Nope. I mean you could complain to the local taberna keeper, I suppose. Wouldn't do you any good.

Piracy in the Mediterranean in the 1st century was a big problem. The most famous example is Caesar, who got himself captured by pirates for ransom. Here's something about that:

when the pirates demanded twenty talents for his ransom, he laughed at them for not knowing who their captive was, and of his own accord agreed to give them fifty... [while captive] He also wrote poems and sundry speeches which he read aloud to them, and those who did not admire these he would call to their faces illiterate Barbarians, and often laughingly threatened to hang them all.

After he was ransomed, he came back and crucified them all.

The problem seems to be that although Rome basically owned the Mediterranean, Rome's political structure didn't allow anyone to have control of the whole coastline. Governors were assigned provinces and were not supposed to operate outside them. One governor might get bothered about pirates; the one next door not so much.

What finally curbed the piracy problem was very controversial law in 67 BCE, the lex Gabinia, which made Pompey the military commander of the whole littoral area of the Mediterranean. Once he had that command, he cleaned up the problem in just three months.

So no, there was no one to complain to. The political structure Rome used to govern its provinces was such that systemic problems such as piracy couldn't be addressed, and when Rome finally dealt with the problem of piracy it took a special law to give an individual sufficient authority to manage the whole Mediterranean.

This leads me to a few questions. Would the captain or crew survive? Maybe taken as slaves? Wouldn't the pirates keep the ship too? I'm going to assume that there would be a tax/tariff on goods entering a port and pirates would cause a loss of income for the port city and cause a government response. Perhaps the merchant guild would hire mercenaries.

Also, was there any sort of weapons or stuff merchants would carry to ward off pirates?

Ok, a real answer to this question is going to be very complicated and involve more research than I (or probably anyone) is willing to do! I can cover some basics (mods permitting), however, in the most broad of terms.

By 100 BCE, Mediterranean shipping was big business, especially in the Hellenistic east, and had been so for several centuries at least. A complicated tangle of civil law and economic practice had developed, in both cases aimed at maximizing profits and minimizing/indemnifying risk (in other words -- exactly like today). Unless you were a mega-merchant, you did not load an entire ship with just your own goods. The risk of loss was significant, not just from piracy but from weather and accident as well. We have documentary evidence from as far back as the 5th century showing how shared risk shipping contracts were drawn up (partially; for the curious, see SEG 38.1036). The typical merchant vessel was probably a shared-risk venture in this way, with different parties utilizing subsections of the ship's capacity. These parties were variously contracted with the ship's captain and/or the ship's owner(s), and may (or not) have enjoyed indemnity against loss in that contract or contract(s).

One can find examples for, and summaries of, such arrangements in Roman juridical writers such as Ulpian. There are certain problems with this evidence (for instance, Ulpian is writing in the 200s CE, when the world was very different than 100 BCE), but in general the jurists are a fantastic source for Roman legal resolution. Somebody could probably dig up some really interesting stuff from Ulpian about this topic, but that somebody is not me!

So in short: it is possible that our Roman merchant in 100 BCE, having lost his shipment of Greek tableware decorated with ithyphallic dancing satyrs, could claim restitution for his loss provided that he had a contract which stipulated as such. If he runs into trouble, he would have to take the matter to the praetor (judge) for adjudication with the other party. There he (or his advocate) would present arguments about the nature of the attack and loss, the legal definition of the piratical act and the pirates themselves, whether force majeur applies, whether there was legal jettison of cargo during the encounter or not, and so forth.

If he doesn't have a contract that indemnifies him, he is, as we Americans say, shit out of luck. The Roman State is not responsible for his economic hardship as a *privatus,*even though precisely around this time it is beginning to take a more proactive role in the burgeoning pirate crisis, a problem which had been growing worse for half a century or more. In fact, in 101 or 100 BCE a law was passed called the lex de provinciis praetoriis, several inscribed fragments (copies) of which have been found around the Mediterranean. Among many other things, the law includes provisions for the senior magistrate to enter into a collaboration with eastern kingdoms to help battle piracy "...so that the citizens of Rome and the Allies and Latins and those of the external nations who are in the friendship of the Roman People may be able to sail the seas in safety[.]" more on that.

The Romans, you see, had in the previous half-century systematically eradicated most of the other Mediterranean states capable of policing the seas (Carthage; the Macedonian kingdoms; and, eventually, Rhodes). This left a sort of power vacuum on the seas, a horde of displaced, desperate people, and a golden opportunity. The pirate problem got worse and worse in the early years of the 1st century BCE, and the pirates more and more bold. Rome made some feeble attempts to help, but not until 67 BCE did anything decisive happen. In that year, Pompey "the Great" got a special mandate to end the pirates once and for all. He was awarded special imperium, given virtually unlimited resources, and let loose. He created several fleets and armies, started at the Straits of Gibraltar, and swept the whole Mediterranean clean. We don't hear much about pirates after that, at least not in the Roman period.

One further note on your merchant and his pirate problems. While pirates in this period certainly stole cargo, especially valuable cargo, and even the whole ship when feasible, opportunistic theft was probably not their most profitable venture. We hear much more about kidnapping. So, famously, we are told that Caesar was captured by pirates while a young man and held for ransom, and that the pirates in this case got more than they bargained for. If you were kidnapped, it was usually up to your family to raise the ransom (again, not the Roman State); if they could not, then a family friend (preferably) or an predatory investor (in the worst case) might front the cash (and there was a catch, we can be sure).

Follow-up.

How frequent were pirate raids? Were some routes more dangerous than others? Roughly how many miles do you need to travel to risk an attack? Were most attacks successful?

Actually, in this situation, how did you survive the encounter? What would a merchant have used to themselves and their cargo from predators?

Would the Roman Navy be based around the Mediterranean in case of pirates? It seems like that would be a plausible thing to do in order to combat piracy, as it hurts trade and income no doubt.

Hello everyone,

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