So there's already been some questions asked about organized crime in the ancient world, particularly Greece and Rome, but I was more curious about the less organized kind of crime. Are there records of what we would consider 'street gangs' in the ancient world? By street gang I mean a loosely organized group of people that commit crimes for recreation and/or personal gain, and were based on land in either one or multiple cities. Did these kinds of gangs live in the slums of the ancient world, or were they among the middle and upper classes? Did ancient cities like Athens or Rome have sections of the city that normal folk would say "Oh, don't be caught east of that street after dark"? Were these gangs made up of troubled adolescents or hardened veterans of the lifestyle? Were such gangs ever manipulated for political reasons? Are there any known major events that were caused by street gangs? I know of one major case, the Demes which played a major role in the Nika riots of Constantinople, but are they the only notable example of this? (And yes, I know the Demes weren't so much street gangs but more like English football 'firms', no need to correct that.) What kind of action was taken within ancient cities to quell these street gangs, if any had a chance to truly form? And did any of these ancient street gangs have similar influence and spread as modern gangs like the Bloods, the Crips, or Los Zetas?
Edit: I'm glad for all the answers surrounding the Romans and Greeks, but I'm also curious about other corners of ancient society. Particularly if anyone could answer these questions from a Middle Eastern or Asian standpoint I'd be very interested to learn about that.
With respect to classical Rome, there was a good answer on the issue of street gangs in this sub last year from u/Zaniac0:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2npi1s/did_street_gangs_exist_in_ancient_rome/
As far your question of:
Did Rome have sections of the city that normal folk would say "Oh, don't be caught east of that street after dark"?
I would offer a passage from Juvenal:
“And now think of the different and diverse perils of the night. See what a height it is to that towering roof from which a pot comes crack upon my head every time that some broken or leaky vessel is pitched out of the window! See with what a smash it strikes and dints the pavement! There’s death in every open window as you pass along at night; you may well be deemed a fool, improvident of sudden accident, if you go out to dinner without having made your will…Yet however reckless the fellow may be, however hot with wine and young blood, he gives a wide berth to one whose scarlet cloak and long retinue of attendants, with torches and brass lamps in their hands, bid him keep his distance. But to me, who am wont to be escorted home by the moon, or by the scant light of a candle he pays no respect.” (Juvenal /Satire/ 3)
There's this recent answer to a similar question. But sadly, though this is quite literally right up my alley I'm a bit short on time so any actual detail will have to come through any followups. Sorry about that
The most famous "gangs" that we can point to are of course Clodius' (and his contemporaries', most notably Milo) operae in the 50s, when gang violence became endemic within the city. The Clodians were well-organized and political, and their bloody brawls throughout the city terrorized Republican politics in the 50s. The Clodians first turned violent in 58, and it's highly debated who made up the operae and how exactly they worked and were organized. The orthodox view has long been that they were members of collegia, the voluntary organizations of the urban plebs. Clodius passed a lex de collegia as one of his four leges Clodiae on the day that he became tribune of the plebs in 58, and we know from Cicero that he held a collegiate roll and enrollment in the forum, registering those collegia that already existed and organizing enrollment of new collegia. The standard explanation is that when Cicero says operae it's code for collegia, which really doesn't seem to make sense to me, personally--there seems to me to be next to zero evidence in the texts that Cicero thinks that the collegia are in-and-of-themselves the operae. Surely members of collegia made up Clodian operae, but I think there's no basis for stating that they're equivalent, which is so frequently just repeated in scholarship without even being supported. Just as unclear is what sort of people made up these gangs. The vast majority of the urban poor were freedmen or migrants from outside the city, and Cicero's talk of operae as being composed of slaves and criminals seems in large part to be an exaggerated form of this. On several occasions both Milo and Clodius employed gladiators, but it seems that on the whole the gangs that patrolled the streets, assaulted political enemies, and even laid siege to the houses of their enemies (notably Pompey's) were on the whole citizens and members of the urban plebs. Tatum insists that Clodian operae were unpaid and on the basis of this and that Clodius at several points called on shopkeepers to close up thinks that the operae were composed mainly of shopkeepers who could afford to miss a day or two of work, the sort of people you'd expect in collegia. Others largely agree with Cicero's depiction of rabble, presumably being paid, and this seems more tempting to me personally--the city was crawling with day workers and migrants, and if payment was offered entry into operae might seem an attractive means of earning steady pay, a relative luxury for the vast majority of the city. Besides probably being made up of a lot of freedmen, though, there's nothing that we can say about the gangs of the 50s--Cicero's descriptions are rhetorically charged, and in any case he says nothing about Milo's gangs, which must have been made of "more of the same," as my thesis director puts it. In any case the organization of these groups was remarkable--nothing like it had been seen in the Republican state before. Both Clodius and Milo could muster hundreds of people in one place at the drop of a hat, and while these gangs were often relatively easily dispersed their brawls were bloody and they could swoop down on unprotected enemies.
The political violence of the 50s, though, did not last long--already by the Conference at Luca Publius Clodius' unbridled rampage was stomped out during the negotiations, and though violence between Milonian and Clodian gangs continued with little interruption Clodius was mostly no longer able to attack whomever he pleased, as his actions had almost driven a wedge between the triumvirs. Following Clodius' death the organized political street gangs quickly faded away, although political violence did not--with Milo's exile the two main leaders had been removed, and the civil war largely prevented this sort of civil violence. The Principate, however, did not tolerate for one moment the threat of organized violence of any kind, particularly gang violence. This does not mean that street gangs did not exist, especially in bad neighborhoods (although not always--even in the Republic public violence was hardly the monopoly of the urban poor), but the Principate imposed harsh legal penalties on the assembly in secret or in public of unapproved crowds, and kept a close watch on collegia, vici, and other associations that might breed dissent. Likewise in the Principate real instruments of public order, consisting really of military and para-military forces under state direction, emerged to prevent large-scale violent disturbances, although it's not as though crime, even on a relatively large scale, disappeared--the emperors were more worried about political violence and rioting getting out of hand than robberies and thugs, which we don't hear about as much but which we know existed
Hi, a few more posts that may be of interest...