Cretan Pirates: Fact or fiction?

The Concordia Classics Student Association presents a guest lecture with Jane Francis.

About the lecture

The seas of the eastern Mediterranean in the Hellenistic period, an era fraught with war, were also, according to the historians Polybius and Livy, plagued by pirates, many of whom were Cretan. Livy tells us that Mark Anthony the Elder used his praetorian command to eradicate the pirates, which ended in a failed attempt to invade Crete in 72 BC. It is widely believed that the successful invasion of the island by the Romans in 67 BC — the Pax Romana — finally suppressed Cretan piracy. Yet the ancient texts upon which this interpretation is based are vague and sparse, and the archaeological evidence is similarly limited. This discussion explores the evidence for Cretan pirates, both at sea and on the island, and assesses the degree to which we can lay claim to this nomenclature, both for the activity of piracy and to the Cretans themselves.