Piracy in the Early Hellenistic Period: a Career Open to Talents

Abstract

Pirates were frequently employed by the Diadochoi and the Epigonoi of Alexander as an auxiliary military or naval force, and some examples are given below. Unfortunately, the surviving evidence does not allow us to do more than make the general statement. The evidence for piratical activity is largely in the form of personal anecdotes, and the evidence for the nature of Hellenistic military and naval establishments is nothing more than a record of a few persons and/or positions. The authors of our scant literary sources, especially those who wrote many generations after the events which they describe, were not attempting to analyse the role of pirates for posterity, thus they often use the word ‘pirate’ with a notable lack of precision, if they use it at all. Nevertheless, a review of the existing evidence suggests a rather remarkable degree of social and occupational mobility in the third century B.C.