower offices, normally considered a prerequisite for this supreme post.
In his early life Pompey had backed Sulla’s conservative program, indeed his zeal in doing Sulla’s dirty work had earned him the nickname adulescens carnifex (butcher-boy). But as Consul, he began to roll back much of Sulla’s legislative program, restoring the Tribunes’ power to propose legislation, and their right to hold other political offices. Having done this, Pompey found himself rather at a loose end. He had no prior political experience and did not really thrive in the Senate, where he was seen as a dangerous parvenue. He was soon looking for an opportunity to get out of Rome and back into the field, where he could display his prowess. Although he was careful not to show too much eagerness to take up the post proposed by Gabinius, Pompey’s Senatorial colleagues would have none of it, fearing that he was another potential Sulla in the making. Initially the only senatorial supporters of Gabinius’ proposal were Julius Caesar and Rome’s spin doctor extraordinaire Marcus Tullius Cicero. To counter Gabinius’ plebiscite, the senators persuaded another Tribune to threaten to veto it.
The in and outs of how Gabinius and (at a discrete distance) Pompey finally got the motion through are not really germane here, but it caused a lot of bad blood and left the Roman constitution sorely bent out of place. The bottom line is Pompey got his command and immediately set about mustering his forces to combat the pirates. Indeed it is likely he had already been doing so quietly while waiting for Gabinius’ bill to pass. Pompey was authorized to raise 200 ships, 120,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry. To help with command and control, he could appoint up to 15 deputies (legates). These handpicked younger members of the senatorial class were each given a stretch of coastline to patrol, with a flotilla of ships to bottle up the pirates in their harbours and ground forces which would then winkle them out. Pompey himself led a dedicated fleet of 60 warships, and starting in Sicily swept clockwise around the western Mediterranean from north Africa to Spain along the Riviera and back to Italy, driving any pirates he encountered into the arms of his legates. Within an astonishing 60 days, Pompey claimed to have cleared the western Mediterranean of pirates. Even before he began operations, the price of grain had dropped to normal levels.
The massive and rapid concentration of force was vintage
Pompey; but Pompey was not, in fact, a particularly good ce a first class enemy, and that — Caesar. At the battle of Pharsalus rger army, lost. He fled to Egypt, 5 murdered him,
general, as much as he fancied himself to be another Alexander the Great (he adopted the cognomen “Magnus” to emphasize a vague physical resemblance to the Macedonian warlord). He was however a superb organizer of military and financial resources. He was also good at exploiting other generals’ groundwork. Much of the spade work in defeating Sertorius (who in fact had already been assassinated by one of his followers) had been done by Quintus Metellus Pius (another of the plodding Metelli). Crassus had already defeated Spartacus, when Pompey showed up to round up the remnants of his army, demanding equal credit. None of this had endeared him to his senatorial colleagues.
The real challenge lay in the eastern Mediterranean, the home of the Cilician pirates. Pompey’s legates in the east had done nothing to hinder their retreat to their Cilician bases. Pompey now concentrated his ships to ensure they could not break out, while his army, with a powerful siege train, landed on the southern coast of Asia to reduce the pirates’ strongholds. Unfortunately the details of the campaign are lost. It is said that several fortresses were reduced and a decisive naval battle was fought in the Bay of Coracaesium, followed by the capture of the fortress there. After that, 20,000 pirates surrendered to Pompey, who had made it clear he was offering generous terms. It is claimed that this stage of the eastern campaign was over in 70 days — what had been envisaged as a three-year campaign was accomplished in less than half a year.
The official spin was that Pompey resettled the surrendered pirates on deserted lands and abandoned cities (of which there was an abundance in the wake of Mithridates’ wars), well inland, so they would not be tempted to desert their new calling as peaceful farmers. The grateful ex-pirates even renamed one of their newly acquired towns Pompeiopolis. As well Pompey took many into his own service to help further what he hoped would be the next stage of his career: the commission to finish off Mithridates. His friends at home were already hard at work. Another tame tribune, Gaius Manilius, backed by Cicero’s oratory, proposed a plebiscite to strip Lucullus of his command and give it to Pompey. Lucullus had been there too long, had suffered some reverses (after a string of spectacular victories) and worse had offended the tax farmers. Pompey had the ships, he had the troops, and he was in the neighbourhood (see “He Died Old,’ bout de papier, Vol. 21, No. 3, Summer/Fall 2005).
There was one piece of unfinished business — Crete. For the past two years, Metellus, true to his family’s slow but thorough style, had been systematically reducing the pirate strongholds on the island, offering no quarter. The Cretans thought they would get a better deal from Pompey and offered to surrender to him. Pompey, never loath to steal someone else’s glory, sent one of his legates, Octavius, backed by a force of Cilician ex-pirates, to accept the Cretans’ surrender. Notwithstanding Pompey’s Jmperium Maius, Metellus refused to accept that he had any right to interfere. Octavius and his men, along with those whose surrendered they had come to accept, soon found themselves in the town of Lappa, besieged by Metellus. When Metellus stormed the town, he released Octavius but executed his Cilicians. Despite the intervention by other troops loyal to Pompey, Metellus completed his conquest of Crete and captured Lasthenes. However, he was unable to parade Lasthenes in his Triumph, as one of Pompey’s tame tribunes vetoed it.
Pompey had won a quick, spectacular and seemingly complete victory over the pirates, using it as a stepping stone in an even more spectacular career of conquests throughout the Middle East which took him from Caspian to the Red Sea, leaving the pirates far behind. Pompey once again demonstrated his ability to mobilize and concentrate massive resources, and build upon (and claim credit for) the work of others. Only once did Pompey have to face a first class enemy, and that — unfortunately for him — was Julius Caesar. At the battle of Pharsalus in 48 BC, Pompey, despite his larger army, lost. He fled to Egypt, where his hosts murdered him,
While the world marvelled at Pompey’s drang nach Osten, not all of the pirates who had submitted to him were resume their old calling. Indeed Pompey’s youngest son, Sextus, was to gain the reputation for piracy. Sextus assumed command of his father’s still formidable fleet and took over Sicily and Sardinia. For over a decade he resisted all attempts to oust him, waging a guerre de course against Caesar’s successors, Anthony and Octavian, often threatening Rome’s grain supply. Whether Sextus should properly be considered simply a rogue admiral is perhaps moot — Octavian’s publicists naturally branded him a pirate, and his two chief naval commanders seem to have been ex-pirates who had surrendered to his father. After several failed attempts, Octavian’s chief military expert Agrippa was finally able to defeat Sextus, crucifying many of his sailors on the grounds that they were ex-pirates and escaped slaves.
Following their defeat of Sextus, Octavian and Agrippa went on to deal with Anthony and Cleopatra. As sole ruler of the Roman world, Octavian — soon to be known as Augustus — proceeded to tidy up its boundaries, effectively bringing the entire Mediterranean coast under Roman rule. It was then, and only then, that piracy effectively died out under the Pax Romana, not to reappear in the Mediterranean basin until the Vandal conquest of north Africa almost five centuries later.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 24, No. 3 (2009) — Summer/Fall 2009 // Été/Automne 2009, pp. 24–27. Read the rest of this issue →
