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Short description

The Cilician Pirates were a notorious group of raiders which originated in Cilicia, now the south-eastern coastal region of modern Turkey.

Description

The Kiliki peirates were a notorious group of raiders which originated in Cilicia, now the south-eastern coastal region of modern Turkey. They attacked and plundered the coastal settlements, merchants and grain ships that sailed from Egypt and the Near East, taking whatever they could find of value and selling the crew as slaves. Although armed lightly with captured or crude weapons, they posed a real threat to the maritime trade routes and merchant crews. Owing loyalty to nobody other than themselves they were easily persuaded to take sides for the right sum of money and the prospect of pillaging.

Piracy in the Mediterranean Sea is attested since the bronze age and it may well have been an established practice since prehistory. The term comes from the Greek πειράομαι (peiráomai) and πειρατής (peirates), meaning to rob and brigand, a term from which the Latin "pirata" derived.

In its beginnings, pirate raids and trade weren't fully separated, but were actually considered an "honourable" affair.

The first ruler that engaged in clearing the sea lanes was the legendary 15th c. BC King Minos, according to Thucydides (5th c. BC). The same author mentions the Carians as active in pirate activity. Although Minos managed to clear the seas, after the demise of the Minoan civilisation and Mycenaeans later, the pirate raids once again flourished, Crete itself becoming a pirate heaven. In the 12th c. BC the Sea People, a heterogenic wave of brigands, took the banner of piracy and caused havoc in the eastern part of the Mediteranean basin causing the so called "bronze age collapse". Among them were probably Eteocretans, Achaeans, Lycians and Tyrrhenians.

Such activities were not only favoured only by brigands, but also by the Phoenicians and Illyrians, who used piracy to add to their income, kidnapping and selling the captives as slaves. Lemnos, Samos, Skyros, the Baleares, Pamphylia, Crete and Cilicia were well known for their pirate heavens and slave markets.

The Cilician pirates were a group of brigands and raiders which plagued the eastern Mediterranean Sea from the defeat of the Seleucid Empire in 190 BC and treaty of Apamea until the early first c. BC.

They engaged in raids and attacked the merchant and grain ships in the eastern Mediterranean selling their captives as slaves in special markets like the ones in Miletos, Delos, Ephesos and Smyrna. They preferred rich captives from which they could extract large sums of money, as was the case of Caesar and two other roman senators. According to Appian (around 95 AD - 165 AD), they allied themselves to the Kingdom of Pontus during the Mithridatic Wars.

Although the raids destabilised maritime trade routes in the Roman Empire, the Senate was slow to take action, as they depended on slave trade, and it was not until Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus in 67 BC in the battle of Korakesion operating under the "Lex Gabinia", together with 500 ships and 120,000 roman troops destroyed most of the Cilician pirates and their Isaurian allies the threat was ended.