Pirates
group · 5 works · 7 mentions · 9 anchored passages
pirates · privateers · adventurers · depredators · pirate vessels
in the texts
The Rights of War and Peace
Sea-robbers referenced both in Cicero's anecdote and as a closing analogy.
But right does not necessarily lose its nature from being in the hands of wicked men.
Cicero, in defending Publius Sextius, says, “If I were taking a voyage with my friends, and happening to meet with a fleet of pirates, they threatened to sink our little bark, unless the crew surrendered me as the victim to appease their fury, I would sooner throw myself into the deep, than suffer my companions out of their affection to me to encounter sure death, or even imminent danger.
This, it must be admitted, may sometimes happen, but does not apply to all promise made to pirates.
On the Embassy
Unnamed raiders who captured Phrynon of Rhamnus during the Olympian truce, prompting the first Athenian contact with Philip over his ransom.
Not long after this, Phrynon of Rhamnus was captured by privateers, during the Olympian truce, according to his own complaint.
Apollodorus Against Callippus
Pirates who capture Lycon's ship, seize his goods, and are linked to his fatal wounding.
No sooner had he set out, and was sailing around the Argolic gulf, than his ship was captured by pirate vessels and his goods taken to Argos, while he himself was shot down by an arrow, and met his death.
On Halonnesus
Sea raiders whose seizure of places supplies Philip's asserted basis for ownership and his later pretext for naval operations.
But a man who should defeat and punish pirates would surely be unreasonable, if he said that the stolen property wrongfully held by them passed thereby into his own possession.
Moreover, when we ambassadors visited him, he used similar language, to the effect that he had captured the island from pirates and that therefore it belonged absolutely to him.
For, that plea once granted, if some pirates seize a strip of Attic territory, or a part of Lemnos or Imbros or Scyros, and if someone dislodges these pirates, what is to prevent this place, where the pirates are established and which is really ours, from becoming the property of those who chastised them?
Philip’s Letter
Pirates and privateers whose activity is treated as hostile, unlawful, or destabilizing maritime violence.
Now, if you say that you handed it over to Sostratus, you admit that you employ pirates;
Next, when the Thasians opened their harbor to the Byzantine war-galleys and to any pirates that chose to touch there, you ignored the incident, in spite of the clauses expressly denouncing such acts as hostile.
So I am at a loss to say what difference it will make if you admit that you are at war with me, for when we were openly at variance, then too you used to send out privateers, enslave merchants trading with us, help my adversaries, and lay waste my territory.