IN THIS ISSUE: ROBBERS, RAIDERS, AND SLAVERS AT SEA FROM THE BRONZE AGE TO THE ROMAN EMPIRE

VOL XVI, ISSUE 1

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PIRACY AND
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Robbers on the Mediterranean

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THEME – GREEKS RAIDING IN ASSYRIA? // PIRATES AT WORK // POMPEY PACIFIES PIRATES

SPECIALS – INDIA AFTER ALEXANDER // A DECURION'S DEPUTIES // THE PERSIAN AKINAKES
 TABLE OF CONTENTS
Ancient Warfare magazine
Editor-in-chief: Jasper Oorthuys
Assistant editor: Murray Dahm
News editor: Lindsay Powell
Proofreader: Naomi Munts
Image research: Lauren van Zoonen
Design & Media: Christianne C. Beall
Design © 2016-2021 Karwansaray Publishers

Contributors: Jo Ball, Duncan B Campbell, Murray

Dahm, Louise A. Hitchcock, Tyler Holman, David
Lewis, Mark McCaffery, Andrei Pogăciașis, Lindsay THEME: ANCIE PI TeS AND IDERS
Powell, Philip de Souza, Owain Williams One man's pirate is another's daring raider, and the boundary between warrior and a pi-
Illustrators: Catalin Draghici, Seán Ó'Brógáin, Jose rate can be equally nebulous. Piracy was an age-old problem without a simple solution.
Morán, Angel García Pinto, Marek Szyszko, Richard
Thomson, William Webb
8 Opportunist raiders 24 They though he was joking
Print: Grafi Advies Figuring out Bronze Age piracy Julius Caesar and the Cilician pirates
Editorial office
PO Box 4082, 7200 BB Zutphen, The Netherlands 14 The Iauna have come 28 Anti-piracy imperialism
Phone: +31-848-392256 (EU), +1-800-549-4742 (US) Greek pirates in eighth-century Levant? Pompey and the pirates
E-mail: editor@ancient-warfare.com
Customer service: service@karwansaraypublishers.com
Website: www.ancient-warfare.com
18 The pirate crew at work 58 Further reading
Classical and Hellenistic Greek piracy More books and articles on the theme
Contributions in the form of articles, letters, re-
views, news and queries are welcomed. Please send
to the above address or use the contact form on SPEAL FEAS
www.ancient-warfare.com

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38 In the wake of Alexander 46 Raids across the Danube
Wars of the Mauryan Empire The impact of the Getae and Dacians
Subscriptions can be purchased at www.kp-shop.com,
via phone or by email. For the address, see above.
44 The Persian akinakes 50 Upholding military standards
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ing in this publication may be reproduced in any form
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26 46
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GREEK SEABORNE RAIDERS? AFTERMATH OF ALEXANDER

In the eighth century BC, an Assyrian gover- Alexander's invasion of India left its pow-
nor complained of "Iaunian" raiders. Some er structure in tatters. An exiled minister
intriguing sources point to Ionian Greeks. and his protegé capitalized on the chaos.

Ancient Warfare XVI-1

3
ES
NEWS ITEMS BY LINDSAY POWELL
EDITORIAL - Seaborne robbers
When I first started to read about the Roman im-
perial navy for my MA thesis, I ran into claims
about how Augustus' new fleets at Misenum
P MINA
and Ravenna made the Mediterranean safe for
shipping. After all, pirates had almost entirely
disappeared in the early Imperial period, not re-
surfacing until the chaos during the years of the
Soldier Emperors in the third century.
One can easily imagine galleys escort-
ing lumbering merchantmen from Alexandria
to Rome. Or perhaps they patrolled the Medi-
terranean, scanning for pirates? The trouble is,
we're all heavily influenced by the images of
the Golden Age of piracy. Jean-Bart at Dunker-
que, Blackbeard in the Caribbean, or perhaps a
Disney movie on a lazy Christmas day.
Watchtower found on Rome’s southern border
The remains of a substantial stone watchtow-
er, which was once part of the defensive sys-
tem of the city of Volubilis, have been identi-
fied in Morocco.
The outer dimensions of the ancient
building at Bled el Mellali measured 5.0m
x 5.5m (16 ft x 18 ft). Fragments of a stone
Metal ‘fingerprint’ confirms Clades Varian
The archaeological site at Kalkriese, near
Osnabrück in Germany, was clearly the site
of a battle between Roman and Germanic
soldiers in the first years of the first century
AD. Whether that was the site of the defeat
of Varus’ legions or a battle belonging to the
campaigns of Germanicus afterwards, has
long been debated. New research strength-
ens the case of those who claim it is the site
of Varus’ last stand.
Research in the United Kingdom had al-
ready proven that the constant recycling of
A section of lorica
brass and bronze in the repairs of arms and
segmentata found at
Kalkriese. New analysis equipment of Roman soldiers led to the in-
suggests that the met- clusion of particles in the environment that
allurgy of such finds are unique in their composition for a single
— and especially the site: they are added in by the cycles of re-
copper alloys — holds working the metal, changing and adding to
clues to the date of the elements from its original ore. That leaves
the site.
a kind of fingerprint in the metal that can
© Karwansaray Publishers
be seen when samples are examined using
mass-spectrometry. This, in turn, means that
when a unit is known to have occupied a
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Ancient Warfare XVI-1
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As we've argued in previous issues of
Ancient Warfare, ancient galleys were unable
to do the things I just described. Nor did they
have to. Pirates worked from inlets and near
narrows, where their ships could dart out and
attack an unwitting merchant vessel to capture
its cargo and passengers. And these pirates
raided largely for lack of a better option. The
relative peace and prosperity of Augustus' em-
pire (and the threat of a visit by the legions) is
what made the Mediterranean mostly
safe after a milennium of piracy.
Jasper Oorthuys
Editor, Ancient Warfare
structure were also found inside, which may
be a part of a staircase leading to the upper
floors of the tower. Based on pottery finds,
archaeologists tentatively date the structure
to the 2nd-3rd Century AD.
Adjacent to the watchtower, archaeolo-
gists located another, earlier structure, which
certain location, finds from that location can
be compared to finds elsewhere and, in this
way, the unit can be tracked.
Annika Diekman, PhD researcher at the
German Miningmuseum in Bochum, ana-
lysed over 550 items from seven legionary
bases where the legion had been identified
and was known to have occupied the site for
a substantial amount of time. The results of
this analysis were then compared to the finds
from Kalkriese. It appeared that the metals from
Dangstetten, which was occupied by Legio XIX
between 15 and 9 BC and subsequently aban-
doned, were quite similar to the metals found at
Kalkriese and at Haltern, which is also associ-
ated with the campaign of AD 9. Conversely,
the composition of the metals found at sites oc-
cupied by legions involved in Germanicus’ lat-
er campaigns were significantly different. This
is a strong indication that one of the legions
involved in the battle at Kalkriese was
Legio XIX, known to have been de-
stroyed in the Clades Variana.
x
measured some 25.0m x 25.0m (82 ft x 82 ft).
Shaped blocks of stone were found in two tri-
al trenches. The shapes of several blocks indi-
cated that they were part of a rounded corner
of an as-yet unknown building. Tentatively, the
archaeologists believe that this structure was
erected and used by Roman troops.
The research team from University of
Warsaw and Université Hassan II de Casa-
blanca have been working together in Mo-
rocco to answer the question about the ap-
pearance and functioning of the border
defence system (limes) of the province of
Mauritania Tingitana, the westernmost Ro-
man territory in North Africa.
The Roman province’s southernmost
city was Volubilis. It was protected from raids
How an auxiliary unit blew its own trumpet
An extremely rare part of a musical instrument
used by a Roman hornblower has been recov-
ered from the silty mud during excavations at
the fort of Vindolanda in Northern Britain.
The artefact was found buried deep
below the remains of a schola (officers’
club house) and left with the debris over
a Hadrianic-period workshop floor. Dated
to AD 120-128, it measures approximately
17cm (7 in) long and was cast as a single
by five military camps, such as at Tocolosi- The foundations of a watch tower
da Ain Chkour, as well as watchtowers and measuring 5.0 x 5.5m near the city
a defensive ditch (fossa). Towards the close of Volubilis, Morocco. The remains
of the second century AD, a 2.5km (1.6 mi) of an unidentified circular building
can also be seen.
circuit wall with eight gates and forty tow-
© Karol Bartczak
ers was constructed around the city. Despite
the installations, Volubilis was taken by local
tribes around AD 285. Rome never again re-
established control.
The first phase of the excavations was
preceded by two seasons of ground surface
surveys. The results are published as ‘Tingi-
tana Frontier Project. Rapport préliminaire
de recherche de la mission polono-maro- MORE ONLINE
caine dans la région de Volubilis au Maroc Read the original ar-
chaeological report:
pendant la saison 2018’ in Polish Archaeol-
https://bit.ly/3V8zrJ3
ogy in the Mediterranean volume 29/2.
MORE ONLINE
piece. It has been identified as the mouth- See (and hear) a cornu
piece of a Roman horn. being played:
https://bit.ly/3EELxEb
The horn (cornu) was a wind instru-
ment some 3m (10 ft) long made of cop-
Relief from Ostia showing two soldiers
per alloy, which was curled into the shape playing a cornu and a tuba.
of a letter ‘G’. It was com- © Sailko/ Wikimedia Commons
monly supported by a
wooden pole across its
diameter for better con-
trol as it was played by

A reenactor representing a cornicen,
with his cornu. Complete versions of
the instrument are exceedingly rare.
© Carole Raddato / Flickr
MORE ONLINE
View a detailed report
on RIB 3215:
https://bit.ly/3gg2KKS
Tondo showing Septimius Severus,
his wife Julia Domna, their younger
son Caracalla and the obliterated im-
age of Geta, murdered by Caracalla.
© José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro /
Wikimedia Commons
Ancient Warfare XVI-1
6
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ENTMCਡ@Sਡ6HMCNK@MC@
ਡ© 4GDਡ6HMCNK@MC@ਡ4QTRS
the hornblower, while allowing for some of
its weight to be held on his shoulder.
The brassy sound of a cornu was produced
by the vibrations of the player’s lips through the
mouthpiece. There were no keys or valves.
Cornua are depicted in use in military,
ceremonial and entertainment contexts,
such as on Trajan’s Column in Rome. A com-
plete instrument was found in Pompeii; it
was played during gladiatorial combats.
The Roman army used the cornu to trans-
mit orders to troops on the march and in bat-
tle. The instrument was used in concert with
the movement of the unit’s standard (sig-
num). The cornu announced advances
and retreats. Vegetius writes: “all the
Foreign soldiers of a classical greek army revealed in their genes
Based on the extant sources, it has been as-
sumed that non-Greeks did not fight in large
numbers in Greek armies in the fifth century
BC. Evidence for their active participation
has now come from a detailed study of an-
cient genomes.
Mass war graves containing neatly-laid
rows of skeletons of adult males and horses
One of Britain’s longest Roman inscriptions goes on display
Two inscribed Roman building slabs have been
taken out of storage and put on display for the
public to enjoy at the University of Leeds, Eng-
land. One of them bears possibly the longest
Roman inscription found in Britain.
The two blocks record the Roman army’s
construction of buildings at Virosidum, the
fort on Brough Hill in Bainbridge. They were
built by men of Cohors VI Nerviorum, an aux-
iliary unit originally recruited from Belgium,
at the beginning of the third century AD.
Catalogued as RIB 3215 (AD 205),
the inscription is a dedication to Septimius
Severus, Caracalla, and Geta. It reads:
For the Emperor Caesar Lucius Septimius
Severus Pius Pertinax Augustus, and for
the Emperor Caesar Marcus Aurelius An-
toninus Pius Felix Augustus, and for Pub-
lius Septimius Geta most noble Caesar,
in the consulship of Our Lords the Em-
peror Antoninus for the second time and
Geta Caesar; the Sixth Cohort of Nerv-
ians which Lucius Vinicius Pius, prefect
x
watches are called by
the trumpeter [tubicen] and at
the end of their time by the hornblower [cor-
nicen]” (Vegetius, On Military Matters 3.8). He
also mentions that the cornu was one of the in-
struments used to play the classicum or fanfare
in the presence of the commander, or at the ex-
ecution of a soldier indicating it was being car-
ried out under his authority.
An auxiliary cohort, like Cohors I Tungro-
rum milliaria peditata, which was stationed at
Vindolanda during the Hadrianic-period, had
a cornu for each of its ten centuriae.
The mouthpiece is a first-of-its-kind in
the Vindolanda collection. It has been con-
served and is now undergoing further study.
had been unearthed in 2007 and 2008 in the
west necropolis of Himera on the north coast
of Sicily. They are believed to be the remains
of soldiers who died in two battles fought be-
tween Greeks and Carthaginians.
According to ancient accounts, Himera
was victorious in the battle of 480 BC, in part
owing to relief forces sent by its Greek allies
of the said cohort, commands, built (this)
barrack-block, under the charge of Caius
Valerius Pudens, senator of consular rank.
Geta’s name was erased from the historical re-
cord after his murder, a process called damna-
tio memoriae. Unusually his name and status
survive here. Instead, line 6 was erased in error.
The fort of Virosidum, meaning ‘settlement
of true men’, occupied an area of 1.06 hectares
(over 2 acres). The original wooden fort erected
in the second century AD was destroyed by fire.
Men of Cohors VI Nerviorum rebuilt it in stone.
It was abandoned by the late fourth century.
The smaller slab (RIB 3216) is a centuri-
al stone, recording construction work “Of the
Sixth Cohort of Nervians, the century of Iulius
Martinus (built this)”.
The slabs were initially affixed to the wall
of a barrack building, but they were subse-
quently reused in the foundations of a Roman
road outside the east gate. They spent much of
the past 2,000 years upside down in a muddy
field. Both inscriptions were found in 1960-1.

in Syracuse and Agrigento; seven of the mass
graves are associated with this battle. It lost
the subsequent battle of 409 BC, when Hi-
merans fought unassisted; two of the graves
are associated with this battle.
By studying genome-wide data from 54
individuals dated to the eighth-to-fifth centu-
ries BC, the scientists gained new insights into
the composition of Greek armies of the pe-
riod and the population of a particular Greek
colony with a documented history of conflict.
Unlike the rest of the test sample, they
found that many soldiers had ancestral origins
in northern Europe, the Steppe, and the Cauca-
sus. By integrating genetic, archaeological, iso-
topic, and historical data, their results appear
to validate the claim that mercenaries played a
significant role in ancient Greek armies as ear-
ly as 480 BC. The findings also highlight how
participation in war contributed to continental-
scale human mobility in the Classical World.
“We provide insight into the demo-
graphic dynamics of ancient warfare by re-
porting genome-wide data from fifth-century
BC soldiers who fought for the army of the
Greek Sicilian colony of Himera, along with
representatives of the civilian population,
nearby indigenous settlements, and 96 pre-
sent-day individuals from Italy and Greece,”
write the international team of researchers.
Ruins of the Temple of Victory at Himera,
Sicily. The necropolis containing skel-
etons of the war dead was found nearby.
© SalvatoreFicarra86 / Wikimedia Commons
Their findings are published as ‘The di-
verse genetic origins of a Classical period MORE ONLINE
Greek army’ in Proceedings of the National Read the researcher's
original findings:
Academy of Sciences of the United States of
https://bit.ly/3Eembfa
America (PNAS), volume 119, number 42.
π HAVE YOU READ? By Tristan Hughes
THE PERDICCAS YEARS
Perdiccas was one of Alexander the Great’s
most reliable commanders, fighting in all his
battles. Initially a commander of a taxis of
the phalanx, in 324 BC he took over com-
mand of the Companion cavalry after the
death of Hephaestion. When Alexander died
in June 323 BC, it was to Perdiccas that Al-
exander gave his ring. His power was imme-
diately challenged. Perdiccas proposed that
the successors of Alexander await the birth
of Roxanne’s child and, if a boy, he should
be chosen king. Meleager (another equally
experienced commander) proposed, how-
ever, that Alexander’s half-brother Philip Ar-
ridaios be made king. Thus began the dissention and wars of the Diadochi, the
successors of Alexander. In this volume, Hughes explore the first three years
of this era. It is a complex and dense period of history and Hughes leads us
confidently and expertly from the death of Alexander to 320 BC when Perdic-
cas died trying to keep Alexander’s empire together. By this time, the lines had
been drawn between the Ptolemaic, Seleucid, Antigonid and other empires
(Antipater in Greece, Lysimachus in Thrace and Eumenes in Cappadocia).
Ancient Warfare XVI-1
7
THEME: Ancient pirates
A crew of Sea People celebrate a
successful raid, piling the booty
on the deck of their ship prior to
dividing it up among the warriors.
© Marek Szyszko

Ancient Warfare XVI-1

8
FIGURING OUT BRONZE AGE PIRACY By Louise A. Hitchcock

Opporni iders
Understanding piracy at the end of the Bronze Age is fraught with controversy.
There is no contemporary word for the concept, yet archaeological evidence
and even some minimal textual references make it possible to speak of pirati-
cal activity in the Late Bronze Age. Numerous discussions of ancient seaborne
tribes collectively referred to as ‘Sea People’ in modern studies frequently
describe them as raiders or pirates. That said, applying the label does not re- A thirteenth-century BC cuneiform tab-
let from an official in Lebanon to the
place an explanation of what it meant to be a pirate in the twelfth century BC. king of Ugarit concerning a boat-load
of timber. Now in the Louvre, Paris.
© Livius.org
n a series of articles, my colleague Aren about later piracy in that pirates of various

I
Maeir and I sought to develop an expla-
nation of what it meant to be a pirate
in the Late Bronze Age. We did this by
constructing an anthropological mod-
el of what a culture of piracy might consist of
through examination of our sources from the
classical era through to the eighteenth century
(AD!) to see which features remained constant
through time, while excluding features that
were culturally and temporally specific. The
model we developed was also constrained by
the evidence: fragmentary textual accounts or
references (pirates tended not to write their own
histories), weapons, depictions of their panoply
and ships, Mediterranean geography, feasting
remains, and what we know of the consump-
tion habits of the era.
Textual references
Our earliest textual information that suggests
piratical activity comes from Hittite accounts,
which mention a captive escaping the Shek-
elesh (Sicels?), while other texts mention on-
going raids by individuals from Ahhiyawa
(Achaean or Mycenaean Greece) and Mill-
awanda (Miletus), a Mycenaean colony.
Inscriptions from Egypt, most famously
from Medinet Habu, where the Sea Peo-
ple are also depicted in reliefs in the
temple of Rameses III, provide us with
the tribal names of the Sea People, men-
tion that some of them served as mer-
cenary soldiers in the Egyptian army,
and claim success in repulsing various
tribes of them. This fits what we know
time periods are known to use hit-and-run
tactics and to desolate coastlines at night, but
were usually unsuccessful in direct combat.
Such tactics were effective in achieving the
aims of pirates in terms of acquiring ‘booty’ as
well as minimizing casualties.
Finally, a Linear B tablet written in an early
form of Greek from the Mycenaean palace at
Pylos informs us of a tense situation develop-
ing at the end of the Bronze Age, stating that
“watchers are guarding the coast”, suggesting
threats from the sea, possibly pirates. There
were certainly foreigners arriving in the king-
dom of Pylos. The lawagetas, leader of the peo-
ple, whose rank was second to that of the king, A typical bronze Mycenean pe-
may have functioned as a type of minister of riod helmet (from Mycenae) with
migration, helping to integrate foreign workers punched geometric decoration, ca.
into Mycenaean society. If migrants could trav- 1400-1300 BC, now in the Ash-
el to Pylos, so too could pirates.
molean Museum, Oxford. Such hel-
mets can be seen in Mycenean art
throughout the Aegean.
Social order © Gts-tg / Wikimedia Commons
Regarding the social order of pirates, most
(early-modern) accounts view their society as
egalitarian, with seized goods and food being
equally shared, with maybe a bit extra for a
doctor and the captain. Typically, the captain
might be someone who demonstrated supe-
rior skill. We cannot speculate about medi-
cine aboard a ship in the twelfth century
BC; however, regarding a captain, there is
nothing in the Medinet Habu depictions
of the Sea People that makes one person
stand out among others as a captain, with
the exception of one individual that has
his hands bound and is facing forward.

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The 'Warrior Krater' from Mycenae
has been dated to the twelfth cen-
tury BC or as late as the eighth cen-
tury. Mycenaean warriors have been
associated with the Sea Peoples.
The bundles attached to the spear
shafts suggest travel.
© Dan Lundberg / Flickr
Detail of an ivory panel game board
from Enkomi, Cyprus (either made
locally or in Syria). The figure be-
hind the chariot may represent a
Sea People mercenary.
© Paul Hudson/ Wikimedia Commons
Ancient Warfare XVI-1
10
Biblical accounts of the
Philistines refer to their
king as a seren, a word
that seems to derive from
the Luwian (an Anatolian
language) term tarwanis. The
title tarwanis is understood
as war lord, a fitting title for a
pirate captain, and is attested in
later Greek as tyrannos or tyrant.
Pirate groupings are typi-
cally not large, although Cilician and
Chinese pirate groupings seem to have
been exceptions. By contrast, in Villains of All
Nations, Marcus Rediker discusses how North
Atlantic piracy expanded from just two origi-
nal ships to a total number of about 3,500 pi-
rates. This occurred as these initial ships took
more and more prizes and attracted more and
more followers. We have compared this pro-
cess and subsistence strategies to hunter-gath-
er tribes, whereby as groups grew too large for
the catchment zone or local habitat, segments
might split or fission off into new groups oc-
cupying a new catchment zone.
Pirate tribes frequently attracted new fol-
lowers through dissatisfaction among state-
sponsored groups of sailors or workers. Such
persons were attracted by the lesser workload,
greater autonomy, and better access to food.
Occasionally, a prisoner might improve their
status by joining a pirate tribe. Membership in
such a tribe might be attained through what an-
thropologists call rites of transmission. This is
also a rite of transition whereby the new mem-
bers might be required to engage in an ordeal,
such as killing an enemy or some other activity
that might serve to bind them to the tribe.
We might conceive of the various tribes
of Sea Peoples in a similar way, with the tribal
name being more of an administrative desig-
nation than an actual ethnic one. We know
that not all Cilician or Barbary pirates came
from a single origin but they were melded into
a cultural group through their ship-borne ex-
istence. Their different ethnic origins might be
seen as reflected in their ship design, weap-
ons, ritual items, and drinking practices as
discussed below. It is also possible to suggest
that they came from the non-elite classes, and
that these were happy to throw off the yoke
of kings that pressed them into hard labour to
maintain their elite lifestyles.
Food, feasting, and plundering
Feasting is mentioned second only to fighting
in Homer’s Iliad, where a new term for feast-
ing – δαíς (dais), "to share" – comes into use.
If we are correct in regarding the shipboard
life of the Sea Peoples as egalitarian, this rep-
resents a marked change from the activity of
feasting in Mycenaean Greece. The Linear B
texts along with animal bone remains indicate
that feasts were provisioned by the palaces
and that such feasts were ‘diacritical’. This re-
fers to hierarchical access to enjoying the best
food, wine, and access to the king. A domi-
nant cultural feature among the various tribes
of Sea Peoples was a preference for Mycenae-
an Greek drinking culture, whereby a drinking
set consisted of a large bowl known as a krater
– coming from the Greek krasis, meaning to
mix wine and water – and smaller bowls that
could be used both for drinking wine and for
eating stews or porridges. Mycenaean styles of
pottery were popular throughout the Mediter-
ranean by the end of the Bronze Age and were
familiar products from Cyprus to Sardinia.
What is interesting is that in the final century
of the Mycenaean civilization, the thirteenth
century BC, the deep bowl, resembling a min-
iature krater, replaced the stemmed kylix as
the preferred drinking vessel. This might
be another example of the growing dis-
tance between palatial elites and rural
populists. Drinking activities were
popular and served to bind people
together, becoming symbolic of
Sea Peoples’ identities, much as
the Jolly Roger became a rallying
symbol in North Atlantic piracy.
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We know that in the eighteenth cen-
ments may have been introduced by the spread
of Italian slaves and pirates in the Mycenaean
world. In addition, we know that the Mycenae-
ans were present in Italy by the thirteenth cen-
Bronze Age is widespread through-
out the Mediterranean. Several ar-
eas became 'infested' with pirates.
© Richard Thomson

tury AD, greater access to food and
drink, along with reduced work hours,
were a major motivation of luring reg-
ular sailors into piracy. What pirate
consumption habits also tell us is that
bright and shiny objects are no more
interesting to pirates than they are to
magpies, as recent research on both
indicates a preference for stealing food
rather than a bauble. If pirates did
steal objects, it might have been
to barter for food or other ship-
board necessities such as wood or bronze.
In fact, in the destruction at Ugarit, many valu-
able ivory objects were found smashed.
Pirate ‘Tacticool’
The age of piracy at the end of the Bronze Age
also introduced the concept of warrior beauty,
which was already detectable in European war-
rior burials. Italian-style razors and tweezers,
sometimes accompanied by swords and even
amber beads, turn up in Late Bronze Age do-
tury BC as indicated by the local production of A Mycenaean terracotta long-
Mycenaean pottery. stemmed kylix (drinking cup) deco-
The Italian presence in Greece is credited rated with vertical whorl shells, ca.
for the appearance of these Italian-style groom- 1300-1190 BC, found at Zygouries
ing implements, as well as a type of poorly ren- near Corinth, Greece. Many such cups
dered handmade pottery known as Handmade have marine-themed decorations.
© Metropolitan Museum of Art
Burnished Ware and, most importantly for
this article, the Naue II sword. The Naue II
sword is a double-tanged cut-and-thrust
sword, which made for a very effective
combat weapon. Reinhard Jung has pin-
pointed its origins in Italy, and it seems to have
quickly spread throughout the Mediterranean.
It has been suggested that the development
of iron technology for production of weapon-
ry was prompted as a response to this sword.
However, at present the temporal gap between
the two different types of weapons seems to
be too great. Seventeen examples of Naue II
swords have been found in Greece, Crete, and
other islands during the
Bronze to Iron
x

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 Drawing of a relief on Rameses
III's Mortuary Temple at Medinet
Habu, ca. 1178 BC, depicting the Sea
People and their distinctive ships,
headdresses, and weapons.
© New York Public Library
Age transition. Although this may not seem like
very many, we must assume that bronze was
recycled meaning that their discovery is de-
pendent on finding un-looted tombs or a hast-
ily abandoned house.
The panoply of the pirates seems to have
included a corselet, a small round shield with
boss, occasionally greaves, and a sword and/or
spear. The main distinction among them seems
to be in their helmet style, which was either
a horned helmet or a feathered or spiky
helmet with the feathers coming from a
metal ring encircling the
head. The meaning of
the helmet distinction is
unclear as both are worn
by warriors brandishing
weapons. In some cases, they
might be depicted separately; in
others they might be depicted
together but grouped separately as on the fa-
mous Warrior Krater from Mycenae. Similar
panoplies with horned helmets are found in
the famous bronze statuettes of the Ingot God
and Horned God from Enkomi. Both statuettes
are depicted wearing horned helmets, and the
Ingot God also brandishes a round shield and
a spear. In the past, attempts have been made
to link the iconography of these statuettes to
Aegean iconography; however, they find their
closest parallels in the bronzetti warrior figu-
rines from Sardinia.
Readers knowledgeable about Mycenae-
an art or those who have closely read Homer’s
Iliad will be familiar with the mention of the
boars’ tusk helmet, famously depicted in the
Aegean on fresco paintings, on pottery, and
found in tombs. No early Iron Age iconograph-
ic or tomb evidence has been found for the
existence of the much-vaunted boars’ tusk hel-

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 met, and in fact Richard Janko suggested it may
be known through tomb robbery. As a result,
its mention in the Iliad may be anachronistic,
representative of an elite that were overthrown
at the end of the Bronze Age. Recently the
bronze headpiece of a so-called ‘hedgehog’ or
‘feathered’ helmet was found in Greece at the
cemetery at Portes in Arcadia.
We know ships from this period mainly
through iconography. The preferred ship was
the Mycenaean galley with fighting platform
and a bird head device adorning the prow and
stern. To this was added the brailed sail, a series
of rings attached to the mast, which made the
ship more manoeuvrable. A ring at the top of
the mast seems to have been borrowed from
Sardinia, as it's seen on Sardinian bronze ships.
Habitat
Our understanding of preferred geography
by the Sea Peoples as pirates might be
understood through a combination
of modern studies and the archaeo-
logical evidence. Peter Galvin studied
modern-era Mediterranean geography
as well as the North Atlantic and ar-
rived at some very practical observa-
tions regarding pirate geography.
Among these, he discusses choke
points where the sea lanes become
narrow enough that a group of ships
might be spread out making them more
vulnerable to attack, projecting promon-
tories that were easily defended and could
serve as convenient places to spot passing
ships, and river valleys that could function
as safe havens and sites of ambush.
Troy overlooked the straits of the Darda-
nelles connecting the Mediterranean and the
Black Sea, which made it an attractive site for
pirates to take during the era of the Trojan War.
The site of Maa-Palaeokastro occupied a prom-
ontory in western Cyprus and was the site of a
short-lived settlement at the end of the Bronze
Age that exhibited a combination of artefacts
and features from Cyprus, Canaan, and the
Aegean. Many of the smaller sites in northern
Crete were abandoned in favour of more de-
fensible villages in the mountains, possibly mo-
tivated by the desolation of coastal villages. A
fortified settlement in the Gorge of the Dead
at Kato Zakro in east Crete might have served
both as a site for carrying out ambushes and
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as a safe place to spend the non-
sailing season. Pirate tribes may
have also made effective use of
sites where there were maritime
connections such as Millawan-
da (Miletus) in coastal Anatolia
and various Canaanite sites,
where some eventually settled,
resulting in the Philistine cul-
ture as an outcome.
A pirate’s life for me?
Piracy was a dangerous activity, and pi-
rates adapted to hit-and-run or surprise tactics. Fragment of a decorated pithos,
ca. 1225-1200 BC, found at of Maa-
Wounded warriors could not row or fight, thus
Palaiokastro on Cyprus. This loca-
there was a motivation to choose battles care- tion may have been (one of many)
fully. Piracy in the Mediterranean was an activ- pirate hideouts along the coasts of
ity that waxed and waned over time, as we see the Greek islands.
with the later emergence of the Cilician pirates © Livius.org
and again later of the Barbary pirates. Thus, we
can think of piracy as a fluid concept, also af-
fected by circumstance. Moreover, the era of
Bronze Age piracy was short lived. As entrepre-
neurs, pirates seem to be opportunists, and we
cannot be certain whether the desire to settle
was based upon diminished habitat – that is,
a decrease in the number of sites available to
plunder – or was due to the fact that piracy and
plague caused the Hittites and the Egyptians to
loosen their grip on their furthest possessions,
making these regions desirable for settling. 0
The 'Gorge of the Dead' near Kato
Zakros, eastern Crete, is believed to
Louise Hitchcock is Professor of Archaeol-
have been a pirate hideout. Origi-
ogy at the University of Melbourne. The re- nally it was a Minoan burial site,
search for this article was supported by the hence the name.
National Endowment for the Humanities. © Louise Hitchcock
Ancient Warfare XVI-1
13
THEME: Ancient pirates
A unit of Assyrian soldiers, including
archers and cavalry is dispatched to
deal with an Iauna pirate raid but
arrives too late to prevent the sack-
ing of a seaside village.
© Seán Ó'Brógáin
GREEK PIRATES IN THE EIGHTH-CENTURY LEVANT?
e Iaa he 
In the late eighth century BC, the Assyrian governor of Phoenicia, Qurdi-Aššur-
lamur, wrote to Tiglath-Pileser III of a seaborne raid upon a place called Danabu.
These raiders, the Iauna, are thought to be Ionian Greeks. While this identifica-
tion is not definite, raiding was certainly important to Iron Age Greek culture.
uring the late ninth and early
D
eighth centuries, the territo-
rial expansion of the Assyrian
Empire stalled, with power-
ful magnates increasing their
own power at the expense of the king. One
such magnate was Šamši-ilu, field marshal of
king Adad-nirari III, who increasingly portrayed
himself as acting independently of the office
of the king. Šamši-ilu’s power may have even
been a motivation for the revolt of several As-
syrian cities in the mid-eighth century. More-
over, during this period of stagnation, Assyria
faced external threats, most notably from Urar-
tu, Assyria’s northern neighbour, who won a
number of significant victories against Assyria
in the mid-eighth century.
The accession of Tiglath-Pileser III marked
a reversal of Assyrian fortunes. He reduced the
power of the magnates, dividing the territories
they controlled into smaller individual units;
he defeated Urartu, forcing the king to flee;
and he expanded Assyria’s power towards the
Mediterranean, conquering the North Syrian
and Phoenician city-states. In these new terri-
tories, Tiglath-Pileser III installed officials to en-
sure that Assyrian interests were pursued, and a
significant corpus of letters, the Nimrud Letters,
sent from these officials to the king, record the
many issues they faced.
The Iauna have come
One such letter, Nimrud Letter 69, sent by
Qurdi-Aššur-lamur who was a prominent As-
syrian official on the Levantine coast – tells
of a raid from the sea.
To the king my lord (from) your servant
Qurdi-Aššur-lamur. The people of the land
of Iauna came (and) attacked the cities
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By Owain Williams
of Samsimuruna and Harişŭ and […]. A
cavalryman came to the city of Dana[bu]
(to report this). I gathered up the available Some of the earliest
men and went (after them). (The Iauna) types of Corinthian helmet,
did not get anything. When they saw my like this example from the British Mu-
troops, they got into their boats and [dis- seum, were made from an upper and
appeared] into the middle of the sea. lower half riveted together. Dated to
the early seventh century BC.
(Adapted from Parker, 2000)
© Karwansaray Publishers
While this letter is clear about where the raid
happened and who the raiders were, to a
modern audience, the names Qurdi-Aššur-
lamur uses are meaningless: we do not know
precisely where Samsimuruna and Harişŭ
are, nor who the Iauna were.
That said, there are hints that suggest a
general location of the raid and identity of
the raiders. Unfortunately, this is the only
surviving reference to Harişŭ, meaning it will This relief from the North Gate of the
Hittite fortress in Karatepe may depict
likely remain unknown. However, Samsimu-
an Aegean-style ship. Alternately, it
runa appears in the annals of several Assyrian
may be a vessel from the local area,
kings, always in connection to the Phoeni- an ancestor of the Cilicians.
cian coast. Thus, as Qurdi-Aššur- © Klaus-Peter Simon/ Wikimedia Commons
lamur is associated with the
Phoenician coast in his letters,
particularly Sidon and Byblos,
then Samsimuruna was likely
somewhere between these two
cities. As for the raiders, it has
been suggested, based upon
the similarities of the names,
that the Iauna were Ionian
Greeks. The name Iauna does
appear in several other sourc-
es, such as inscriptions within
Sargon II’s palace, but there is
nothing within these references
that definitively connects them
to the Ionians; there they are
simply pirates from the west.
Ancient Warfare XVI-1
15

Neo-Assyrian Period relief (ca. 744-
727 BC) depicting an Assyrian sol-
dier returning (from a raid?) with
his booty in tow.
© Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin /
Wikimedia Commons
Many of the states of the Northeast-
ern Mediterranean were relatively
small, and so could mount no con-
certed resistance to pirate raids. Thus,
coastal communities and shipping
would remain vulnerable for many
centuries.
© Richard Thomson
Ancient Warfare XVI-1
16
Pots and penteconters
The identification of the Iauna
with the Ionians is somewhat sup-
ported by the archaeological evi-
dence, which attests to a Greek
presence in the eastern Mediter-
ranean in this period. Several sites
along the Levantine coast have
yielded Greek pottery fragments.
Al Mina, the port at the mouth of
the river Orontes, possibly that of
the Syro-Anatolian state of Kunulua,
has yielded more finds than any other
site. So many, in fact, that the original
excavator thought it had been a Greek
settlement. However, the modern con-
sensus is that Al Mina was a trading
port frequented by Greeks, Cypriots,
Phoenicians, and North Syrians.
Up to ca. 700 BC, Greek pottery at Al Mina
is Euboean in character, with some Attic wares
also present. This is confirmed by analysis of
the clay in the pottery finds. Of course, just be-
cause the finds are Greek, this does not mean
the traders who brought them were Greeks. The
Phoenicians, in particular, are renowned for
being traders, and Phoenician goods from the
tenth century BC and later have been found in
significant quantities in Euboea and Attica. That
pottery only appears in such numbers at those
two sites for this early period, suggesting that it
was the Greeks who were the carriers, as Phoe-
nician traders would invariably have travelled
to as great a number of markets as possible, not
restricted themselves to a small few.
The spread of North Syrian goods across
the Mediterranean similarly suggests that it
was Greeks who were the primary carriers.
The Phoenicians were undoubtedly active in
North Syria, but North Syrian goods do not
appear in regions of the Mediterranean associ-
ated with the Phoenicians in this period, such
as North Africa, Sardinia, and Spain. On the
other hand, as much as one quarter of eighth-
century and early seventh-century finds from
the Samian Heraion and Olympia are North
Syrian, and Greek art of the Orientalizing Pe-
riod bears closer similarities to North Syrian
work than Phoenician. There is even evidence
to suggest that there was a permanent Greek
presence in North Syria. In Karatepe, a relief
depicting what has been described as an Ae-
gean-style ship has been found in the city’s
North Gate, and there may have been a Greek
royal dynasty based in Adana.
Traders and raiders
The fact that Greek goods have been found in
the East, regardless of the quantity, does not
prove that the Iauna who raided the Phoeni-
cian coast were Ionian Greeks. When com-
bined with the literary and epigraphic record
for Greek raiding, however, the archaeological
evidence does reinforce such a conclusion.
The Homeric epics contain many ref-
erences to raiding (see also issue XV.3). In
modern scholarship, based largely upon
comparing the archaeological record with
the material culture depicted in the epics,
the Homeric epics are dated between 750
and 650 BC, making the poems, and their
references to raiding, roughly contempora-
neous with the raid of Nimrud Letter 69.
The cattle raid is the most common of its
kind in Homer. Andromache’s brothers were
killed by Achilles when he came for their cat-
tle (Iliad 6.424), Achilles forced Aeneas from his
cattle upon Mount Ida (Il. 20.91–92), and Od-
ysseus seeks to replace his livestock eaten by
the Suitors through raiding (Odyssey 23.356–
358). Such raids were reason enough for war
(Il. 1.152–156), as was the case in Nestor’s tale
of the war between Pylos and Elis (Il. 11.669–
682). Yet cattle and other livestock are a rather
cumbersome spoil to transport, and cattle raids
were likely confined to overland raids. Homer-
ic seaborne raids instead primary sought to cap-
ture slaves. Odysseus’ raid upon the Cicones of
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Ismaros involved killing all the men and
taking the women captive (Od. 9.39–42),
just as happens during the tale of Odysseus’
fictitious raid on Egypt (Od. 14.258–266), and
it is also what happens when a city is sacked
(Il. 9.590–599). In the Odyssey, there is even
a brief mention of a raid that resembles that of
Nimrud Letter 69, where a woman from Sidon
was captured by Taphian pirates and brought
back to Greece (Od. 15.426–427).
Such raids were not confined to myths.
Herodotus records that the Samians plun-
dered the Aegean (3.39) and that the Phocae-
ans, after fleeing the arrival of the Persians,
raided the lands of their neighbours about
Italy, causing the Tyrrhenians and Carthagin-
ians to ally together to drive them off (4.166).
Thucydides also records how, even in the late
fifth century BC, many Greeks still undertook
raids as they did in the Homeric epics (1.5).
There is also an inscription from Didyma, in
Asia Minor, probably from the sixth century
BC, that may record an appeal to the ora-
cle there for guidance concerning who may
justly raid so as not to displease the gods.
Spear-famed Euboeans
Greeks were certainly in the East at the time of
the raid, and raiding was absolutely a common
element of Iron Age Greek society; we
can even make a specific guess as to where in Limestone Orthostats, ca. 738 BC,
the Greek world the raiders came from. depicting Assyrian soldiers armed
As has already been noted, the majority with bows and swords rendered in
a provincial style.
of Greek artefacts in the Near East in the late
© Daderot/ Wikimedia Commons
eighth century are Euboean and Attic, while
contemporary Phoenician artefacts have been
found in Euboea and Attica, suggesting that it
was Greek from those closely connected areas,
that were transporting these goods across the Attic Geometric krater from the first
sea. That the Euboeans were famed both for quarter of the eighth century BC,
their seamanship and their prowess as warriors, showing two ships with warriors
fighting with swords, an archer on
when coupled with the prevalence of Euboean
the prow, and infantry who have
goods in the Near East, certainly makes them perhaps been disembarked.
likely candidates. Indeed, it is possible that a © Metropolitan Museum of Art
tomb at Lefkandi, a significant archaeologi-
cal site on Euboea, contains the remains of
someone who may have been a war-
rior-trader. In tomb number 79, an as-
sortment of weapons was found along
with other items, such as a ‘killed’ sword,
a spearhead, and 30 arrowheads.
Thus, in the late eighth century, Eu-
boean traders set off to the Near East to
trade their goods at Al Mina. While there,
they turned their sights on small undefended
Phoenician settlements on the coast to the
south, where they landed, killed the men,
and enslaved the women and children, flee-
ing to their ships at the sight of Assyrian
troops and sailing off to safety. For their cap-
tives, a life of servitude awaited. 0
Owain Williams is the editor of Ancient
History magazine.
Ancient Warfare XVI-1
17
THEME: Ancient pirates

CLASSICAL AND HELLENISTIC GREEK PIRACY

e pi te cw
at work
When northern Europeans and North Americans think of
piracy, the cultural blueprint that comes quickly to mind is
that of piracy in the Early Modern Caribbean. However, Car-
ibbean piracy is rather a misleading analogy when it comes
to approaching ancient Greek piracy, at least in its earlier
phases. A better analogy is Viking raiding of the early Mid-
dle Ages. Here, longship-owning elites who dominated so-
ciety crewed their ships with followers bonded to them by
reciprocal obligations and went roving abroad for summer
slaving and plundering raids, but also settled new lands.

By David Lewis

o too in the early archaic period – the period reflected in

S
the Homeric poems – we find small, pre-state societies
dominated by wealthy galley-owners, who take their com-
panions (hetairoi) with them on summer plundering voy-
ages; these raiders sometimes settled in distant lands too.
We have seen (see Owain William’s article) that the first mention of
Greeks in cuneiform sources aligns very much with this model. The
ships used by these raiders were literally ‘longboats’ (ploia makra
in Greek), though they differed in numerous respects from Vi-
king longboats. Early Greek raiders typically used ships such
as penteconters (‘fifty-oared’ galleys) and triaconters
(‘thirty-oared’ galleys).
As time went by, most Greek communi- complex fiscal systems. In most places, the pri-
ties grew into states, with all that this term vate ownership of raiding galleys by wealthy
implies – public finances, written laws, men became a thing of the past … but not
and so on. The informal position of ‘Big everywhere. In his History of the Peloponne-
Man’ or Chief (basileus) of the early ar- sian War, Thucydides (1.5) noted that in some
chaic period eventually morphed into the northern parts of Greece such as Aetolia, peo-
formalized magistracies of the emergent ple still acted like Homeric raiders. Thucydides
Greek states, and by the 520s, large may as well have added Crete to this compari-
publicly owned trireme fleets (with son. Even after the death of Alexander and the
crews of around 200 per vessel) had beginning of what we now call the Hellenistic
appeared in the Aegean, funded by period, individuals from various regions of the
Greek world still practised private sea-raiding
Large white-on-red Etruscan pyxis, ca. 670-650
(leisteia, conventionally translated as ‘piracy’)
BC, decorated with what is identified as a 'cor-
sair' ship. From tomb 1 of the tumulus of San along rather archaic lines. Some non-Greeks
Paolo, Cerveteri (Caere), Italy.
© Sailko / Wikimedia Commons

Ancient Warfare XVI-1

18

such as Illyrians and Tyrrhenians (i.e. Etrus-
cans) pursued similar practices into Aegean
waters, and from the 130s onwards we have
the remarkable outbreak of so-called ‘Cilician’
piracy. Although referred to as ‘Cilician’ from
its main base in Cilicia, this phenomenon in-
volved mariners of multiple ethnicities operat-
ing out of a network of bases and landfalls,
possibly in concert with Cretan pirates. Down
to Pompey’s campaign against the pirates in
67 BC (and even beyond), ancient Mediter-
ranean history was therefore marked by the
violent exploits of small crews of men aboard
galleys haunting the seas in search of captives
A Greek pirate ship exploits a
lull in the wind to attack a mer-
chant ship, using 'iron hands'
(grapnels) and ladders. The
pirate crew vastly outnumbers
that of her victim.
© William Webb
to enslave or ransom, and any other booty that
could be seized.
Tools of the trade A hoard of 158 silver Corcyraean
In writing of the Trojan War, Thucydides re- coins now in the Archaeological
Museum of Corfu. Dating to
marks that the ships used by the Homeric he-
the late sixth – early fifth
roes were not like triremes, but small and old century BC, the hoard
fashioned like the pirate galleys of his own day. is believed to have
For most of the period discussed here, Thucy- been deposited
dides’ remark rings true: Greek pirates tended around 480 BC.
to favour small galleys with 50 or fewer oars- © Lauren van
Zoonen
men and usually no bronze ram to cap the cut-
water bow – after all, rams were expensive
and heavy, and the aim was to capture,
Ancient Warfare XVI-1
19

The Kybele, a replica of an antique
ship that would have sailed the
Mediterranean in the sixth century
BC. Some 20 men were required to
man the oars. Built in Foça (ancient
Phokaea), just outside modern-day
Izmir, Turkey.
© Nejdet Duzen / Shutterstock
A pirate galley is shown about to
board a merchantman on this Athe-
nian kylix made in the late sixth
century BC.
© Karwansaray Publishers
Ancient Warfare XVI-1
20
not sink, a prize. These galleys also mounted
a square sail, useful in pursuit or escape if
the wind was favourable, but which could be
stowed or left ashore on calm days.
Several variants of the small, undecked,
oared galley were popular among pirates
during the Hellenistic period. The hemiolia
was notorious. According to Theophrastus,
the cowardly man is one who, when at sea,
mistakes the outline of headlands for hemio-
liai – that is, pirate galleys bearing down upon
him. The word itself means “one-and-a-half-
er”, which must derive from the configuration
of the oarsmen (just as trireme, trieres, got its
name from its three-file-a-side rowing arrange-
ment). The hemiolia probably had a full longi-
tudinal file of oarsmen either side of the vessel,
and an extra half file on each side amidships,
squeezed in where the vessel’s beam was
greatest – this would maximise the galley’s oar
power without adding wasteful superstructure.
In the Adriatic, Illyrian pirates typically used
a small galley called a lembos, which seems
normally to have had a single level of
oarsmen, about 25 each side – in
other words, this vessel was
not dissimilar to the archaic
penteconter (see
George Topalid-
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is’ article on the lembos in AW XII.4). The
lembos eventually became popular among
Greek pirates, and with state navies too. An-
other common type of vessel used by pirates
was the myoparon, which likewise had a sin-
gle level of oarsmen; in his speech Against
Verres, Cicero lambasts the former Sicilian
governor for allowing a flotilla of four myopar-
ones led by the pirate chief Heracleo into the
harbour of Syracuse. The efflorescence of ‘Cili-
cian’ piracy began, according to Appian, with
the use of hemioliai and myoparones before
these pirates graduated to using decked war-
ships such as triremes. He writes that Pompey’s
campaign of 67 BC netted some 377 vessels;
if Plutarch’s claim that 90 of the captured ves-
sels had rams can be credited, then even at the
height of ‘Cilician’ piracy, most of their ships
were small, ramless galleys of the traditional
sort. These ships were not the sole preserve of
pirates, however: many states had such units in
their navies too, so we cannot think of Greek
pirate ships as a distinct class.
 Another kind of vessel favoured by pirates
in our period was the merchant galley. Built
for trade, merchant galleys differed from large,
solely sail-driven merchant ships (holkades) in-
sofar as they employed oars as well as sails for
primary propulsion. Such vessels were typical-
ly slower, beamier, and more seaworthy than
the raiding galleys just described, but faster
and handier than most large merchant vessels;
if it came to a lengthy chase under sail, swift
merchant galleys like the akation and the epa-
ktrokeles were ideal.
Since pirate galleys, like Greek galleys
more generally, were typically moored daily,
the pirate’s work was closely tied to landfalls,
small islets, and handy points of ambush. (This
was less of a constraint for pirates aboard mer-
chant galleys, who could stay at sea.) As Pseu-
do- Demosthenes, writing in the fourth century
BC, put it, “all pirates seize places belonging
to other people and fortify them, and then
from them do evil to others” (7.3). Of the vari-
ous pirate bases known from antiquity, few are
better attested than Myonnesos, ‘Mouse
Island’, on the coast of Asia Mi-
nor between Teos and Samos
(modern Çifitkalesi Adası). We
know from Livy that in 190 BC
it was being used by a gang of pi-
rates with a flotilla of fifteen galleys,
keletes (a kind of merchant galley) and
lemboi, who raided the island of Samos and
were chased back to their bolthole by a Roman
fleet. By the time of ‘Cilician’ piracy’s apogee,
many such landfalls and bases were occupied.
In pursuit of a prize
Much of our evidence for piratical attacks con-
cerns amphibious raids on coastal settlements
– after all, such events were more likely to find
their way into historical accounts or inscrip-
tions than attacks on lone merchant vessels,
whose crews often may not have survived to
tell the tale. Such amphibious attacks often
took place at night and left victim communities
reeling. One such raid is described in an in-
scription from third-century BC Amorgos: Sok-
leidas and his gang struck at night, abducted
over 30 people, scuttled the ships in the har-
bour save one, which they stole, and made a
hasty getaway. Two captives, Hegesippos and
Antipappos, persuaded the gang to return the
free persons and some of the slaves, presuma-
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bly for a ransom. But
if the more lucrative
option of ransom was
not feasible, then cap-
tives could be disposed
of in slave markets or to
slave traders.
Running down a
merchant ship at sea
posed different problems.
Merchant ships were, in
general, more seawor-
thy than pirate galleys; a
pursuit under a stiff wind
was therefore hazardous for the
One of the Novilara Stelae (often
pirate crew, who risked their low galleys being
dated to the sixth century BC, but
swamped. According to the Elder Pliny, mari-
possibly much more recent) is
ners first attempted sailing during the winter as inscribed with three detailed ships,
a way of avoiding pirates – piracy was strongly often interpreted as a naval battle
influenced by the seasons (most seafaring oc- between Picene and Illyrian ships.
curring between May and September), and few © Museo Archeologico Oliveriano, Pesaro, Italy
pirates would put to sea in winter. As Casson
noted, we can see an attempt by a small galley
to run down a merchantman under a stiff wind
depicted in two stages on a late-archaic Attic
cup now kept in the British Museum (see page
20). In the first scene we see a merchant ship
riding under shortened sail, whilst a two-level
galley bears down upon it with a full sail and
every man to an oar. In the next scene, how-
ever, we can see that the merchant has noticed
the danger and unfurled his sail in a vain at- The island of Antikythera served as
a pirate stronghold from the fourth
tempt to escape as the attackers close in; one
– first century BC. Controlled by the
man aboard the galley is taking in sail, some of Phalasarnians, notorious pirates
the oarsmen have shipped their oars, and an- from Crete, this wall of the pirates'
other figure positions himself on the bow ready fort is well preserved.
to board the merchantman. © Andronos Haris / Shutterstock
Ancient Warfare XVI-1
21

(Top) Ancient Korakesion (Latin:
Coracesium, modern day Alanya,
Turkey) was one of the locations
controlled by Cilician pirates. The
Alanya Shipyard (the thirteenth-cen-
tury ruins are visible here) dates to
the third century BC.
© M Selcuk Oner / Shutterstock
(Bottom) The Greek island of
Amorgos was often subject to
pirate raids, and so, defence was
neccesary. These are the ruins of a
Hellenistic watchtower called Agia
Triada in Amorgos, Greece.
© Markos Loudaros / Wikimedia Commons
Ancient Warfare XVI-1
22
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In variable condi-
tions, pirates aboard a
merchant galley could
toggle between oars and
sail to run down a prize. In
his late antique novel Aethiopica, Heliodorus
depicts the pursuit of a large merchant ship
by pirates aboard an akation, a kind of mer-
chant galley. Some of the passengers aboard
the merchantman, suspecting that the akation
is a pirate galley, remark that it has been tail-
ing their course for some time. Others disagree
– after all, such vessels are normally used by
merchants, and it is normal for smaller ships to
follow larger ones since larger vessels usually
have more experienced navigators. But the de-
bate is resolved once the wind drops: while the
large merchantman floats dead in the water, the
akation breaks out its oars to close the distance,
and its predatory intent becomes clear. The
danger of a lull in the wind, switching the tacti-
cal advantage from the merchant to the pirate,
is well captured in this Hellenistic epigram:
“Chilling for sailors is the setting of the Goat
Star, but for Pyron the calm was much more
hostile than the tempest. For his ship, fet-
tered by a lull in the wind, was run down
by pirates in a swift double-filed galley. They
killed him; he fled the storm only to meet
destruction in the calm. Ah! A baneful,
wretched, and unlucky harbour!”
– Greek Anthology 7.640
When the pirates came in range, they could
intimidate their victims into surrender by un-
leashing a barrage of missiles. We know of one
man, Lykon, killed by pirate archers in the Sa-
ronic Gulf during the fourth century BC. Exca-
vators of a shipwreck of the early third century,
discovered near Kyrenia in Cyprus in 1967,
discovered javelin tips under the hull; they
hypothesised that it had faced a hail of pirate
missiles. To board the merchantman, it is prob-
able that pirates used grapnels (cheires siderai,
“iron hands”), which were standard naval kit.
Philostratus, a later writer, indeed describes a
painting of a pirate galley armed with various
weapons, including grapnels. As for the mer-
chant ship’s crew – the fortunate ones might
end up being sold into slavery, but pirates
were known for tossing mariners into the sea
to drown, whilst according to Aristotle, the Tyr-
rhenians had a particularly sadistic practice: ty-
ing surviving captives face to face with corpses.
A risky line of work
It would be a mistake to think that pirates
in the Greek world operated with impunity.
Even when attacking merchantmen, the nu-
merical advantages enjoyed by the pirate did
not prevent merchants from carrying arms to
defend themselves, and some merchant ships
carried lead weights called ‘dolphins’ that
could be dropped on enemies that got too
close, with the aim of smashing through their
hull-planking and drowning the attackers.
Greek coastal communities fought
back, too. In a third-century BC inscription
from Corfu, a mother laments her dead son:
Kalliope wept, having poured countless
tears around this tomb of her deceased son
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 Alexandros, since he was buried under this
earth short-lived and childless, having quit
the breath of life aged twenty-seven – wise
in schooling, splendid with the bow, with
which he once killed man-slaying pirates
upon the briny Strophades. But go now,
traveller, having bid farewell to he who
comes from the land of Alkinoös, the noble
son of noble Satyros.
– Inscriptiones Graecae IX 12 4, 928
Like many young citizen men in Hellenistic
Greece, Alexandros had trained in the use of
weapons; he seems to have taken part in an ex-
pedition to clear the Strophades islands (south
of Zakynthos) of pirates. Evidence for the ephe-
beia (“cadet training”) is widespread in this era,
and the presence of armed citizens in target
communities meant that pirate crews had to be
careful. An inscription from Ephesus describes
a successful rescue operation: pirates raided its
territory and carried off people and plunder, but
an expedition from the nearby island of Astyp-
alaia hunted down and captured the pirates,
liberating the captives and punishing the pirates
“as befitted their wickedness”. Greek coastal
communities were not soft targets.
Pirates also had to reckon with active naval
opposition – some cities had their own units.
Hellenistic Chios, for instance, had its own leis-
tophylakika ploia, “anti-pirate vessels”. But the Dated to ca. 450 BC, this detail of a
biggest threat was from large naval states: Ath- fresco from the "Tomb of the ship" in
ens in the Classical period, Rhodes in the Hel- the Monterozzi necropolis near Tar-
lenistic period; these states not only organized quinia depicts an Etruscan ship.
© Chiar / Wikimedia Commons
convoys for merchants but sent expeditions
against pirates, such as the expedition against
Antikythera described in an early Hellenistic
Rhodian honorific inscription. As Gabrielsen
has shown, these naval prostatai (“protectors”)
never aimed at eliminating piracy entirely, as
their protection services drew in money from
mercantile states which would soon dry up if
the ‘problem’ was decisively solved. But Rome
did, for a while, come close to complete sup-
pression. By 67 BC, the Cilician menace had
become so bad that Pompey was empowered
to sweep the Mediterranean of pirates. Divid- An Attic kylix, ca. 570-550 BC, depict-
ing the sea into zones, his fleet worked from ing the transformation of Tyrrhenian
west to east and eventually cornered the pirates pirates into dolphins.
© Sailko/ Wikimedia Commons
in Cilicia and defeated their fleet. It took cen-
turies before Mediterranean piracy once again
reached the intensity that it had held prior to
Pompey’s campaign. 0
David Lewis is Senior Lecturer in
Greek History and Culture at
the University of Edinburgh
and member of Eskmuthe
Rowing Club’s under 40s
men’s crew.
Ancient Warfare XVI-1
23
THEME: Ancient pirates

A young Julius Caesar warns the

Cilician pirates who have captured
him of the fate which awaits
them, much to their amusement.
Caesar would be ransomed and
follow through on his promises,
having them all put to death.
© Jose Morán

Ancient Warfare XVI-1

24
JULIUS CAESAR AND THE CILICIAN PIRATES
THey thought he
s joking
Just into his twenties, Julius Caesar was captured and
ransomed by pirates. The kidnapping did not turn out
the way his renegade maritime captors had planned.
n 80 BC, C. Julius Caesar (b. 12/13 July 101/100
I
BC) was a young man rising up the cursus hono-
rum, the career ladder of official civil and military
positions for which politically ambitious Romans
competed. He was then serving on the staff of M.
Minucius Thermus, praetor of Asia Minor, who sent Cae-
sar to the court of Nicomedes IV Philopator of Bithynia (r.
94–74 BC) on a diplomatic mission to bring back a fleet
of ships owned by the king.
Spending so much time at court, however, rumours
circulated that the 20-year-old Roman had had a sexual af-
fair with the much older ruler – M. Calpurnius Bibulus later
joked that his consular colleague for 59 BC was the queen
of Bithynia. It may have been just a made-up story; Caesar
denied the rumour all his life.
Elsewhere, Caesar acquitted himself well when, in 81
BC, “During the rest of the campaign he enjoyed a better
reputation, and at the storming of Mytilene Thermus award-
ed him the corona civica” (Suetonius, Divus Julius 2). This
was a crown of oak leaves awarded to a soldier who had
saved the lives of his fellow citizens by killing an enemy
combatant at a location held by the opponent. Even at that
early age, Caesar revealed a penchant for acts of derring-do.
Completing his assignment in 75 or 74 BC, he set sail
for Rome. Just days from port, his ship was boarded by pi-
rates. What happened next is recorded in several accounts
of the story, each of which has slightly different details.
Sources
Writing closest in time to the event was Velleius Paterculus
(19 BC–AD 31) in his Roman History, but even this work was
published over a century later. Next was Velleius' contem-
porary Valerius Maximus, compiling his Memorable Deeds
and Sayings, a collection of historical anecdotes, around AD
30. Plutarch (ca.AD 46–after AD 119) gives the longest and
liveliest account in his Julius Caesar. Suetonius (ca.AD 69–
after AD 122) relates the episode in his gossipy Divus Julius.
Each biographer or historian shares a basic storyline embel-
lished or stripped of detail to suit his purpose.
By Lindsay Powell
The question arises: who was the original source of the
story? Undoubtedly, it was Julius Caesar himself. In shap-
ing the first draft of his history, he controlled the narrative,
deciding which details to include or to exclude, and plac-
ing himself squarely as the hero of the tale. In later life,
Caesar would become an expert self-publicist, writing fa-
mous – and still extant – accounts of his military exploits
in Gaul and against Pompeius Magnus. His adventure with
the pirates is thus an early example of his self-promotion.
Cilician pirates
In the first century BC, travelling by sea was a dangerous
undertaking. Passengers and crew not only had to contend
with the capriciousness of the wind and the sea, but the
menace of piracy was ever present – and nowhere more so
than off the coast of Anatolia. Plutarch writes, “With him
[Nicomedes] he [Caesar] tarried a short time, and then, on
his voyage back, was captured, near the island Pharmacusa
[Farmakonisi], by pirates” (Plutarch, Julius Caesar 1.8).
In the Roman world, a pirate (praedo) was a robber.
He was considered part of the wider social problem of
brigandage (latrocinium), which encompassed banditry,
armed street robbery, uprisings, and even slave rebellions.
The Cilicians were regarded as “the most murderous of
men” (Plutarch, Julius Caesar 2.2). In the 80s BC, the Cili-
cians “already at that time controlled the sea” (Plutarch,
Julius Caesar 1.8). The territory of Cilicia (now the south-
eastern region of Turkey) was bordered by Pamphylia, Ga-
latia, Cappadocia, and Syria. It was home to a community
of particularly active pirates. Strabo explains:
It was Tryphon [Diodotus r. 142–138 BC], together with
the worthlessness of the kings who by succession were
then reigning over Syria and at the same time over Ci-
licia, who caused the Cilicians to organize their gangs
of pirates; for on account of his revolutionary attempts
others made like attempts at the same time, and thus
the dissensions of brethren with one another put the
country at the mercy of any who might attack it.
(Strabo 14.5.2)
Cilician pirates sailed the seas “with large armaments and
countless small vessels” (Plutarch, Julius Caesar 1.8). These
were liburnae or liburnicae, apparently named after the
Liburni, a seafaring and piratical people living along the
Adriatic Sea who perfected a type of compact seaworthy
ship. The Cilicians’ choice of equipment was significant.
Powered by one or two rows of oarsmen or by sail, the rela-
tively small but agile and manoeuvrable ships were ideal
for purpose: they could be kept in hidden, natural harbours
and then launched quickly to intercept maritime traffic. In
Ancient Warfare XVI-1
25
this case, the pirates operated around the Dodecanese is-
lands, some 1,000 km (620 mi) west of Cilicia.
None of the sources describe the type of ship Caesar
was sailing. Merchant ships of the time were slow and unpro-
tected, but navy vessels, like biremes or triremes, were both
swift and armed. That his ship was intercepted and boarded
clearly indicates that its crew was not able to outmanoeuvre
the attacking pirates to prevent it from being seized.
Capture and ransom
Caesar was now a prisoner. He was not alone but accom-
panied by friends and his personal slaves. No army would
be coming to rescue young Caesar, however.
The pirates made their living from ransoming their
hostages. They named their price. Caesar was unimpressed
by the value they placed on his head:
To begin with, then, when the pirates demanded 20
talents for his ransom, he laughed at them for not
knowing who their captive was, and of his own accord
agreed to give them 50.
(Plutarch, Julius Caesar 2.1)
An Attic talanton was a unit of weight equivalent to about
26 kg (57 lb); it was also used as a store of value equal
to this amount in pure silver. Caesar thus valued himself
at some 1,300 kg (2,845 lb) of silver, roughly worth US
$764,000 based on the current (2022) price of silver.
The fate and whereabouts of the crew is not explicitly
mentioned in the sources, but Suetonius states that Caesar
“had sent off his travelling companions and the rest of his
attendants at the outset, to raise money for his ransom”
(Suetonius, Divus Julius 4.2). This left him “attended only
by a single physician and two bedroom-servants” (Sueto-
nius, Divus Julius 4.1).
Raising such a large amount of hard cash would take
time. Plutarch reports that Caesar was detained for 38 days,
while Suetonius states that he “remained in their custody
for nearly forty days in a state of intense vexation” (Sueto-
nius, Divus Julius 4.1).
Caesar was annoyed but not afraid. He projected su-
preme self-confidence toward his captors:
[Caesar] conducted himself during the entire period of
his detention as to inspire in them an equal degree both
fear and respect. Neither by day nor by night did he
remove his shoes or loosen his girdle – for why should
a detail of the greatest significance be omitted merely
because it cannot be adorned in imposing language? –
lest the slightest change in his usual garb might cause
him to be suspected by his captors, who guarded him
only with their eyes.
(Velleius Paterculus 2.41.3)
Ancient Warfare XVI-1
26
Plutarch adds:
As if the men were not his watchers, but his royal body-
guard, he shared in their sports and exercises with great
unconcern. He also wrote poems and sundry speeches
which he read aloud to them, and those who did not ad-
mire these he would call to their faces illiterate Barbar-
ians, and often laughingly threatened to hang them all.
The pirates were delighted at this, and attributed his bold-
ness of speech to a certain simplicity and boyish mirth.
(Plutarch, Julius Caesar 2.3–4)
Caesar also made them a solemn promise: after he was
freed, he would return, arrest, and execute them all. They
laughed at him because “they thought he was joking” (Plu-
tarch, Julius Caesar 2.7).
Where would Caesar raise the money? Ambitious for
success, he was still cultivating benefactors and powerful
friends, and to these he now looked for help. One might
have been Nicomedes IV Philopator of Bithynia who may
already have been dead; another could have been M. Mi-
nucius Thermus, although he had since returned to Rome.
A quarter of a century before Caesar arrived in Asia,
however, his own late father – C. Iulius Caesar, who had died
unexpectedly in 85 BC – had been praetor of the province. As
his son, Caesar would have inherited his father’s prestige and
many clientes (clients). It was the cities of the province of Asia
that finally paid the ransom. In particular, the leading men
of the city of Miletus on the coast of southwestern Asia may
have seen an up-and-coming ally in the young man, one who
could represent them in Rome as their patronus. In later life
Caesar would recognize Miletus with deep gratitude.
As a guarantee that they would free him, Caesar insist-
ed that the pirates must offer hostages to the cities of Asia
providing the money. After the ransom was paid, Caesar
was finally released.
Caesar’s vengeance
That would not be the end of the matter. Caesar would not
let the pirates get off scot-free. He conceived and assessed
“his many bold plans for the punishment of the pirates”
(Velleius Paterculus 2.42.1). He favoured swift and terrible
vengeance. Caesar was understandably furious when M.
Iunius Iuncus, “the timid magistrate of the Roman people
in Asia [governor 75/74 BC]” (Velleius Paterculus 2.42.1),
obstinately refused to approve his plans.
He took matters into his own hands. According to Plu-
tarch, it was from the harbour of Miletus that Caesar launched
his campaign of retribution. The pirates, “still lying at anchor
off the island” (Plutarch, Julius Caesar 2.5), were sitting ducks:
On the night following the day on which his ransom was
paid by the cities of Asia … although he was but a private
 citizen without authority, and his fleet had been collected
on the spur of the moment, he directed his course to the
rendezvous of the pirates, put to flight part of their fleet,
sank part, and captured several ships and many men.
(Velleius Paterculus, 2.42.1–2)
He seized the ransom money, declaring it personal booty,
and shipped the pirates to Pergamum, where he had them
incarcerated.
Caesar then approached Iuncus, as the proconsul with
legal imperium (‘command’ or ‘power’), presently residing
in Bithynia, to make his plea for the prisoners to be pun-
ished. Caesar sought the death penalty for his captors; Iun-
cus sought to sell them as slaves.
This was unacceptable to Caesar. One Roman histo-
rian notes that, acting on his own initiative, Caesar “re-
turned to the coast with incredible speed and crucified all
his prisoners before anyone had had time to receive a dis-
patch from the proconsul in regard to the matter” (Velleius
Paterculus 2.42.2). Plutarch, meanwhile, reports it thus:
Caesar left him to his own devices, went to Pergamum,
took the robbers out of prison, and crucified them all,
just as he had often warned them on the island that he
would do, when they thought he was joking.
(Plutarch, Julius Caesar 2.7)
Caesar was never one to hesitate on matters of personal
importance.
The particular choice of crucifixion as punishment for
the crime is confirmed in Valerius Maximus and Suetonius.
Generally reserved for slaves, pirates, and enemies of the
state, crucifixion involved nailing the victim to a tree or
cross (crux) through the wrists and ankles. It could be pre-
ceded by a terrible beating.
His honour satisfied and reputation enhanced, “Cae-
sar sailed to Rhodes to study under Apollonius the son of
Molon, an illustrious rhetorician with the reputation of a
worthy character, of whom Cicero also was a pupil” (Plu-
tarch, Julius Caesar 3.1).
In retrospect, the episode at Pharmacusa revealed many
of the trademark characteristics for which Caesar would later
become well-known: calmness under pressure, self-assured-
ness and confidence, willingness to take command, decisive-
ness, and speed. No doubt propagated by Caesar, the legend
of his time with the pirates spread. As one historian noted:
For so small a sum [50 talents] as that, Fortune would
have sold off the brightest star of the world, in a pirate
ship. Why then should we complain of her, when she
does not even spare the associates of her divinity? But
Caesar’s celestial power avenged his own injury.
(Valerius Maximus, Memorable Deeds and Sayings 9.15)
Ridding the seas of pirates
Years before Caesar’s encounter with the pirates of Cilicia,
P. Servilius Vatia (ca.130–44 BC), proconsul of the province,
had led a series of army and navy operations to eradicate the
criminal gangs. In 77 and 76 BC he defeated the pirates at sea
off Cilicia and occupied the coasts of Lycia and Pamphylia.
Turning his campaign inland where the pirates had since fled,
he attacked their strongholds in the Taurus Mountains, captur-
ing Isaura Vetus, Olympos, and Phaselis, as well as many pi-
rate captains. For his victory over the Isauri the Roman Senate
awarded him a triumph and the war title Isauricus.
Nevertheless, as Caesar’s captivity in 75/74 BC shows,
piracy still continued to plague Roman shipping and coastal
cities. In 68 BC, pirates audaciously sacked Ostia, the stra-
tegically vital harbour of the city of Rome. They set its build-
ings alight, destroying the consular war fleet, even seizing
two senators and their entourages. Enough was enough.
In 67 BC, Cn. Pompeius Magnus (AKA Pompey the
Great) was granted legal powers under the lex Gabinia
de piratis persequendis to rid the Mediterranean of the
maritime scourge once and for all. Caesar was the only
one who spoke in favour of the proposal in the Senate.
In just three months, with a massive force under his com-
mand, Pompeius successfully prosecuted his mission and
destroyed the pirates.
Even then, piracy was never completely eradicated. It
was Julius Caesar’s adopted son and heir, Augustus, who
boasted at the end of his life: Mare pacavi a praedoni-
bus, “The sea I pacified from pirates” (Res Gestae 25).
In 5 BC, he sent an army to Cilicia under P. Sulpicius
Quirinius, legatus Augusti pro praetore of Syria, to extin-
guish the source of manpower for the pirate fleet. Though
it was “considered too strong to capture” (Strabo, Geog-
raphy 12.6.5), Quirinius defeated the coalition of bandits,
known collectively as Homonadeis. He starved them into
submission, taking 4,000 of them prisoner and “leaving
the country destitute of all its men who were in the prime
of life” (Strabo, Geography 12.6.5).
Yet Augustus’ claim to have eradicated piracy does
not quite hold up to examination. Dio reports that “pirates
overran a good many districts” (Cassius Dio, Roman His-
tory 55.28.1); they ran amok on Sardinia in AD 6, its sena-
torial administrator having fled, leaving the island under
the control of “soldiers with equestrians as commanders”.
While ships laden with merchandise sailed the open
seas, there would always be criminal operators willing to
risk their lives to steal it. Even the great Julius Caesar did
not succeed in stopping them. 0
Lindsay Powell is news editor of Ancient History and An-
cient Warfare magazines. He is the editor of Julius Caesar
(Flame Tree Publishing, 2022).
Ancient Warfare XVI-1
27
THEME: Ancient pirates
Limestone frieze depicting soldiers embarked on a galley, ready to board an enemy ship. Now in the Narbo Via museum, Narbonne, France.
POMPEY AND THE PIRATES
A-pi cy ie
In 67 BC, one of the Roman Republic’s leading generals,
Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, Pompey the Great, was
given an extraordinary, three-year, Mediter-
ranean-wide command by a law of the Ro-
man people, to rid the seas of ‘pirates’.
nder the terms of the lex Gabinia,
U
Pompey was allocated huge re-
sources of men, ships, and mon-
ey. He was also granted imperi-
um maius, the power to override
the authority of all other Roman magistrates, for up to
50 miles inland, much to the dismay of his political
rivals, who felt that this amounted to almost monarchi-
cal status. Like all members of the Roman senatorial ar-
Bust of Pompey the Great now in the Louvre, Paris.
Though the recognized busts of Pompey show some
variation in the rest of the face, the hairstyle and
shape of the forehead are consistent in all of them.
© Pierre André / Wikimedia Commons
Ancient Warfare XVI-1
28
By Philip de Souza
a sm
istocracy, Pompey lusted after military glory,
which was the principal route to political suc-
cess. His campaign lasted less than a year and
was portrayed as a resounding success by his
political ally Marcus Tullius Cicero in a speech
to the Roman people in 66 BC, arguing that
only Pompey could win Rome’s long-running
war with Mithridates VI, king of Pontus (Cic-
ero, On the Command of Gnaeus Pompeius).
This spectacular defeat of the ‘pirates’ did in-
deed pave the way for Pompey to take com-
mand against Mithridates, who was eventually
defeated in 63 BC. But there is another way of
viewing at Pompey’s ‘Pirate War’. If we look
behind the image of a heroic Roman leader
freeing the seas of evil ‘pirates’ for the good of
all, we can see how the opponents of Rome
have been demonized and how aggressive
Roman imperialism has been justi-
fied as the suppression of piracy.
© Zunkir / Wikimedia Commons
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Ancient piracy and the raid mentality
Piracy can be defined as ‘armed robbery in-
volving the use of ships’. It can be distinguished
from banditry, not only because of its maritime
aspect, but also because ships give pirates the
capacity to raid over much longer distances.
Maritime raiding was widespread in the ancient
Mediterranean by the late Bronze Age. There is,
however, no specific word in the sources de-
scribing those raids that equates to the word
‘piracy’, so it is impossible to distinguish pi-
racy from warfare. Indeed, maritime raids pro-
vided a means for the leaders to maintain and
enhance their military status, to obtain plunder
from which to reward their followers and allies,
and to inflict both material and moral losses on
their enemies. Vincent Gabrielsen has argued
that this “raid mentality” remained an essential
form of warfare throughout antiquity.
It is only in the late fifth and fourth centu-
and cities in search of both plunder
and prisoners to be ransomed or sold
as slaves. The numerous coastal set-
tlements of the Aegean and Eastern
Mediterranean were especially vul-
nerable to the sudden appearance of
‘pirate’ ships, whose crews could eas-
ily bypass or overwhelm local defences
and plunder at will. The ancient sources re-
fer in particular to the Illyrians, Cretans, Pam-
phylians, and Cilicians as habitual ‘pirates’, but
this does not necessarily mean that their actions (Top) Ruins of the outer city walls
and motivations were very different to those of of the Pamphylian city of Side. The
main gate (Megale Pyle) dates to
other states, rather that they were the objects of
the Hellenistic Period.
pejorative labelling by their enemies. © Dosseman / Wikimedia Commons
(Bottom) Remains of a Roman naval
Romans vs ‘pirates’
monument in the harbor of Miletus,
The rise of Rome in the Mediterranean was ac- possibly erected to Pompey after his
companied by a gradual realization among the defeat of the Cilician pirates in 67 BC.
senatorial aristocracy that one way to legitimize © Livius.org

ries BC, when political aims such as territorial

expansion became the norm in warfare, in ad-
dition to the socio-economic objectives of raid-
ing and plundering, that piracy begins to be dif-
ferentiated from warfare in the surviving literary
sources. The Greek words leistés, found in the
Homeric poems, and peiratés, a fourth century
term, can be translated as ‘pirate’, but they can
also mean ‘bandit’ or ‘raider’. Latin words that
have similar meanings are latro and praedo.
The only Classical words that are used to mean
pirate, but not bandit, are the Greek katapontis-
tés (i.e. “one who throws people into the sea”)
and the Latin pirata (a transliteration of peira-
tés). It is important to take account of the con-
texts in which such words are used, and to real-
ize that labelling one’s opponents as pirates was
a way of de-legitimizing their activities, similar
to the modern practice of describing political
violence or warfare as ‘terrorism’. Thus, pirates
are occasionally mentioned in Thucydides’ and
Xenophon’s descriptions of Greek inter-state
warfare, and accusations of practising and pro-
moting piracy were made by both sides in the
conflicts between Athens and Macedon in the
second half of the fourth century.
In the Hellenistic and Roman Republican
periods, maritime plundering was endemic in
the Mediterranean, practised by both the mili-
tary forces of states and by non-state agents,
particularly on the fringes of wars. Raiders at-
tached to one side or another attacked islands

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Ancient Warfare XVI-1

29
π THE CENTERFOLD
Pompey's legionaries land from a Roman
galley at a coastal pirate enclave in a
cove in Cilicia in the Eastern Mediter-
ranean in 67 BC, catching the relatively
unarmoured pirates unaware.
© Catalin Draghici
 a law requiring a Roman praetor to cam-
paign each year in Cilicia. This law, known
as the lex de provinciis praetoriis, says:

and the Latins, and those of the foreign

Clay model of a decked Roman galley
from Cape Maleas, Greece, late first
century BC – early first century AD.
© Livius.org
Pompey's extraordinary com-
mand split the Mediterranean into
zones. He and his subordinates
quickly took control and con-
quered the pirates throughout —
making it once more the Romans'
Mare Nostrum, 'our sea'.
© Richard Thomson
their growing em-
pire was to present them-
selves as taking a stand against enemies
who could be presented as ‘pirates’. Thus the Il-
lyrian War of 229, the conquest of Liguria in the
late 180s, and the conquest of the Balearic Is-
lands in 123 were all proclaimed as anti-piracy
actions, but these can all be seen as convenient
justifications for Roman imperialism.
In 102, a Roman naval force attacked parts
of Cilicia, the Roman term for the southern
coast of Anatolia. The fleet was largely made up
of men and ships provided by Rome’s Greek al-
lies, led by the praetor Marcus Antonius the Or-
ator. He raided some coastal towns and cities,
which he identified as pirate strongholds, doing
enough to earn a triumph back in Rome, but
Cilicia was not brought under Roman control.
Two years later, the Roman people approved
nations who are in a relationship of friend-
ship with the Roman people, may sail in
safety, and that on account of this matter
and according to this statute they have
made Cilicia a praetorian province … he
is to send letters to the effect that it is also
right for them to see that no pirate use
as a base of operations their kingdom or
land or territories, and that no officials
or garrison commanders harbour the pi-
rates, and to see that, insofar as it shall be
possible, the Roman people have them as
contributors to the safety of all.
The clear message of this law, which was wide-
ly publicized among the Greek communities of
the Eastern Mediterranean, is that the Romans
have decided, for the common good, to take a
leading role in the suppression of piracy, con-
centrating on the notorious pirate strongholds

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of Cilicia. The alternative way to see it
is as a manifesto for Roman imperialism.
By claiming the right to send a senatorial com-
mander and his army to the region in order to
suppress piracy, the Romans were justifying the
expansion of their empire in a way that made
them look good to their allies and simultane-
ously demonized their enemies as pirates.
After 100 BC, several Roman generals
campaigned in the Eastern Mediterranean and
especially Cilicia, but very little of their activity
can be described as suppression of piracy. From
78 to 74, Publius Servilius Vatia defeated sever-
al local rulers in Eastern Lycia and Pamphylia,
including one Zeniketos. He is described as a
‘pirate’ by the Greek geographer Strabo, writ-
ing about 100 years later (Geography 14.5.7).
Servilius’ priority, however, was to extend Ro-
man control over the inland areas, especially
the mountains of Isauria. He was awarded a
triumph for his victories and took the surname
‘Isauricus’. As Servilius passed through the ter-
ritory of Rome’s friends and allies, he displayed
his prisoners in chains and labelled as ‘pirates’,
thus providing evidence of Rome’s success in
clearing the region and making the seas safe.
Many of those designated as ‘pirates’ by
the ancient sources were allies or friends of King
Mithridates, who fought against Rome from 89
to 63 BC. In his struggle against Roman impe-
rial expansion, he recruited substantial forces
from the autonomous communities of Cilicia
and Pamphylia, either as allies or as mercenar-
ies. In 88 BC, he captured the island of Delos,
a major commercial port for Roman and Italian
merchants. By presenting Mithridates
as a leader of ‘pirates’, the Romans
could exploit the fears of maritime
trading cities and discourage them
from joining his cause.
Caesar and the pirates
In 75, the inadequacy of the Ro-
mans’ anti-piracy measures was
dramatically revealed when an as-
piring politician called Gaius Ju-
lius Caesar was captured by pirates
(see also Lindsay Powell’s article).
It is clear from this and other small
incidents that, despite their claim-
ing to be waging war in the Eastern
Mediterranean to protect their citi-
zens, allies, and friends from pirates,
the Romans’ real interest lay in expanding their
empire and increasing their own wealth.
Three centuries later, Cassius Dio wrote
that the Romans displayed very little interest
in suppressing the supposedly endemic pi-
racy. He sums up their attitude thus: “But
they used to send out fleets and gener-
als, as and when they were prompted by
specific reports. Nothing was achieved,
except that the allies had to suffer even
greater hardship as a result of these at-
tempts, until their situation became
quite desperate” (Dio 36.23.2).
If what the Romans labelled ‘pi-
racy’ was such a big problem at this
time, but very little had been done
about it, why was such drastic action tak-
en in 67? The principal reason for the change
in attitude was self-interest. By then, piratical Copper-alloy Roman helmet, second-
attacks were not just troubling Rome’s subjects first century BC, from a shipwreck
near Narbonne, France and now in
and allies. Maritime raiders had struck the coast
the Narbo Via museum there.
of Italy, even sinking some ships in the harbour
© Skopien / Wikimedia Commons
of Ostia, just a few miles from Rome itself. The
Greek biographer Plutarch, writing in the sec-
ond century AD, picked out the threat to the
city’s food supply as the most urgent problem
(Plutarch, Life of Pompey 24):
The pirates’ power was felt in all parts of the
Mediterranean, so that it was impossible to
sail anywhere and all trade was brought to
a halt. It was this which really made the Ro- This marble frieze from the late
mans sit up and take notice. With their mar- first century BC shows Roman
soldiers on the protected deck of
kets short of food and a great famine loom-
a galley, ready to send a volley of
ing, they commissioned Pompey to clear
pila at an opponent.
the seas of pirates.
© Karwansaray Publishers
Ancient Warfare XVI-1
33

Remarkably preserved hemispheri-
cal cap made from wool felt which
may have belonged to a sailor.
© Zunkir / Wikimedia Commons
Detail of a fresco depicting three gal-
leys apparently sailing out of a port
equippoed with boathouses. Found
in the Temple of Isis in Pompeii.
© Carole Raddato / Flickr
Ancient Warfare XVI-1
34
Pompey tackles the ‘pirates’
Pompey’s initial operations were concentrated
on the grain-producing regions of the Western
Mediterranean, North Africa, Sicily, Sardin-
ia, and Corsica. Only after these places
were secure did he turn his attention
eastward. Plutarch’s account contin-
ues (Plutarch, Life of Pompey 24):
He spread his forces out, threaten-
ing the pirate hordes from all sides
so that they were swiftly caught and
brought to land. The more elusive
ones were driven together back to Ci-
licia, like bees swarming to their hive.
Given that Cilicia was supposed to be the
main base of the pirates, the ancient sources
have surprisingly little to say about the final, Ci-
lician phase of Pompey’s campaign. The only
battle mentioned was at Korakesion, followed
by a brief siege of the city. The famous politi-
cian and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero summed
it up in one sentence: “He set out from Brundis-
ium and in 49 days he had brought Cilicia into
the Roman Empire” (Cicero, On the Command
of Gnaeus Pompeius 35). To have secured the
entire Mediterranean, conquered Cilicia, and
ended the threat of piracy in such a short time
seems an incredible achievement, particu-
larly when compared to the minimal success
achieved by previous Roman commanders.
Modern historians have usually accepted
what the ancient sources say at face value, but
the real reason Pompey’s pirate war ended so
quickly is because it was not really a war at
all. Cicero claims that so great was Pompey’s
reputation that most of the so-called ‘pirates’
gave up without a fight (Cicero, On the Com-
mand of Gnaeus Pompeius 35):
All pirates wherever they were suffered
capture and death, or handed themselves
over to this singularly powerful commander.
Even the Cretans, when they sent emissar-
ies to him in Pamphylia to plead their case,
learned that there was hope for their surren-
der, and were ordered to give hostages.
Cassius Dio says that, while Pompey’s fleet
and army were very large, “Just as great was
his clemency towards those who made terms
with him, so that he won many of them over
by this policy” (Dio 36.37.4) To achieve a swift
victory, Pompey announced in advance that if
the alleged pirates immediately surrendered to
him, they would be treated leniently, not made
captives and executed as Servilius Isauricus
and Julius Caesar had done. This willingness
to negotiate with the enemy, rather than defeat
them in battle, was very unusual for a Roman
general, but it enabled Pompey to subdue Cili-
cia with almost no fighting.
Pompey reforms the ‘pirates’?
Taking their cue from the ancient sources, mod-
ern scholars have heaped praise on Pompey for
his enlightened policy of ‘resettlement’ for these
former pirates. According to Velleius Paterculus,
Plutarch, Appian, and Cassius Dio, the Cilicians
and Pamphylians who surrendered to him were
relocated away from the sea, in places more
suited to agriculture than to piracy. Careful
scrutiny of these accounts suggests something
rather different. The defeated Cilicians con-
tinued to live in coastal cities such as Mallus,
Adana, and Corycus. Because they had submit-
ted to a Roman proconsul, however, they were
no longer designated as ‘pirates’ but became
friends and allies of the Senate and People of
Rome. Soli, the largest of the Cilician coastal
cities, was even renamed Pompeiopolis (the
city of Pompey). Some of the leading Cilicians
became clients of Pompey and fought in the
civil wars of the 40s BC against Julius Caesar
and his supporters. The following lines from the
epic poem composed by Lucan in the first cen-
tury AD describe Pompey gathering his forces
in deliberately ironic terms (Civil War 3.225-8):
The Taurus forests are deserted, so too
Perseus’ Tarsus / And the hollowed rocks
of the Corycian cave. / In Mallus and
far-off Aegae naval bases are filled with
sound, / And the Cilician, no longer now
a pirate, sets out in a legitimate vessel.
There is direct evidence that, despite Pompey’s
claim to have successfully cleared the seas of
pirates in 67 BC, piratical attacks remained a
serious danger for the Romans, their subjects,
and their allies. Even Cicero, who had acted as
Pompey’s chief cheerleader, had to admit that
some of those whom Pompey had resettled at
Dyme in Greece were making seaborne trav-
el between Italy and Greece
dangerous in 44 BC (Letters
to Atticus SB 409).
Pompey’s celebrated ‘Pirate
War’ in 67 did little to reduce
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piracy, because its primary aim was to enhance The ruins of Antiochia ad Cragum
his military reputation by extending Roman im- in Cilicia Trachea, Turkey. Probably
perial power and securing areas for economic one of the concealed ports where
exploitation. It was Augustus and the succeed- pirates lurked and took refuge,
Pompey needed to destroy all such
ing Roman emperors who, having secured con-
hideouts to reduce the threat from
trol of the entire coastline of the Mediterranean, seaborne raiders.
effectively restricted piracy to occasional inci- © Saida Nabi / Shutterstock
dents, typically on the margins of the Roman
Empire. Under these stable political conditions,
the heavily politicized concept of pirates as the
Section of a relief dating to the sec-
common enemies of all peoples, implicit in the ond century BC. From Italy, it shows
lex de provinciis praetoriis of 100 BC and fully three galleys — one from starboard,
articulated by writers such as Cicero (On Du- one prow-on, and one from port.
ties, 3.107) and Plutarch (Pompey, 24–26), The three ships are possibly en-
gave way to the characterization of pirates gaged in combat.
© Karwansaray Publishers
as colourful, independent mari-
time bandits, portrayed in an-
cient novels such as Petronius,
The Satyricon, Achilles Tatius,
Kleitophon and Leukippe, and
Heliodorus’ The Ephesian Tale,
and familiar today from many
books, paintings, and films. 0
Philip de Souza is Associate Pro-
fessor of Classics at University
College Dublin. He has pub-
lished extensively on ancient
piracy, seafaring, and warfare.
Ancient Warfare XVI-1
35
SPECIAL
Two Hellenistic Seleucids engage
with typical Mauryan soldiers: an
infantryman with sword, shield,
armour and helmet; and an archer
wearing a dhoti kilt and little else.
© Angel Garcia Pinto

Ancient Warfare XVI-1

38
WARS OF THE MAURYAN EMPIRE By Tyler Holman

In e ke of
Axander
The shock of the Macedonian invasion of northwestern India exposed the weakness-
es of divided tribal states and small kingdoms. When the army of Alexander left, a
network of satraps and vassals remained. The chaos after his death reached all the A Roman marble bust of Alexander
the Great based on a Greek orginal
way to India and allowed a driven sage and his chosen pupil to create an empire that from the third century BC. Now in the
Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen.
stretched across most of the subcontinent and lasted into the second century BC.
© Richard Mortel / Flickr

hen Alexander the and put Porus to rout. The spirited resistance

W
Great’s army had
conquered Bactria in
Central Asia, his army
swept through the
Gandhara and the Punjab, in the area of mod-
ern Afghanistan and Pakistan. Most famously,
he faced a Punjabi king named Porus at the
Battle of Hydaspes in 326, in a hard-fought
and costly victory that tempered the appetite
of the Macedonian army for further conquest.
The battle was especially hard-fought
because Porus’ forces fought with markedly
different tactics than their Macedonian coun-
terparts. The Indian king used trained war el-
ephants as shock troops to break enemy lines
and reinforce the army’s infantry backbone,
while cavalry and chariots harassed the ene-
my’s flanks. Because elephants were so wide-
spread in ancient Indian warfare, infantry for-
mations tended to be less compact than those
employed by Greek armies; this lessened the
risk of mass casualties from trampling but
made it easier for them to be scattered. At the
Hydaspes, Alexander’s army discovered the
hazards of tight formations when many men
were trampled by charging elephants or im-
paled on tusks that were reinforced by steel
cladding. As the battle progressed, the Mac-
edonians learned to target the elephant driv-
ers, causing the elephants, in the words of
the Roman historian Arrian, to rush “forward
at friends and foes alike”. Out of this chaos,
the Macedonian army managed to regroup
A Yavana (Greek) warrior, from
sparked in Alexander an admiration for Porus, Bharhut Stupa, Satna district of
and the Indian king became one of his vassals. Madhya Pradesh. The relief dates
Alexander did not advance deeper into the roughly to the second century BC,
subcontinent. Beyond Porus’ small kingdom lay and depicts a man with short curly
the Ganges River, and beyond that lay the terri- hair, a headband, and tunic. He is
tory of the Nanda Empire, at the time the most holding a sword and a grape plant.
© Michael Gunther/ Wikimedia Commons
powerful state in the subcontinent. The Nandas
ruled from the city of Pataliputra in the Magad-
ha region of eastern India and were backed by a
strong military, which ancient authors claimed
could muster some 200,000 infantrymen and
thousands of trained elephants. Although Alex-
ander was eager to invade these lands, his army
refused to proceed deeper into the subconti-
nent, and he pulled back the bulk of his forces
to Babylon, where he would die in 323.
Alexander’s withdrawal was not the end
of the Greek presence in India; he left behind
a small contingent of satraps – a title for pro-
vincial governors inherited from the Persian
Achaemenid Empire – to rule over the Indian
territories he had secured, alongside Indian vas-
sals such as Porus. With their king’s death, noth-
ing remained to unify these rulers, and some
of the satraps Alexander left behind proclaimed
their own independence and took to fighting
their former comrades. Alexander’s incursions
had highlighted the weakness of divided gov-
ernment in north-west India, making it an at-
tractive target for any army strong enough to
unify it. Such a force was about to emerge in the
form of a sage named Chanakya and his young
protégé, Chandragupta Maurya.

A Roman bronze bust of Seleucus I
Nicator, from the Villa of the Papyri
in Herculaneum, ca. 100 BC-AD 100.
© Sailko / Wikimedia Commons
Long before Alexander's adventures
in the Indus Valley, the Achaemenids
already had contact with various peo-
ples in the region. After their own war
of conquest, Indian soldiers began
serving in the Persian army, fighting
in some of the Achaemenids' most fa-
mous battles with the Greeks. Dating
to 340 BC, this relief from Artaxerxes
III's tomb shows warriors from the ter-
ritories of Sattagydia, Gandhara, and
Hindush respectively.
© Martin Yhlén/ Wikimedia Commons
Ancient Warfare XVI-1
40
An exiled sage
Chanakya was a former minister of the Nanda
kings who had fled the court following a dis-
pute with the king, the details of which are un-
clear. After this humiliation, Chanakya burned
with a determination to see the Nanda dynasty
overthrown. He was a sage of extraordinary
wit, wisdom, and wealth, but he was no mil-
itary leader; that was a role he groomed the
young Chandragupta to fill. Both men were
probably from eastern India, but they are first
recorded at Taxila, an ancient city-state that
was located in present-day Pakistan, where
Chanakya taught at one of the world’s earli-
est universities. Taxila had been an early ally of
Alexander, and Chandragupta may have served
in the army, exposing him to Greek tactics and
military thought. Most stories emphasize that
he came from a family of low status, but not
much else can be said with certainty.
Like many other ambitious young men
in the ancient world, Chandragupta dreamt
of accomplishing what Alexander could not.
It was said that Chandragupta often remarked
that Alexander could have easily toppled the
Nanda Empire, had his army been willing to
advance. If the duo’s ultimate goal was to top-
ple the Nandas, however, they were in no
position to do that. They did recognize that
if the peoples of the north-west, along with
the Greeks who had settled there, could be
united under a single leader, then they could
present a formidable fighting force.
As the region sank into chaos follow-
ing Alexander’s death and the disintegration
of his empire, Chanakya and Chandragupta
saw an opportunity. As a former royal minis-
ter, Chanakya was wealthy, and the two used
that wealth to raise a small army of mercenar-
ies, bandits, and anyone else willing to follow
them. Both Indian and Greco-Roman sources
state that Chandragupta’s first actions were to
seize the territories held by the Greek satraps
and vassals in the north-west, and establish a
base of operations. Scattered and divided by in-
fighting, the warlords were an easy target, and
Chandragupta was able to build a more formi-
dable army after consolidating their territories.
Chandragupta’s army
There are no detailed accounts of the course
of this initial conquest, and it was probably not
a conventional war. During this period, Chan-
dragupta’s army may have operated very dif-
ferently from the disciplined force adopted by
Porus’ army against Alexander; descriptions of
the early Mauryan army refer to its soldiers as
bandits or mercenaries, some of them Greeks
and other foreigners, and give the impression of
guerrilla warfare. Chanakya is often attributed
as the author of the Arthashastra, an ancient
handbook on warfare and governance, which
treats subterfuge and assassination not as dis-
honourable but as ideal, exemplars of achiev-
ing military goals with fewer casualties. Some
historians believe that Chanakya may have
instigated uprisings among Greek troops and
engineered the assassination of the Macedo-
nian satraps Philip and Nicanor. Through these
methods, Chandragupta’s army grew quickly as
the cities of the north-west fell under his control
over the course of several months.
With the north-west united under his rule,
Chandragupta’s ambition shifted towards the
Nandas on the other side of the Ganges. In
the early part of the Nanda campaign, Chan-
dragupta is said to have advanced rapidly on
the Nanda capital at Pataliputra, intent on cut-
ting off the head of the empire, but this initial
attack was repulsed. After losing much of the
territory gained in the initial assault, the Mau-
ryan army settled into a difficult campaign.
Chanakya and Chandragupta decided on a
slow but steady advance on the Nanda borders,
consolidating the governance of captured cit-
ies before advancing towards Pataliputra. Texts
from later centuries record the deaths of tens
of thousands of elephants, horses, charioteers,
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and infantry over the course of this cam-
paign, echoing a distant memory of the
bloodshed and indicating that the Mau-
ryan army now relied more on conven-
tional tactics than in the north-west.
Over the course of the campaign,
Chandragupta was said to have mustered
as many as 600,000 men into his army. Un-
fortunately, there is not much archaeological
evidence of these soldiers. Historians must
thus rely on artistic depictions to reconstruct
their arms and garb. One reason for this may
be the nature of that equipment: relief sculp-
tures from the period portray most soldiers as
bare-chested, wearing cloth headdresses and
loose cloth trousers called dhoti. Metal armour
was rare, and this lack of armour stood out to
Greek observers, who described the clothes
worn by Indian soldiers as flamboyantly dyed.
Mauryan cavalry bore two spears, always car-
rying a spare in case their weapon became
lodged in a foe and lost. For infantry, clubs and
maces were carried alongside large, almost
body-length shields made from hides stretched The spread of the Mauryan conquest
across a wooden frame. Occasionally heavy
from their modest homeland was re-
broadswords, wielded with two hands, are de- lentless, rapid, and vast. The empire
picted. Mauryan archers carried large bows, reached its greatest extent in less
described by Greek observers as being “of than a century from its beginning.
© Richard Thomson
equal length with the man who bears it”, giving
them impressive range and power. Elephants
could be equipped with specialized carriages
called howdah, which could be armoured and
stationed with three or four archers, creating a
‘moving fortress’. It took between two and three
years for the Mauryan army to seize control of A miniature terracotta Indian chariot,
most Nanda territories and topple Pataliputra, ca. 187– 78 BC, which may have held
which Chandragupta made his own capital. a figurine of a hero or divinity. It
The Nanda king was either executed or exiled, may have been used as a toy or for
depending on which account is believed.
display on a domestic altar.
© Cleveland Museum of Art
With the Nandas overthrown and much of
the subcontinent consolidated under his rule,
Chandragupta began laying the ground-
work for a state that was again to be ruled
from Pataliputra, appointing Chanakya as
his minister. The following decade
saw further consolidation of Mau-
ryan territory. Recognizing that
professional soldiers were a great
asset, a standing army with
well-paid soldiers was estab-
lished, and the Mauryan army
Ancient Warfare XVI-1
41

(Top) The easternmost 'Pillar of
Ashoka' at Vaishali, India. Erected
by Ashoka all over the empire and
inscribed with edicts, twenty such
pillars survive today.
© Thanes.Op / Shutterstock
(Bottom) Rock inscribed with an
edict of Ashoka at Shahbazgarhi, Pa-
kistan. Fourteen such edicts survive.
© Raza Shah Khan / Wikimedia Commons
Ancient Warfare XVI-1
42
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became highly efficient, even estab-
lishing a branch dedicated to ensuring a
dependable supply chain. Chandragup-
ta’s military successes finally met their limit
when he tried to invade the state of Kalinga,
along India’s eastern coast. Formerly part of
the Nanda domain, the now-independent
kingdom resisted his efforts of conquest, and
he was forced to withdraw from its borders.
A new clash with Macedonians
Around 305, Chandragupta’s empire was con-
fronted by an outside threat in the form of the
Seleucid Empire. It had originated in from Alex-
ander’s army in the east and was led by one of
his generals, Seleucus I Nicator. His army had
spent years fighting to subdue former Macedo-
nian territories from Babylon to Bactria before
shifting its attention towards the subcontinent.
Seleucus subdued several Greek satraps
in what is now Afghanistan before crossing the
Indus and advancing towards Taxila. With the
north-west now united under Mauryan rule,
Seleucus, a veteran of Alexander’s Indian cam-
paign, was confronted by far more organized
resistance than had existed before. The inva-
sion was short-lived, and the result must have
been a clear Mauryan victory. In an agreement
that ended the conflict, Seleucus surrendered
vast tracts of land on the western bank of the
Indus, extending Mauryan power into mod-
ern Afghanistan and Iran. In exchange, Chan-
dragupta provided Seleucus with 500 trained
war elephants; with access to thousands, this
was no great blow to Mauryan military power.
These elephants provided an important advan-
tage to the Seleucids, who used them to great
effect against the army of their Macedonian ri-
val Antigonus at the Battle of Ipsus in 301. War
elephants soon spread to other Greek armies,
though they never became so widespread as in
India. To seal the treaty, the two parties agreed
to an arranged marriage between Chandragup-
ta Maurya and a Seleucid princess, referred to
in some accounts as Berenice.
After Chandragupta
This victory was Chandragupta’s last great ac-
complishment. He simply disappears from our
accounts, while a much later but oft-repeated
tradition has him abdicating his throne to be-
come a Jain monk. Accounts of Chandragup-
ta’s succession are dominated by gruesome
stories of sibling rivalry, which would become
hallmarks of Mauryan dynastic succession. He
was ultimately succeeded by his son Bindusara
Maurya. Bindusara maintained good relations
with the Seleucids and expressed an interest in
Greek philosophy, and his reign seems to have
been focused on consolidating the territories
captured by his father. Bindusara’s favoured
son, Ashoka, ensured his place as his father’s
successor by proving himself a capable mili-
tary leader in the suprression of a rebel-
lion at Taxila and, according to some,
by having all of his siblings murdered.
Determined to continue his grand-
father’s legacy, Ashoka was more ambi-
tious than his father. The Mauryan Empire
reached its greatest extent during his reign,
and its infrastructure was improved. It was
also a period of great cultural and artistic
achievement. Fuxian, a Chinese pilgrim, com-
mented that Ashoka must have used magic
to build his great palace at Pataliputra, since
it was filled with “elegant carving and inlaid
sculpture in a way which no human hands of
this world could accomplish”. Greek witnesses
were equally struck by the beauty of the palace,
and archaeological evidence has uncovered
impressive works of sculpture and architecture
from this period, showing the influence of In-
dian, Persian, and Greek styles and techniques.
Kalinga, the state that resisted Chan-
dragupta, drew Ashoka's focus, its conquest a
way of proving himself equal to his grandfa-
ther. Around 261, Ashoka invaded with a mas-
sive army, beginning a campaign of incredible
bloodshed that ultimately brought Kalinga un-
der his control. Ashoka himself later claimed
that 100,000 Kalingan soldiers died during the
conflict, and almost as many Mauryans. Wheth-
er or not these numbers are accurate, the cam-
paign was an extraordinarily bloody conflict, so
much so that it drove Ashoka to renounce wars
of conquest altogether, declaring them “painful
and deplorable”. He found solace in the
teachings of Buddhism and spent the
rest of his life promoting non-
violence, dispatching mis-
sionaries as far afield as Asia
Minor, Greece, and Ptole-
maic Egypt. Ashoka’s re-
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morse for the suffering he caused was reflected This relief from the Sanchi Stupa de-
in edicts that he had carved on massive pillars picting a war over the Buddha’s rel-
and polished boulders throughout his domain, ics, with warriors using Mauryan-era
one of which adorns the flag of modern India. (second century BC) military equip-
Ashoka ruled for almost 40 years and ment including elephants, shields,
spears, and bows.
died around 232. No successor could surpass
© Tapasr / Shutterstock
him. After his death, the empire fell victim to
even more vicious infighting and began to
disintegrate. In 184 the last Mauryan ruler, Br-
ihadratha, was overthrown by one of his gen-
erals, Pushyamitra Shunga. His dynasty ruled
over a shadow of the Mauryans’ glory, which Relief from Amaravathi village, Gun-
had lasted for some 133 years. 0 tur district, India. Dating to the first
century BC, it depicts the Mauryan
Tyler Holman is an Art History graduate stu- ruler Ashoka.
© Neoclassicism Enthusiast /
dent at Emory University. His research focuses
Wikimedia Commons
on ancient Rome, but he has also published
research on the coins of the Mauryan Empire.
FURTHER READING
• Nilakanta, Sastri, ed. Age of the
Nandas and Mauryas. Delhi:
Motilal Banarsidass, 1988.
• Roy, Kaushik. Warfare in Pre-British
India. New York: Routledge, 2017.
• Thapar, Romila. Aśoka and the
Decline of the Mauryas. Third
Edition. New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 2012.
Ancient Warfare XVI-1
43
THE WEAPON

Relief on the southern wall of the east stairway of the Apadana Palace in Persepolis. The swords attached to the soldiers' belts are akinakes.

AN EMBLEM OF DISTINCTION By Mark McCaffery

e Persian akinakes
By March 480 BC, two floating causeways bridging the Hellespont were ready to convey the Persian king
Xerxes and his army across into Europe. Their construction had not been without its difficulties; an ear-
lier storm had torn apart the structures mid-construction. Xerxes’ irate reaction to this setback was to
order the water to be whipped 300 times, a pair of fetters to be thrown in, and the waves themselves
to be branded with red-hot irons. Those in charge of the construction project were also beheaded.

ow, in June, on the morning of his crossing and being perplexed as to whether this gesture

N
with better weather, Xerxes approached the wa-
ters of the Hellespont, but with an evidently dif-
ferent intention. As the sun rose, Xerxes poured a
libation into the sea from a golden bowl, praying
that “misfortune would not prevent him conquering Europe”, before
casting the golden bowl into the waters of the Hellespont. This of-
fering was promptly supplemented by a golden
mixing bowl and a short sword, the type the
Persians refer to as an akinakes, according to
Herodotus (7.53). Whilst Herodotus admits to
A silver Achaemenid rhyton (a ceremonial
vessel for drinking or pouring from) shaped
as a rider on a horse, wearing an akinakes
on his right hip, ca. 550 – 330 BC. Found
near Arin-Berd, Yerevan, Armenia.
© EvgenyGenkin/ Wikimedia Commons
was an offering directed to the sun or some
sort of contrition for his previous abuse of the
Hellespont, the choice of weapon to commit
to the waters at this moment might provide
some clarity of Xerxes’ intentions.
Sign of allegiance
Although not much shorter than the smaller
known examples of Greek xiphoi swords, the
straight, double-edged akinakes, typically
35–45 cm in length, is generally thought of
as more of a dagger from both modern and
ancient perspectives alike. This was not a pri-
mary weapon to be utilized in battle by Per-

Ancient Warfare XVI-1

44
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sian troops. Indeed, Quintus Curtius (3.3) dis-
paragingly questions the serviceability of the
akinakes, listing it amongst the “attire of the
king noteworthy of luxury”, adorned as it was
with a golden belt and bejewelled scabbard.
Yet at the same time as Quintus Curtius’
accusations of feminine el-
egance comes a recognition
that the akinakes played a
crucial role in the recognition
of individuals of high status
within Persian aristocracy. Of
particular note were the ‘King’s
Kinsmen’, known as the ‘Huva-
ka’ in Old Persian. The practice of
their being presented with a gold-
en akinakes perhaps harkens back to
Elamite origins whereby the wearing of
© Lukiyanova Natalia frenta / Shutterstock
a thrusting weapon, intended to
be drawn with the blade facing
down, as Valerius Flaccus’ ref-
erence (Argonautica 6.701) to
the weapon being worn typi-
cally on the right suggests.
Our one account of an akinakes in action
again comes from Herodotus’ account of In- An ornate ivory
taphrenes’ death (3.118). Being one of the six akinakes scabbard, fifth-
aristocrats who helped Darius claim the Persian fourth century BC, from the Temple of
throne in 522 BC, Intaphrenes held exalted sta- the Oxus, Takht-i Sangin, southern Ta-
jikistan. Its design matches the others
tus, including the privilege to enter the palace
found and depicted on several reliefs.
unannounced at any time, except when the © ALFGRN/ Flickr
king was in bed with a woman. A night came
when he chose to enact this privilege, only to be
refused entry by the gatekeeper and a message-
bearer, who claimed that the king was indeed
occupied. Suspecting this to be a deceit, Inta-

phrenes drew his akinakes and cut off the gate- !ਡRB@Q@ANHCਡCDOHBSHMFਡ@ਡ0DQ
such daggers identified the best warriors. RH@MਡJHMFਡEHFGSHMFਡ@ਡM@JDCਡ
keepers’ ears and nose. When word reached 'QDDJਡGNOKHSD ਡB@ਡਡ"#ਡ

However, the presentation of akinakes
was not limited to members of the Persian
aristocracy. Xenophon (Anabasis I.3.27)
x
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describes how Cyrus demonstrated his
honour and respect for Syennesis, king
of the Cilicians, by presenting him with
a ‘gold akinakes’, along with a Nisaean
horse with golden bridle, a purple kan-
tus (Persian robe), and a gold torque
and bracelets. Likewise, on his return
journey from Greece, Xerxes stopped
at the town of Abdera, where he pre-
sented the citizenry with a gilded
akinakes and a tiara, thus sealing a
bond of alliance and probably rec-
ognizing some particular logistical
support crucial to his campaign.
that it was simply the overreaching pride
of Intaphrenes, and so put him to death.
From Cyrus down to Darius III, the
akinakes symbolized status and privi-
lege within the Persian court. Whether
as a gift to the King’s Kinsmen, adorning
the body of a king like Cyrus in his golden
sarcophagus, or being plundered in the after- Bas-relief from Persepolis depict-
math of battle and sent by Alexander as a gift to ing ambassadors bearing gifts to the
king, including an akinakes. Several
the goddess of the Parthenon; the akinakes was
akinakes presentation reliefs survive,
a defining Persian weapon. 0
suggesting the importance of such
ceremonies, and reinforcing the pic-
Mark McCaffery is a regular contributor to ture we're given in literary sources.
Ancient Warfare magazine. © MAVRITSINA IRINA / Shutterstock

Thus, Xerxes’ earlier dedication of

an akinakes to the waters of the Hel-
lespont might similarly be interpreted as an act
of binding the sea to himself, just as his kins-
men were elevated in status by his endorse-
ment or his allies endowed with privilege.

Practical weapon
That said, Quintus Curtius appears excessive-
ly harsh in his questioning of the functional-
ity of the akinakes. Plutarch makes reference
to the “wielding of akinakes” amongst the
ranks of the Persian army at Plataea in 479
BC, although whether this may be interpreted
as evidence for the presence of Persian kins-
men is debatable. Still, the straight, short na-
ture of the weapon seems to suggest it being
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Ancient Warfare XVI-1

45
SPECIAL
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46
THE TACTICS AND IMPACT OF THE GETAE AND DACIANS By Andrei Pogacias

ids across e Danube

The Getae and the Dacians were two related peoples in Eastern Europe, from roughly where Romania and
Bulgaria lie today. During their history, the Dacians especially occupied territories now belonging to Hun-
gary, Moldavia, Ukraine, and even Slovakia. Their military victories were achieved mainly through the ex-
cellent use of raiding parties formed, of course, of cavalry. From the bits and pieces of ancient chronicles
that have survived to this day, we can form a vivid image of their most beloved way of fighting – the raid.

ncient Greek and Roman sources record ing the supply bases of the Romans would ensure the

A
how the Getae and Dacians – the pre-
cise distinction was unclear to Roman
authors – used to cross the Danube and
plunder south all the way into Greece,
from where they returned rich with loot. They were also
hired as mercenaries, especially by the Romans, to fight
against other barbarians, or in Roman civil wars. Their at-
tacks were usually swift and bloody, and they managed
to instil fear even into the hearts and minds of the peo-
ple living in Rome. Unfortunately, many relevant ancient
sources have been lost, so we have only a few hints re-
garding these raids, but no detailed accounts.
The raiding lifestyle
Plunder was the main reason for these attacks. The Greek
cities on the Black Sea, in the case of the Getae, and
the Roman territories in the Balkans, in the case of the
Dacians, were their targets: rich places filled with vari-
ous precious goods, weapons, and slaves. The Dacians
launched their raids based on information regarding the
presence or absence of troops in the area, and they were
immensely successful.
Some of these actions might have occurred when
provisions were scarce north of the Danube, perhaps due
to bad crops or other reasons. The population could grow
quickly and there was a need to ensure their relative wel-
fare. Kings or commanders had to prove their courage
and skill by leading these raids and returning home in
glory. Another cause, especially when the numbers of
warriors grew and there was the risk of political unrest,
could actually be to lose some problematic commanders
in the heat of the campaign. The troops also had to gain
experience through such military actions and earn per-
sonal glory and loot. Some raids would be undertaken if
the Roman presence grew more menacing or if there was
news of a planned attack north of the river – information
was of course flowing across the Danube in both direc-
tions through merchants, spies, and fugitives. Destroy-
delay of such actions at least. The Romans also crossed
the Danube a few times into what is now the Romanian
Plain, defeating local rulers and moving tens of thou-
sands of barbarians south of the river, in order to increase
the number of taxpayers in the Republic and then the
Empire, and also to weaken the northern rulers. Perhaps
some raids were undertaken in order to liberate some of
the people who had been taken. Political crises between
the Dacians and Romans, perhaps when negotiating new
stipendia (payments, usually to ensure a quiet border),
also led to such actions from time to time.
The Dacian kingship might not have been based on
a hereditary system, but on prowess in battle in a system
of ‘military democracy’ where the most skilled high com-
mander would take the crown, especially if the king in of-
fice was old or deemed unworthy. We don’t have details
on how the Dacian leadership worked, but we know that,
after the raid in AD 85/86 south of the Danube, the old king
Duras granted the throne and the Dacian defences against
Domitian’s troops to the commander of the raid, Diurpa-
neus, better known as Decebalus (perhaps a nickname, "the
Valiant", or title). Based on this, it is obvious that raids were
needed in order for new leaders to emerge and prove them-
selves. Victory, as always, meant power and the right to rule.
Great raids and equipment
We do not have much information on the subject, but we
know from ancient sources that the king of Pontus, Mith-
ridates VI Eupator (135–63 BC), negotiated an alliance
with the Getae when attempting to outflank the Romans
through the Balkans. Perhaps the idea was that the Getic
cavalry was supposed to raid Roman territory and disrupt
the Roman army’s supply lines, provide a vanguard for
the Pontic armies, or at least relieve Roman pressure from
Asia Minor. This was a strategy that never became reality.
Burebista was one of the most famous Getic kings.
Between 60 and 48 BC he managed to impose his pow-
er on a large territory, stretching from today’s Slovakia

Ancient Warfare XVI-1

47
 to the Black Sea, where he conquered or accepted the
surrender of several Greek cities. Strabo writes about
him as the king who subdued the majority of neighbour-
ing populations and became feared by the Romans, be-
cause he would cross the Danube and raid the provinc-
es of Thracia, Macedonia, and Illyria. He also attacked
the Celtic tribes of the Boii and Taurisci, whom he com-
pletely routed. Judging by the size of Burebista’s terri-
tory, his state was, for a short while, the second most
powerful European military power after Rome.
Boerebistas a Getan, on setting himself in authority
over the tribe, restored the people, who had been re-
duced to an evil plight by numerous wars, and raised
them to such a height through training, sobriety, and
obedience to his commands that within only a few
years he had established a great empire and subordi-
nated to the Getae most of the neighboring peoples.
And he began to be formidable even to the Romans,
because he would cross the Ister with impunity and
plunder Thrace as far as Macedonia and the Illyrian
country; and he not only laid waste the country of the
Celti who were intermingled with the Thracians and
the Illyrians, but actually caused the complete disap-
pearance of the Boii who were under the rule of Cri-
tasirus, and also of the Taurisci.
Strabo, Geography, 7.3.11
It is hard to estimate the number of warriors in the ar-
mies of these barbarians, as no demographic information
is possible. They also varied over time, but their armies
were likely mostly made up of cavalry. Funerary con-
texts have revealed that Getic and Dacian cavalry was
very well armed. They used spears, lances, bows and ar-
rows, knives, and axes, and had spurs. They wore helmets
made from leather and metal, and chainmail and scale
armour, and perhaps also leather armour.
It is rather obvious that the Dacians used the same
type of tactics as the Getae when attacking and with-
drawing from the enemy. We can just imagine these men
crossing a river through a ford by tying their horses to-
gether with rope or horsetails in a long line. In winter, the
cavalry would try its luck over the ice. Pack horses would
follow with tents and other equipment.
Once in enemy territory, scouting parties would lo-
cate the enemy settlements or troops and the cavalry
would deploy, perhaps in several units, some in front,
forming a centre, others on the flanks, and some hiding in
ambush. The centre – heavy cavalry – would attack with
their lances tilted, while from the back and the flanks light
cavalry would unleash a hail of arrows on the confused
enemy. Hand-to-hand fighting usually occurred, and here
personal skill and force mattered, but also cohesion of the
Ancient Warfare XVI-1
48
formation and acting with discipline and determination.
The conquering of walled towns or fortifications, we think,
would have been done with the help of spies inside or by a
short but fruitful attempt to ram a gate. Once inside, it was
a massacre – the warriors would kill, enslave, and plunder
everything. Carts were piled high with loot and headed for
home, followed by the captives, while the cavalry protect-
ed the convoy on all sides. If attacked, the cavalry would
try to disperse the enemy or draw it off, so the convoy
could reach the banks of the Danube and attempt a cross-
ing. Luck played a major role here, and victory or defeat
was often in the hands of the gods.
Thucydides, writing at the end of the fifth centu-
ry BC, recorded that the Getae were neighbours of the
Scythians and fought just as they did, as mounted arch-
ers and with the same weapons. During Augustus’ time,
we know the Getic king Cotiso led raids into Roman
territory, although no details of the raids have survived.
Ovid, the famous Roman poet exiled at Tomis (modern
Constanța, Romania) during Augustus’ reign, in his vers-
es described his living conditions and also the appear-
ance, tactics, and behaviour of the Getae.
For the most part, glorious Rome, these people
neither care about you, nor fear the weapons
of Italian soldiers. Bows and full quivers supply
them with courage, and their horses, capable of
long journeys, and knowing how to endure days
of hunger and thirst, and that the pursuing enemy
will have no access to water.
Ovid, Letters from the Black Sea, I.II: To Paulus
Fabius Maximus 81-87
He wrote that their main occupation was plunder and
they were very proud of it. When the rivers froze, the
barbarians filled the plains and attacked, shooting their
poisoned arrows over the walls of Tomis onto the roofs
and into the streets, taking any captives as slaves. They
were very fast and used hit-and-run tactics, so that no-
body could catch them. Their equipment was similar to
that of the Sarmatians who raided with them.
Perhaps the best-known Dacian raid, with immedi-
ate and long-lasting consequences, was the great Dacian
attack south of the Danube in the winter of AD 85/86,
led by Decebalus, who became king of the Dacians and,
in AD 89, a client of Rome. Many ancient writers – Dio
Chrysostom, Suetonius, Tacitus, Cassius Dio, Eutropius,
Jordanes – have left details of this raid, so we have a good
idea of the development of the action.
The cause of this raid, according to Jordanes, was that
the Dacians feared the avarice of Emperor Domitian, and
so, breaking the treaties they had concluded with former
emperors, they crossed the Danube into Roman territory.
The governor of Moesia, Caius Oppius Sabinus, was de-
capitated, and other Roman generals met their deaths with
many of their soldiers. The banks of the Danube were laid
waste as fortifications and settlements were conquered, de-
stroyed, burnt, and pillaged. The loot must have been enor-
mous. It is obvious that the attack came by surprise and
the Romans did not have the time to react. Perhaps some
of the slain officers, including the governor, were captured
and executed – could it be they withheld certain amounts
of money from the Dacians? Did they die in battle or when
negotiations went wrong? We may never know. The prov-
ince was in total chaos, so the emperor himself rushed
to the area with troops. Domitian was no warrior, but his
commanders managed, eventually, to push the Dacians
back over the river (see also AW XV.5). The best way to do
this, as in later periods and in similar cases, was to catch
the raiding parties when they were returning to the Dan-
ube, laden with loot, carts, and rows of chained captives.
The Romans probably sent small raids over the Danube for
the next two years, until finally the ill-fated Legio V Alaudae
was sent into Dacia, only for it to be completely routed.
At the beginning of Trajan’s campaign against Dece-
balus in AD 101, there is information that the Dacian cav-
alry attacked the first troops that crossed the river but had
to retreat. Dacian cavalry appears several times on Trajan’s
Column, valiantly fighting against the Romans. The best-
known raid of this war was the one that occurred in the
winter of 101/102, when the Dacian cavalry tried to cross
the frozen Danube and lay waste to imperial territory. As
the sources mention, and Trajan’s Column vividly repre-
sents, the ice broke under the weight of the moving army
and many warriors met their death – the Column actually
shows a Dacian warrior covering his face in dismay while
watching this terrible episode unfold. It seems that the
number of cavalrymen that managed to cross the river was
significant, and their attacks against the depleted garrisons
on the southern bank were so successful that Trajan had
to abandon the attack in Dacia and pursue them, perhaps
also aided by the fleet. We have no idea where the cross-
ing point was, but it might have been through the Roma-
nian Plain to the south, and not directly to the east. The
main Roman castra were there and Trajan also founded
Nicopolis ad Istrum in the area after the war. The town
does not lie on the river but in the interior of the province,
suggesting the attack itself might have reached deep into
Roman territory before being forced to turn east and meet
its gory end in what is now Dobrudja, perhaps at Adam-
clisi, where the Romans won a bloody victory against the
Dacians and their allies, who were also accompanied by
their wives and children. This is the only raid we know of
in Trajan’s war, and cavalry operations are still shown on
the Column, so the Dacians must have used this tactic un-
til the end of their kingdom in 106.
Impact
As shown above, the impact of these raids on the enemy
could be severe. Tribes were routed, fortifications destroyed,
troops crushed, people murdered and taken into slavery,
and an immense amount of loot was captured. For the tribes
routed by the Getae, the solution was to move farther from
them and try to start life all over again. The Greek cities on
the Black Sea fought or paid ransom, while their agricultural
hinterland was depleted of farmers and destroyed. The situ-
ation remained insecure, however. As the Dacians attacked
the Roman Republic and then the Empire, the Romans
had to reinforce those areas and move troops from other
parts or recruit new legions. On a political level, these raids
showed that the Romans had problems in protecting their
own citizens and needed to appoint better commanders.
It was also a matter of politics towards the Dacians, which
usually meant paying large subsidies to try to ensure bet-
ter relations. Again, this situation was insecure, as nobody
knew when another leader could mount another campaign.
There was the question of rebuilding destroyed farms, villas,
villages, fortifications, and towns, supplying the population
with food, and trying to restore the economy. Also, captives
had to be ransomed from the Dacians, especially those from
rich and important families. This money only ensured that
the Dacians could strengthen their defences, hire special-
ists, buy and make weapons, and also bribe neighbouring
nations or even send lavish gifts to distant rulers, such as in
the case of Decebalus – his emissaries to the Parthian king
around the time of Trajan’s Wars must have carried rich in-
centives to try to make him attack the Romans in Asia.
For their own population, the raids of the Getae and Da-
cians meant a steady and rich source of income. First, there
was the possibility of gaining new lands as defeated tribes
moved away from the Dacians, providing a new source of
food and other resources. From the military point of view,
large areas became almost empty and could not represent
an immediate threat anymore. New alliances could be made
from a stronger position. Also, the warriors that had taken
part in these raids gained a lot of experience and returned
home with loot, including weapons, herds, gold, and slaves.
Successful raids boosted the military and political power of
their leaders, who, by bringing victory and spoils, gained
even more legitimacy in the eyes of their people but also
rose as famed warlords feared by their neighbours.
Only the final defeat of the Dacians in 106 under Tra-
jan ensured that these raids south of the Danube stopped,
at least for a while. The barbarians left around the newly
established province were not that menacing and could
be bribed, until other raiders took their place. 0
Andrei Pogăciașis studied History and International Rela-
tions. He works as a military historian and translator.
Ancient Warfare XVI-1
49
GRAVE MATTERS
Detail of a scene on Trajan's Column showing the emperor leading the army across a pontoon bridge with various standards at the front.
THE TOMBSTONE OF LUCIUS DUCCIUS RUFINUS
holng mi tary
Roman soldiers used the inscriptions on their tombstones
to tell a story about their lives, and – if they could afford
it – might also portray themselves on the stone as
a supplement to their epitaph. This example from
York (Britain) commemorates a legionary stand-
ard-bearer, who is depicted in a full-length
portrait with much of his military insignia.
he tombstone was discovered in
T
1688 in the grounds of Holy Trinity
Church in the centre of York, from
where it was uncovered during the
course of building works. It had
been broken in two, and it was nearly lost forever
when workers planned to reuse the stone, but for-
tunately, its value was recognized.
The tombstone was dedicated to a legion-
ary named Lucius Duccius Rufinus, who had died
Limestone tombstone, ca. AD 71-120, found in 1688. It
reads "Luciius Duccius Rufinus, son of Lucius, of the Vol-
tinian tribe, from Vienne, a standard bearer of the Ninth
Legion, 28 years old. He is laid here".
© The York Museums Trust
Ancient Warfare XVI-1
50
By Jo Ball
andards
at the age of 28 after an unspecified number
of years in the Roman army. He was originally
from Vienna (modern Vienne, France), where
he likely enlisted in the military at some point
in his late teens or early twenties. At the time
of his death, he was a standard-bearer (signi-
fer) in the Legio IX Hispana (styled ‘VIIII’ in the
inscription). The legion had moved to the for-
tress at York (Eboracum) around AD 71 and re-
mained there for several decades, leaving no
later than the 120s AD. Rufinus therefore must
have died at some point in the later first cen-
tury or early second century AD. Although no
cause of death is given, the fact that he had a
formal burial makes it unlikely that he died in
battle with enemy warriors.
Signifer insignia
As a standard-bearer, Rufinus was responsible
for carrying the standard (signum) of his as-
signed century, including in battle. Standard-
bearers had to rely on the soldiers around them
for their survival, being a target of the enemy
and having little ability to defend themselves.
© Benjamín Núñez González / Wikimedia Commons

Losing the standard was a great source of
shame for a Roman unit; the standard-bearer
had the ultimate responsibility for preserving
the security of the standards and was expected
to give his life if necessary to preserve them.
Outside battle, the standard-bearer was also
responsible for the financial administration of
his legion, including managing the savings ac-
counts of legionaries in the unit and distribut-
ing pay. This was an important responsibility
and necessitated that standard-bearers have a
3HKUDQਡOG@KDQ@ਡONRRH level of competence
AKXਡCDOHBSHMFਡ4HADQHTR ਡ in both administra-
x
Presumably, Rufinus would have
been contented with the character por-
trait his tombstone would evoke. The
inscription does not record who com-
missioned the stone, suggesting that it
may have been organized by a military
burial club that Rufinus had paid into,
to ensure that he received a proper fu-
neral and tombstone. He consequently
received a burial and a monument that
highlighted his rank and role in the Ro-
man army. The tombstone, however,
may not have been made specifically

NMBDਡLNTMSDCਡNMਡSGDਡ tion and accountan-
RG@ESਡNEਡ@ਡRS@MC@QC ਡ
@MCਡC@SDCਡSNਡਡ cy. Unsurprisingly, a
!$ਡਡ ਡਡ standard-bearer was
© +@QV@MR@Q@Xਡ"6
paid double the rate
of an ordinary legionary soldier,
as one of the duplicarii, ‘dou-
ble-pay men’. It was certainly a
rank to be proud of holding.
The tombstone bears a full-
length portrait of Rufinus, depict-
ed alongside symbols of his military
rank. In his right hand, he holds a ma-
niple standard, decorated with five phaler-
ae medallions, topped with a hand – one of the
more common standards used by the Roman
army. In his left hand, Rufinus carries a small
box, almost certainly intended to represent a
box of writing-tablets, probably the codex ansa-
tus or volume of records, likely in reference to
his role managing the finances of the Legio IX.
In the portrait Rufinus does not have any other
military equipment, and he is shown wearing a
tunic and pointed cloak rather than armour.
for him but chosen from a pre-made se-
lection and then personalised with an
inscription and perhaps some now-lost
painted details. This was not an unusual
phenomenon in Roman funerary practice,
and it was likely much cheaper than getting a
fully personalised stone.
It is not even clear whether the now-lost
face of the figure in the tombstone would have
looked like Rufinus, although a superficial re-
semblance at least could be achieved through
the colouration of hair, eyes, and skin. Nev-
ertheless, the selection of this tombstone in
particular indicates the way that Rufinus was
remembered by his fellow soldiers and buri-
al club, emphasizing his status as a legionary
standard-bearer. It can only be hoped that Rufi-
nus would have approved of their choice. 0
Jo Ball is a regular contributor to Ancient
Warfare magazine.
This tombstone for a Roman infantry-
man was apparently left un-inscribed,
suggesting studios created them,
ready to be bought and used for a de-
ceased soldier. Of course, we should
note the text may have been painted
on as well. Now in the Rheinisches
Landesmuseum, Bonn, Germany.
© Karwansaray BV
Dating to ca. AD 300, this fresco of
a military standard can be found
painted on the wall of the luxuri-
ous Villa Romana del Casale, Piazza
Armerina, Sicily. Military standards
had not altered a great deal since
the second century.
© Becc Repper / Flickr

Representing the dead

Rufinus’ tombstone would have stood along
the road leading to the legionary fortress at
York, and it would originally have been brightly
painted. It was on view to those who passed
by, including other soldiers stationed at or visit-
ing the fortress, retired veterans, and members
of the civilian community. Rufinus would have
been remembered through the words and im-
ages that appeared on his tombstone, which
recorded his origins and military service, em-
phasized by the portrait, which highlighted the
two main tools of his trade. A full-length por-
trait stone was a relatively ornate and expensive
form of funerary monument, perhaps reflecting
the higher rate of pay he received.

0@QSH@KKXਡOQDRDQUDCਡ
M@LDOK@SDਡENQਡSGDਡ
x

RS@MC@QCਡNEਡ#NGNQRਡ6))ਡ
2@DSNQTL ਡMNVਡHMਡSGDਡ
2GDHMRHRBGDRਡ,@MCDRLT
RDTL ਡ"NMM ਡ'DQL@MX Ancient Warfare XVI-1
© +@QV@MR@Q@Xਡ"6 51
ROMAN ARMY IN DETAIL
A relief on the Mausoleum of Glanum shows Roman cavalry in combat. The monument was perhaps built for a member of the Julii, ca. 30-20 BC.
OFFICERS OF THE ROMAN CAVALRY
e decion’s depues
The Roman army included, at one time or another, 70 or
80 cavalry units, each with its own staff of officers and
promoted men. Many of these individuals are known
from their tombstones, but the hierarchy that governed
their day-to-day life isn’t often discussed. So what exact-
ly do we know about the officers of the Roman cavalry?
ur knowledge of the
O
different ranks and
functions in the Ro-
man imperial army
derives, in large part,
from Alfred von Domaszewski’s study
of the Rangordnung (‘hierarchy’).
When he came to study the alae, or
cavalry squadrons, he noted that the
A copper-alloy cavalry mask dated to AD 80-
125, found in Leiden, the Netherlands. An en-
tire unit of cavalrymen wearing polished masks,
glittering in the sun must have been an impres-
sive sight indeed, as undoubtedly intended.
© Karwansaray BV
Ancient Warfare XVI-1
52
By Duncan B. Campbell
hierarchy of command was similar to that of
the equites singulares Augusti (see AW XIII.3).
In fact, the only difference, as far as he could
see, was that musicians, present in the em-
peror’s horse guard, were unknown in the
regular cavalry units – an odd state of affairs,
given that the horse guard was modelled on
the auxiliary alae. But, in fact, this was just an-
other reminder of the vagaries of the archaeo-
logical record, for we now know of several
cavalry musicians (and see also AW XIV.1).
Cavalry command
Domaszewski’s doctoral thesis in 1881 had
been a study of Hyginus’ Book about the For-
tifications of a Camp, so he was well aware
of the command structure of the ala, since
Hyginus (ch. 16) tells us:
A milliary cavalry squadron consists of
24 troops, in which there are decurions,
double-pay men, and pay-and-a-half men,
in the same number as there are troops.
(…) A quingenary cavalry squadron has
© thomas.kopf / Flickr

sixteen troops, with decurions and others The principales

in proportion to the number of troops.
Domaszewski analyzed every career inscrip-
tion known to him, searching for clues that
would help to explain the official hierarchy of
the army. One such clue was the fact that the
decurio (‘decurion’), the man in charge of a tur-
ma (‘troop’ numbering some 30-odd cavalry-
men), could be seconded to temporarily com-
mand an entire infantry cohort. Technically, this
ability placed him on a par with legionary cen-
turions, who are often found seconded to such
duties. For example, the cohors Sardorum had
required the services of such an interim com-
mander, not once but twice in the early years
of the third century: first
,D@E RG@ODCਡAK@CDਡ
ENQਡ@ਡSGHM RG@ESDCਡ Julius Germanus, a decu-
x
Like centurions, decurions had normally
held an intermediate post as a stepping-
stone, proving their ability to wield author-
ity, and although a man might become a
decurion without holding one of these
posts, it could take some time. A papyrus
listing five new decurions who had joined
an unnamed squadron in AD 242 (P. Mich.
III, 164) shows that one, Aufidius Victori-
nus, had enlisted in AD 217 as a legion-
ary and had been factus decurio ex equite
legionis (“appointed as decurion from the
rank of legionary cavalryman”). He would
have been around 40 years of age, with 25
years of service under his belt. By contrast,
two others, Didymus Petosiris and Antoni-

K@MBDਡNQਡI@UDKHMਡRTBGਡ us Ammonianus, had been factus decurio

@RਡSGNRDਡTRDCਡAXਡ2N rion of the ala II Thracum
L@MਡB@U@KQX (CIL VIII, 21721), and then
© 9NQJਡ-TRDTLRਡ4QTRS
Aurelius Exoratus, a de-
curion of the ala Parthorum (CIL VIII, 21720).
They were all three stationed in Mauretania
Caesariensis, so the temporary commanders
did not have far to travel.
Domaszewski thought it particularly in-
teresting that, on 16 March AD 65, a cavalry
decurion (one Lucius Quintius Viator) accom-
panied a primus pilus (the chief centurion of a
legion) and another legionary centurion on a
ex sesquiplicario (“appointed as decurion
from the rank of pay-and-a-half man”);
one enlisted in AD 221, the other in 234,
so both had made considerably more rapid
progress by serving as a cavalry principalis.
The well-known career of Tiberius A painted replica of the tombstone
of Flavinus, a 25-year-old Roman
Claudius Maximus (AE 1969/70, 583), the
cavalry standard bearer (signifer tur-
captor of Decebalus in Trajan’s Second Dacian mae) who served in the Ala Petriana
War, shows the same kind of progression. From for seven years. The original is at
having been a legionary cavalryman, Maximus Hexham Abbey, Northumberland.
was first “appointed as double-pay man in the © M.C.Bishop / Flickr

visit to the famous Memnon colossus at Egyp-
tian Thebes (Luxor), where tourists (including
the emperor Hadrian) carved their names
into the stone. Audimus Memnonem (“we
heard Memnon”), they wrote (CIL III, 30),
alluding to the eerie sound caused when
the sandstone gradually expanded in the
ala II Pannoniorum by the deified Trajan”, and
subsequently “appointed as decurion by him
in the same ala”. He claims that the reason for
his promotion was “because he had captured
Decebalus and had brought his head to him
[Trajan] at Ranisstorum” in AD 106, but we
may think it was perhaps overdue for a thrice-
Graffiti visible on one of the Colossi
of Memnon (the mortuary temple of
pharaoh Amenhotep III). These two
statues were considered tourist attrac-
tions in the Roman Imperial period.
Some of surviving inscriptions were
left by cavalrymen stationed nearby.
© Carole Raddato / Flickr

warmth of the morning air. Clearly, a caval-

ry decurion was socially quite at ease rubbing
shoulders with legionary centurions.
In fact, it seems that the next logical step
for a cavalry decurion was to be promoted to
legionary centurion (which, of course, then
opened the door to many other opportuni-
ties). A certain Marcus Annius Martialis had
become a decurion in the ala Pannoniorum
from humble beginnings as a legionary, by
way of the intermediate rank of duplicarius
(‘double-pay man’) in the same squadron
(CIL VIII, 2354). He went on to hold two le-
gionary centurionates in succession and was
honourably discharged by the emperor Tra-
jan after the Parthian War.

#NOODQਡ@KKNXਡ2NL@MਡG@Q
MDRRਡLNTMSਡ)SਡHRਡO@QSਡ
x

NEਡSGDਡ&QDLHMFSNMਡ(@FFਡ
#@U@KQXਡ(N@QC ਡVGHBGਡBNM
S@HMDCਡ@ਡVHCDਡU@QHDSXਡNEਡ
2NL@MਡGNQRDਡEHSSHMFR Ancient Warfare XVI-1
© 9NQJਡ-TRDTLRਡ4QTRS 53
 Reenactors of a Hadrianic period
Roman cavalry turma, with Roman
equipment and horse fittings, and
including several officers, wait to
display their skills at Bitts Park,
Carlisle, UK, in 2017.
© M.C.Bishop / Flickr
Fragment of the four-metre-long pa-
pyrus roll from Fayum covering the
career of the veteran Lucius Iulius
Serenus (P. Hamb. graec. 184.H).
Within the record are preserved
receipts for hay that were purchased
for horses belonging to the Ala vet-
erana Gallica in Alexandria.
© Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek
Hamburg
decorated soldier (once by Domitian and
twice by Trajan himself). As it seems probable
that Maximus had enlisted in around AD 80,
we may suggest that he achieved the rank of
decurion at around 40 years of age.
It seems that the duplicarius was the sec-
ond-in-command of the troop, mirroring the
role of the optio in the legions and cohorts,
with a sesquiplicarius as his deputy. With only
a decurion’s post to aspire to, many of these
principales must have retired without achiev-
ing promotion. The tombstone of the sesqui-
plicarius Longinus Muleruna states that “he
served for 21 years in the troop of Peticus”
(CIL VIII, 21029) and died aged 40, just at the
stage of life when men like Victorinus and
Maximus finally became decurions. Another
“pay-and-a-half man”, Fuscus, son of Lucius,
was honourably discharged from the ala I Fla-
via Britannica on 9 October AD 148 (CIL XVI,
180), having served out his 25 years.
Other ranks
Domaszewski listed fifteen distinct functions
within the ala, though several were clerical
posts on the decurion’s staff. Three of them
came from the tombstone of Gaius Julius Dex-
ter (CIL VIII, 2094), a veteran cavalryman who
was honourably discharged after 26 years and
who died aged 85, having sat on the
π DID YOU KNOW?
The inscription on a silver ring found at Xanten
in the nineteenth century states that the veteran
Flavius Simplex, formerly a duplicarius in the ala
Afrorum veterana, gave it as a gift to the other
duplicarii and sesquiplicarii of the unit (CIL XIII,
10024.34). This is presumably the sole surviving
example from a set of several dozen rings.
town council of his native Thelepte (Tunisia).
Dexter had served as curator turmae, armorum
custos, and signifer turmae. The last of these
posts, ‘standard-bearer of a cavalry troop’, is
vividly depicted on a figural tombstone found
at Hexham (England) (RIB 1172). (For the post
of armorum custos, see AW XV.2.)
Dexter had also served as curator (‘su-
pervisor’), a post that Domaszewski linked
with the stables without fully explaining his
reasoning. Interestingly, at Vindolanda,
the fort of a part-mounted cohors equi-
tata, the daily reports (e.g. Tab. Vindol.
127) carried the formula “the optiones
and curatores have reported”, suggest-
ing that the curator was the cavalry
equivalent of the infantry optio and
thus second-in-command of the turma.
Domaszewski was perhaps familiar
with a huge roll of papyrus, some four
metres long, that had been discovered in
the Fayum and published in 1911, under the
title “Official receipt of hay money for the ala
veterana Gallica” (P. Hamb. 39). The papyrus
comprised dozens of receipts, each of which
was addressed to an officer called the summus
curator, or ‘head supervisor’, of the cavalry
squadron, and the complete set covered the first
three months of AD 179. All of the cavalrymen
signed their own receipt for the sum of 25 de-
narii; occasionally, a man required the troop’s
signifer to write on his behalf, in one case “on
account of Heliodorus writing so slowly”, and
in several others because the cavalrymen in
question “claimed not to know how to write”,
whereas the signifer’s job required him to be lit-
erate. Unfortunately, each man identified him-
self simply as a “cavalryman of the ala Gallica
in the troop of Julius Nepotianus” (or one
of the other fifteen decurions), rather
than divulging a rank or function.
We cannot be sure of the pre-
cise relationship between Hygi-
nus’ duplicarii and sesquiplicarii
and the range of functions car-
ried out, for example, by Julius
Dexter. Was the curator always
the duplicarius? And if so,
wasn’t the signifer, who also
appears to have drawn double
pay, entitled to the same des-
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ignation? Some light is shed on the prob-
lem by the Dura-Europos duty roster of
AD 219, which lists the complete per-
sonnel of the cohors XX Palmyrenorum
equitata (P. Dura 100). It shows that the
decurions Zebidas and Octavius were
each assisted by a duplicarius and a ses-
quiplicarius, just as Hyginus says, but the
decurion Tiberini, for some reason, had
two duplicarii and a sesquiplicarius. Fur-
thermore, Zebidas’ troop logged a total of
five “double-pay men”, one of whom was
the signifer, while Octavius’ troop logged
six. (Tiberini’s total has been lost.) So, it
seems that certain men could be desig-
nated as the decurion’s deputies, regard-
less of their day-to-day function, though, as
with so many features of the Roman army, The tombstone of Tiberius Claudius
the details remain elusive. 0 Saturninus (duplicarius, and vetera-
nus alae Astur(um) from the first
century AD – (AE 1988, 998).
Dr. Duncan B. Campbell is a regular contribu-
© Sailko / Wikimedia Commons
tor to Ancient Warfare magazine.
FURTHER READING
• Welles, C.B., R.O. Fink, and J.F.
Gilliam. The Excavations at Dura-
Europos: Final Report V, Part 1:
The Parchments and Papyri. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1959.
Ancient Warfare XVI-1
55
REVIEWS
Deploying a Roman Army -
the Ektaxis kat’ Alanon of Arrian
By Duncan B Campbell
ISBN: 979-8803868620
Quirinus Editions (2022) – £15.99
Available from Amazon only
The Array Against the Alans has been
dealt with in these pages before (see
AW 13.4). It is one of the most im-
portant written sources for the de-
ployment of a Roman army in the
second century AD. Previously, all
we had to study it are editions (nearly
a century old), a translation or two,
and a few academic articles. Here,
for the first time, we have a full intro-
duction, new text, translation and in-
depth commentary in print. It is very
welcome and will be sought out and
referred to by all students, and not a
few scholars, of imperial Roman mil-
itary history. Following on from his
excellent similar work on Hyginus’
Liber de munitionibus castrorum in
2018, Campbell here places Arrian’s
brief treatise into its multiple contexts
and explores the ramifications of the
text for our understanding of military
history at the time. The parallel text
and translation takes up only twenty
pages, and in addition we get a thirty-
page introduction and one-hundred-
Ancient Warfare XVI-1
56
and-thirty pages of commentary. As
Campbell says in his preface, “it’s the
book I wish I had had in the 1980s”.
Lucius Flavius Arrianus (known
to us as Arrian) wrote the Ektaxis
when he was governor of Cappado-
cia in Hadrian’s reign. He had been
consul (possibly in AD 129). After
that he was appointed as consular
governor of Cappadocia, probably
for six years. Many other details of
Arrian’s life and career are unknown.
Neither his date of birth nor when he
died are known – he may have been
writing his Anabasis Alexandri as late
as the 160s, in the reign of Marcus
Aurelius and Lucius Verus.
Today, it is his history of Alex-
ander for which he is most famous.
Not so in antiquity; he was famed as a
philosopher and military command-
er. The text of the Array survives in a
single manuscript, is fragmentary and
we are missing the beginning and end
of the treatise (the latter due to a miss-
ing manuscript page – it still existed
when copied in the tenth century).
What we have, however, tells us of an
order of march (1-10), an order of de-
ployment (11-24) and tactics (25-31)
to be used by Arrian’s forces against
an invading enemy: the Alans. They
were a Sarmatian people, consisting
mostly of cavalry (they would later be
associated with both the Gothic inva-
sion of 376 and the Vandal invasion
– the North African kingdom estab-
lished in the fifth century was of the
Vandals and Alans). Their invasion of
Cappadocia probably took place in
AD 135, although Campbell rightful-
ly points out that the confidence with
which this date is often named is mis-
leading. The treatise gives us no con-
text, although dating the invasion to
any time other than the 130s is tricky
(see, however, Cassius Dio 69.15.1).
What the text is or was is de-
bated – it could be a report or an
instruction manual or a literary cu-
riosity. We do not know who it was
addressed to. In the text, Arrian re-
fers to himself as Xenophon (Photius
records that Arrian was known as
the “new Xenophon”) and describes
the deployment of the units of a
quite significant Roman force, but
in peculiarly Greek terms (thus the
legion is referred to as ‘the phalanx’
throughout). There are parallels with
Xenophon’s Cyropaedia describing
the army of Cyrus the Great and this
may have been one of Arrian’s aims.
Arrian gives us remarkable detail
of the forces at his disposal, scouts,
various cohortes (both infantry and
part-mounted), alae of auxiliary cav-
alry and cavalry contingents from
other auxiliary cohorts, his guard cav-
alry (the equites singulares, legion-
ary cavalry, artillery, lanciarii (called
akontistai, “javelin-men”), and the
men of legio XV Apollinaris and le-
gio XII Fulminata. We get how they
marched and how they deployed for
battle – this has been argued to be a
non-standard deployment (where the
auxiliaries took station behind the le-
gions) but I think it might have been
more common, especially against
mounted enemies (such as those uti-
lised during Marcus Aurelius’ wars
against other Sarmatian enemies).
Campbell provides everything the
historian (or scholar) could want on
this important text. The commentary
is thorough and meticulous. He also
compiles and synergises all impor-
tant previous opinion, discussing the
previous translations of single words
on occasion. There are probably are-
as where he could have delved more
deeply, but I say that in a desire to see
his scholarship applied to those areas
rather than them being strictly neces-
sary to the task at hand. For instance,
I would have liked more discussion of
the akontistai. Despite there being a
lacuna at this point in the manuscript,
just who the lanciarii were and their
role around the legionary standards
could have kept going although two-
and-a-half pages on that single word
is, perhaps enough for most! Add this
book to your collection today!
– Murray Dahm

Roman Warriors:
The Paintings of Graham Sumner
By Graham Sumner,
text by Simon Elliott
ISBN: 978-1784387198
Greenhill Books (2022) – £40.00
www.greenhillbooks.com
Many of us have seen Graham Sum-
ner’s paintings before, in the pages
of this magazine and Ancient His-
tory, and in his titles on Roman mili-
tary clothing and the Imperial navy
for Osprey, and Roman Military
Dress, Roman Army: Wars of the
Empire, and other titles. Well, here
they are, all in one place.
This lavishly produced volume
from Greenhill Books features Sum-
ner’s art (including some never-seen-
before pieces) with a historical text
to accompany each plate by Elliott.
Adrian Goldsworthy, in the Foreword,
points to Sumner’s long experience
with the Ermine Street Guard as a con-
tributing factor to his art - especially
research into fabric and clothing and
the vital contribution Sumner has
made showing Roman soldiers ‘not’
in uniform. Cinema, too, played its
part. The biography section (pp. 1-4)
is a rare ‘behind the brush’ insight into
Sumner’s life and influences as well as
a wide array of art (and even a photo
of the posing of action figures in fab-
ric blanks (that is plain calico) which
form the basis of the poses for an art-
work. Although centred heavily on
Rome (and all of Rome – early to very
late), Sumner has painted other peri-
ods – from the Bronze Age to World
War Two (the full list of his publica-
tions as illustrator is on pp. 210-211).
The core of the book is, howev-
er, Sumner’s Roman illustrations and
they do not disappoint. Reproduced
in large, full-page (and some double-
page spreads) in glorious colour for
over 200 pages, the book is rewarding
simply as a book of art. Most readers
will want it for its history too and there
it does not disappoint either. Archaeo-
logically, historically, and reenactorily
informed (I may have just invented that
last category), these are reconstruc-
tions as close to ‘how it was’ as we
can get and something all artists of his-
torical reconstructions strive towards.
Sumner’s personal favourite illustration
of his own opens the book (of Castle-
shaw fortlet in Manchester) and there
are other fortifications throughout.
Organising the plates in chrono-
logical order (so Early Republic up to
the beginning of the second century
BC, Later Republic, very-early Empire,
Claudius to Hadrian, Antonine and
Severan Rome, Fall of Rome and Dark
Ages) makes a great deal of sense. We
see the progression of Rome’s military
from its beginnings to its end (and be-
yond). What is more, you could never
get this scope of chronological span
from the art works in their original
context; each looked at only a single
period, narrower span, or type of sol-
dier. Here, however, you almost get
the sense that Sumner’s entire career
illustrating Roman themes culminates,
was building towards, a book like this
where Rome’s warriors are explored
in art from beginning to end. It is an
immensely satisfying experience just
leafing through such a richly illustrat-
ed history of Roman military dress (not
to be confused with Sumner’s book of
the same title!). These are the histori-
cal plates – those who know Graham’s
work from the articles on Romans as
depicted in film (see pp. 198-203) will
have to collect the articles in AW and
AH or wait until next year’s Ancient
Rome on the Silver Screen.
Elliott’s accompanying text is con-
cise and informative often telling the
original context and the relevant his-
torical intricacies of a piece. Some of
these, like the Bridgeness Cavalryman,
the Regensburg Cavalryman, Lepon-
tius or the Early Principate legionaries,
are based on specific archaeological
finds – tombstones and other items
used to inform the reconstructions. I
particularly liked how the leather ar-
mour debate was explored (briefly) in
text and painting especially as it refer-
enced the Airfix HO/00 figures which
were my own first introduction to Ro-
man History circa 1975 (!).
At his best, Sumner’s paintings are
full of character and detail and evoke
the period and personality of the sub-
ject. There are many pieces which fall
into that category here; some are sim-
ply stunning pieces of the artist’s craft.
In fact, all Sumner’s work is full of de-
tail (much of it finely observed – the
whip and facial scarring of the Hun
bucellarius (pp. 172-173) perfectly
matches our evidence). As with any
artist, not all pieces will be reader’s
favourites, but these pieces tell us so
much – they bring many cold stones or
items usually on display in museums
to life in a way only the best art can.
There is much to enjoy and sa-
vour here – for the Roman military
historian, the lover of art, for budding
illustrators (the hows of Sumner’s ca-
reer, the wide array of types of paint-
ing (static to action filled, domestic to
battle, figures to buildings, animals,
equipment, even the evolution of an
artistic style). This volume stands as
a testament to Sumner’s career of re-
searching and informing (and enter-
taining) readers and viewers. Put it on
your coffee table and convert some-
one to a historian (or artist) today!
– Murray Dahm
Ancient Warfare XVI-1
57
FURTHER READING
AnCIENt WaRFaRE readings

ANCIENT PIRATES AND RAIDERS Want to learn more about the groups that made their living attacking
by sea during antiquity? Here are some books and articles to check out.

PIRACY IN THE GRAECO-ROMAN WORLD PIRACY IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

By Philip de Souza By Henry A. A. Ormerod
Cambridge University Press, 1999 Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996
ISBN: 978-0521012409 ISBN: 978-0801855054

The meticulous scholarship makes this the go-to volume on an-
cient piracy; A historical study examining its origins and growth,
impact on trade, and the relationship between warfare and piracy.
It evaluates attempts to suppress piracy by the states and rulers
of the ancient world and discusses the way pirates are portrayed.
Omerod's classic study brings the treachery of the ancient high
seas alive. Drawing on the works of Homer and Thucydides and
the historical records, Ormerod reconstructs the dangers of coastal
living and seafaring and the attempts to protect against the threat
of invasion from the seas until the formation of the Roman Empire.

SHIPS AND SEAMANSHIP IN MERCHANTS, SAILORS AND PIRATES

THE ANCIENT WORLD IN THE ROMAN WORLD
By Lionel Casson By Nicholas K. Rauh
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995 Tempus, 2003
ISBN: 978-0801851308 ISBN: 978-0752425429

Originally published in 1971, this encyclopaedic study was the
first to use underwater archaeological data to refine an area of
scholarship that had, up to that point, relied on ancient texts and
graphic representations. Casson describes the ships, crews, weap-
onry, cargo stowage, navigation, harbor facilities, and ship names.
Rauh combines trade, maritime travel, Roman expansion and pira-
cy into one concise study. Exploring the origins, possible alliances,
and history of the pirates who sailed the coast of the ancient Medi-
terranean, the most important trading centres, pirates’ coves and
strongholds, and Roman forts that were built to counteract them.

Other articles and publications

• Ager, S. ‘Thera and the Pirates: An Ancient Case of the Stockholm
Syndrome?’ Ancient History Bulletin 12, 1998, pp. 83-95.
• Beresford, J. The Ancient Sailing Season. Leiden: Brill, 2013.
• de Souza, P. ‘Who are you calling pirates?” in: M. Hoff and R.
Townsend (eds.) Rough Cilicia. New Historical and Archaeologi-
cal Approaches. Oxbow Books: Oxford, 2011, 43-54.
• Gabrielsen, V.. ‘Piracy and the Slave Trade’ in: Erskine, A. (ed.) A
Companion to the Hellenistic World. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003,
p. 389-404.
• Grieb, V.; Todt, S. (eds) Piraterie von der Antike bis zur Gegen-
wart. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2012.
• Höckmann, O. ‘The Liburnian: Some Observations and Insights’,
International Jnl of Nautical Archaeology 26, 1997, pp. 192-216.
• Jackson, A. H. ‘An Oracle for Raiders?’ Zeitschrift für Papyrologie
und Epigraphik 108, 1995, 95-99.
• Lewis, D. M.. Greek Slave Systems in their Eastern Mediterranean
Context, c. 800- 146 BC. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
• Lewis, D. M.. ‘Piracy and slave trading in action in Classical and
Hellenistic Greece’, Mare Nostrum 10.2 (2019), pp. 79–108.
• Luraghi, N. Traders, ‘Pirates, Warriors: The Proto-History of Greek
Mercenary Soldiers in the Eastern Mediterranean’ Phoenix 60,
2006, pp. 21-47.
• Ma, J. ‘Fighting Poleis of the Hellenistic World’ in: van Wees,
H. (ed.) War and Violence in Ancient Greece. London: Classical
Press of Wales, 2000, pp. 337-376.
• Parker, B. ‘The Earliest Known Reference to the ‘Ionians’ in
the Cuneiform Sources’ The Ancient History Bulletin 14,
2000, pp. 69-77.
• Pryor, J. H. ‘Geographical Conditions of Galley Navigation in the
Mediterranean’ in: Gardiner, R. (ed.) The Age of the Galley. Lon-
don: Conway Maritime, 1995, pp. 206-216.
• Scholten, J. The Politics of Plunder: Aitolians and their Koinon
in the Early Hellenistic Era, 279-217 B.C. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2000.
• van Wees, H. Status Warriors: War, Violence and Society in Hom-
er and History. Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 1992.
• Wachsmann, S. Seagoing Ships & Seamanship in the Bronze Age
Levant. London: Texas A&M University Press, 1998.

‘Arrgh!’ – Pirates! Any language, any age. π ON THE COVER

Piracy was a consistent, not to say constant, part of life in the Mediterranean, Black, and North Seas.
From the Bronze age through to the Vandal pirates in the sixth century AD and beyond, we find piracy
as a problem for every civilization. How to deal with pirates or the accounts of their privations are a
consistent factor in our sources over several millennia.
Here we see a ship of ‘typical’ pirates, the Sea People, raiders who plagued the eastern Mediter-
ranean, especially during the 19th Dynasty of Egypt, 1292-1182 BC. The reliefs of Egyptian pharaoh
Rameses II are some of the best depictions we have of them with their striking and distinctive headgear,
bronze-gilt headbands with crests. Clothing seems to have mainly consisted of a kilt. They had their
own distinctive designs of swords and they also used bows and spears. Their ships too were different,
with more robust prows and sterns.

Ancient Warfare XVI-1

58
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