Piracy in the Graeco-Roman World »

Philip de Souza was Senior Lecturer in Classical Studies at St Mary's University College, Strawberry Hill. He is also the author of Seafaring and Civilisation (2001; 1861973624) and the forthcoming Ancient Naval Warfare.

An historical study of piracy in the ancient Greek and Roman world.

Times Literary Supplement

It is a truism of academic work on outlawry that cultures get the criminals they deserve, that Prohibition produced the Chicago gangsters, that the war on drugs sustains the drug-barons of Colombia and Burma, that witches are the product of witch-hunts, that the strange criminal hybrid of the philosopher-pornographer is a construct of Bourbon censorship in the eighteenth century and that a distinctive kind of British hypocrisy threw up the distinctive Cynthia Payne. On another level, highwaymen need highways and cat-burglars need security systems and buildings of several floors, and it is, of course, thanks to the discovery of America and the grant of a papal monopoly for the exploitation of its riches that pirates bury their treasure on Caribbean islands, tie handkerchiefs around their heads to protect their fair skins from sunburn and talk in English accents but Spanish coinage of "doubloons" and "pieces of eight".