The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World (24 page)

While merchants could sail the open sea-lanes to Egypt or from the
Bosporus to the
Crimea in relative security, piracy was endemic in the island-studded Aegean, in the Adriatic and
Ionian Seas between Italy and Greece, and in the heavily trafficked approaches to the
Dardanelles and the Bosporus. The Black Sea, whose commerce funneled into the Bosporus, comprised an extremely important source of “
necessities” and luxury goods: “the most plentiful supplies and best qualities of cattle and slaves reach us from the countries lying round the
Pontus [northern Asia Minor], while among luxuries the same countries furnish us with abundance of honey, wax and preserved fish, while of the superfluous produce of our countries they take
olive-oil and every kind of wine. As for corn [grain] there is a give-and-take.” The key to this treasure was held by the people of Byzantium, whom the Greek historian
Polybius describes as “of great service to other people” and deserving of “general support when they are exposed to peril from the barbarians.” This praise notwithstanding, in 220
BCE
the Byzantines
imposed a toll on ships passing through the strait—possibly to finance their own antipirate activities—and a coalition of states appealed to Rhodes to help have it rescinded. This the Rhodians did through a deft mixture of diplomacy and, as a last resort, war.

By coincidence, one of the best preserved ancient Mediterranean merchant ships excavated to date was probably the victim of piracy. The fourth-century
BCE
vessel was discovered off Kyrenia in northern
Cyprus. Built mostly of Aleppo
pine with lead sheathing below the waterline, the fourteen-meter-long hull was found with twenty tons of cargo, including some four hundred amphorae, most of Rhodian origin, and ten thousand almonds. Twenty-nine millstones of volcanic stone from an island northwest of Rhodes were carried as ballast. Personal belongings included enough ceramic plates, bowls and cups, and wooden spoons for a crew of four. Finds of lead net-weights suggest that the sailors fished to supplement a diet of olives, pistachios, almonds, hazelnuts, lentils, garlic, herbs, grapes, and figs. Coins depicting Antigonus and Demetrius date the wreck to about 310–300
BCE
, but by then she was an old and often repaired vessel. The evidence that the ship had been attacked by pirates is in the form of eight iron spearheads recovered from the site, some
embedded in the outer surface of the planking. Enough of the hull remained for a full-scale replica of the one-masted ship to be built. In 1986, the
Kyrenia II
made a passage from Piraeus to Cyprus, sailing more than four hundred miles at nearly three knots, and in one twenty-four-hour period she averaged almost twice that. Though adequate for trade, such speeds would have made the Kyrenia ship and others like her easy prey for pirate galleys.

Rhodes’s antipiracy campaigns were complicated by the fact that pirates operated both on their own account and as mercenaries for foreign rulers. At the end of the third century
BCE
, for example, the island of
Crete was a collection of cities joined in a loose commonwealth presided over by Philip V of
Macedonia. So
Cretans engaged in seizing merchantmen may have been in Philip’s pay and therefore not, strictly speaking, pirates. During the
Cretan War of 206–203
BCE
, Rhodians faced pirates from at least half a dozen cities, some of which they managed to neutralize and bring into formal alliances. By this time, legitimate maritime commerce was vital to the well-being of individual city-states and kingdoms. No longer an honorable way to make a living, as Thucydides claims it was in
Homer’s day, piracy was something to which all those with a stake in sea trade paid close attention. Nonetheless, if the testimony of
St. Augustine is to be believed, the question of what differentiated pirates from recognized rulers was already current: “
It was a witty and a truthful rejoinder which was given by a captured pirate to
Alexander the Great. The king asked the fellow, ‘What is your idea, in infesting the sea?’ And the pirate answered with uninhibited insolence. ‘The same as yours, in infesting the world! But because I do this with my tiny craft, I am called a pirate; because you have a mighty navy, you are called an emperor.’ ”

By the time of the Cretan War, the focus of naval activity was shifting to the western Mediterranean, where Rome predominated. The Romans were relative latecomers to maritime concerns, and although Roman authors maintained a
pretentious abhorrence of seafaring, exploitation of the sea played a critical role in the creation and maintenance of the empire in both its republican and its post-Augustan phases, a fact of which its politicians and generals were acutely aware. The Romans were one of a number of tribes that inhabited the plain of Latium south of
Etruria, but Rome was favored thanks to its position near an important crossing on the
Tiber River, its proximity to the sea, its central position on the Italian Peninsula, and its easily defended seven hills. In about 510
BCE
, the Romans overthrew the last of a succession of Etruscan kings to rule them and established a republic. Despite occasional
setbacks, by the end of the fourth century Rome was the leading city of the
Latin League, and by the 280s
BCE
the Romans dominated Etruria, Umbria, and
Campania and were setting their sights farther afield on the Italian Peninsula. Up to this point, however, they had shown no interest in maritime pursuits, a fact reflected in their long-term relationship with Carthage, the dominant sea power of the western Mediterranean.

Despite later propaganda intended to demonstrate an ancient animosity, notably
Virgil’s account of the relationship between
Dido (the Phoenician
Elissa) and
Aeneas, relations between
Rome and Carthage were not always hostile. Although they lived only fifteen kilometers from the mouth of the Tiber, the early Romans all but ignored the sea and could easily afford amicable relations with the Carthaginians, with whom they signed their earliest known treaty in 509/508
BCE
. This agreement stipulated that the
Romans and their allies were not allowed to sail to Carthaginian Africa except to trade, and Carthage was to have hegemony in Sicily and not build forts in Latin Italy. A subsequent treaty of 348
BCE
barred Roman traders from the western Mediterranean (though there is little indication of Roman sea trade and none of naval ships for another half century) and protected coastal cities under Roman control from the Carthaginians.

The preferred Roman defense against raiders from the sea, whether state enemies or pirates, was the establishment of
coloniae maritimae
(maritime colonies)—ten in all, including
Ostia and Antium (Anzio), among others on the
Tyrrhenian Sea, and Sena Gallica (Senigallia), on the Adriatic north of
Ancona. The date of Ostia’s founding is uncertain, but Antium was colonized after its capture in 338
BCE
, when the Romans confiscated some of its warships “
while the rest were burnt, and it was decided to use their prows or beaks to decorate a platform set up in the Forum; this sacred place was named the Rostra, or The Beaks.” (The word “rostrum,” for a speaker’s podium, comes from the fact that orators stood by these monuments to address their audience.) The
coloniae maritimae
were small settlements of three hundred families. For the men, the only specific benefit of being a colonist was exemption from service in the legions. In return, they were expected to destroy the ships of anyone who came ashore with hostile intent and to slow the advance of any armies marching up the coast. While their settlements were described as “maritime,” the colonists did not necessarily have either ships or maritime experience; they served in a capacity roughly analogous to that of the Minutemen of the American Revolution or Britain’s Home Army in World War II. Although officially Roman citizens, their condition was considered “
more dangerous and less free,” they were far removed from the civic life of the capital, and on balance they were probably no better off than those serving in the legions.

Rome’s reliance on
coloniae maritimae
rather than a navy was not entirely
successful. During their siege of
Naples in 327/326
BCE
, the
Romans had no vessels with which to attack the Campanian port, while the Neapolitans ranged freely against Roman coastal settlements. Still, it was not until 311
BCE
that the Romans built a fleet—two squadrons of ten ships stationed at Rome. These saw little action until 282
BCE
, when a squadron was sent “
on a voyage of inspection along the coast of
Magna Graecia,” in violation of a treaty with
Tarentum “by which the Romans had bound themselves not to sail past the promontory” at the southern end of the Gulf of
Taranto. The Tarentines were suspicious of the Romans, who supported their rivals, Naples and Rhodes, and they responded by sinking or capturing five Roman ships. The ensuing war pitted the Roman armies against the sea-based Tarentines, who widened the conflict by soliciting help from Pyrrhus, king of
Epirus, across the Adriatic in northwest Greece. Related by marriage to both
Demetrius the Besieger and
Ptolemy I and author of a book on military tactics,
Pyrrhus was an expansionist in the Alexandrian mold. After several victories over the Romans, he accepted an offer to defend
Syracuse from the Carthaginians. Between 278 and 276
BCE
, he conquered most of Sicily, but his heavy-handed approach to the Greek cities turned many against him. This combined with reverses in southern Italy and domestic political problems forced him to return to Epirus.

One reason for Pyrrhus’s Sicilian campaign had been to forestall an alliance between Rome and Carthage. In 279
BCE
the Carthaginian admiral
Mago had sailed to Ostia with about 120 ships and an offer of a treaty of mutual assistance against Pyrrhus. The war had already stretched the Romans to the limit, while the Carthaginians feared that a Roman peace with Pyrrhus would give him free rein against them in Sicily. The terms of their treaty reflected Rome’s weakness at sea. Whether Carthage provided troops to Rome or vice versa, Carthaginian ships would carry them, and the Carthaginians were bound to provide naval assistance to Rome, although there was no reciprocal requirement. This naval component was especially important given Pyrrhus’s dependence on the sea-lanes between Epirus, Tarentum, and Sicily, and while the most decisive engagements of the
Pyrrhic Wars were fought on land, naval and maritime concerns were at the forefront of the various combatants’ strategic considerations.

The end of the war brought with it a radically changed political landscape. Rome’s hegemony now extended throughout all of southern Italy, and Tarentum became one of Rome’s naval allies (
socii navales
), from whose lower classes it recruited a majority of its crews. While they had embarked on their war with Pyrrhus in a state of national exhaustion in the wake of their wars with more immediate neighbors, the Romans’ success against overseas aggressors left them at once invigorated and wary. The unexpected appearance of Mago’s
fleet at Ostia doubtless heightened their appreciation for the potential of naval power and forced them to reassess their position vis-à-vis Carthage once peace was restored.

Within a decade of Pyrrhus’s withdrawal from Italy,
Rome and Carthage were at war. The casus belli was a dispute between the people of
Carthage and Messina, Sicily, but it quickly became a struggle for control of Sicily and the western Mediterranean, and it launched Rome on a path to mastery over all of the Mediterranean and Black Seas. The first of the three Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage took place chiefly in Sicily, where the land war simmered for twenty-three years. But it was the naval war that proved decisive in ending Carthage’s centuries-long primacy in the western Mediterranean and catapulted Rome into the front rank of military, and naval, powers. As
Polybius notes, “
those who are impressed by the great sea-battles of an
Antigonus, a Ptolemy or a Demetrius would doubtless be amazed … at the vast scale of the [naval] operations” in the First Punic War.

By the mid-third century
BCE
, Carthage ruled the most extensive empire west of Asia Minor or Egypt, including vast tracts of North Africa, southern Spain, the Balearics, Sardinia,
Corsica, and western Sicily. The city itself was on a peninsula about five kilometers wide in the
Gulf of Tunis. On the seaward side, it was protected by a single wall, while from the land it was protected by three fifteen-meter-high walls with towers every sixty meters. The walls had two levels of stables—the lower could house three hundred elephants, the upper four thousand horses—and the barracks could accommodate twenty-four thousand soldiers. By the second century
BCE
, at least, the double harbor complex was probably the most sophisticated in the world:

The Carthaginians posed a constant threat to the
Romans, who according to Polybius “
were handling the operations in Sicily capably enough. But so long as the Carthaginians held unchallenged control of the sea, the issue of the war still hung in the balance.” After a three-year stalemate, during which they depended on their allies’ ships to reach Sicily, the Romans decided to build “100
quinqueremes and twenty triremes. They faced great difficulties because their shipwrights were completely inexperienced in the building of a quinquereme, since these vessels had never before been employed in Italy.” The initial difficulty was overcome when they seized a Carthaginian patrol vessel that had run aground: “It was this ship which they proceeded to use as a model, and they built their whole fleet according to its specifications.”