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Piracy was a serious nuisance in ancient times. The pirates from Cilicia, whom Rome declared war on, were particularly infamous. According to Pliny the Elder, the most pirate attacks were in the period from May to September, therefore the safest place for merchant ships, contrary to appearances, was to sail in the winter when the sea was restless.
Background of events
In the initial period of its existence, the Roman Republic based its development especially on the expansion of land, in the immediate vicinity. It has relied on nations associated with the sea for centuries for additional food supplies. As a result of this state of affairs, she was not directly concerned with piracy.
This situation began to change at the turn of the 4th and 3rd century BCE. The growing population of the country showed an increased demand for grain imports. Illyrian and “Tyrrhenians ” (the collective name for Etruscan, Sardinian and Italian pirates as well as inhabitants of Greek colonies from Sicily and southern Italy) are just two of the many examples of nations’ robber crafts in the Mediterranean. The fight against this phenomenon was made much more difficult due to the specific attitude to the problem of piracy by some of the rulers of the Mediterranean countries. Demetrias and Philip V were openly hiring pirates for offensive operations against the Rhodes fleet, and the Queen of Illyria ignored her subjects’ plunder.
A little later, Rome was also disturbed by other robber groups, such as the Cretans and, perhaps the most powerful organization of this type of the world at that time, the pirates of Cilicia. Cilicia, as a mountainous land with no developed road network with an irregular coastline, provided pirates with a safe base for a long time and allowed them to focus on maritime expansion. In that city, however, the Cilicians were very successful, which provided them with a mass influx of people from among the inhabitants of the poor neighbourhood. A large group of more affluent supporters provided pirate services with their own fleet of ships with crews or co-financed new units. As a result of such support, the pirate fleet grew into the undisputed power of the then-Mediterranean world. In the 1st century BCE, it also included standard war units donated by Mithridates VI.
The Cilicians were also favoured by the balance of power at sea. The once invincible Seleucid Monarchy lost its fleet as a result of a lost war in the early 2nd century BCE, and Rome neglected its naval forces built at the cost of many sacrifices for the war with Carthage. As a result of the latter’s final defeat in the Punic Wars, some of the best sailors of the time took up piracy – Phoenicians. Rhodes, the traditional Mediterranean “policeman”, was forced to reduce its fleet due to reduced trade volumes (the market for one of the most important transport items, grain, was dominated by Roman freighter). Combined with the strong support given to pirates by the ruler of Pontus, cooperation with other robber groups and extensive own intelligence service, this allowed the Cilicians to play an important role in the history of the Mediterranean.
The power of pirates was so great that they also had some influence on political and territorial events, they contributed, inter alia, until Rome lost the Balearic Islands. They harmed the Republic in other ways as well – as a group that based its income mainly on the slave trade, they posed a constant threat to the inhabitants of coastal towns throughout the Mediterranean. The pirate plague did not avoid even Italian cities, including Rome – there were cases of kidnappings at the very gates of the capital. An example is the abduction of two praetors with lictors or the family of an admiral fighting piracy.
