Customer Reviews

Piracy in the Ancient World

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This book represents one of the first major efforts to study the phenomenon of piracy in Medeterranean waters during the Greco-Roman era. Ormerod has some success in uniting a horde of disparate sources into a narrative of piracy in this period, no small task. However, analysis of the phenomonon is only made on the most basic of levels, the author failing to find broader trends, and terminologies are hazily established. Without strong defenitions the author is often led into discussing issues of warfare rather than piracy. However, the reviewer found this book to be of immense interest, and despite its failings has shed light on hitherto unknown areas such as the discussion of reprisals in Greek forieign policy. The author has made a commendable effort to bring together a number of difficult pieces of evidence with little prior scholarship to guide him.

Not for the faint hearted. Readers can expect to suffer through numerous footnotes, and liberal sprinklings of quotes in Greek, Latin, French and German. That is not to say that the author has done a poor job. The content is very informative, just slow reading.

The author has provided a well put together, bien tenu, history of piracy in the Mediterranean from ancient times to the formation of the Roman empire, first century A.D. based upon the writings of semi-contemporary authors and ancient authors, such as Xenophon, Cicero, Plutarch and such. The content was originally published in 1924 by the Liverpool University Press. The two maps attached to the end of the text are very helpful at finding the many locations cited by the author.

Bottom line, be prepared for a non-trivial read.
P-)

I am reading this book as a course requirement. It is very slow, difficult reading however it is also informative. I am having to re read numerous times to get the main idea. I would not read this book for pleasure.

I agree with an earlier reviewer that the frequent footnotes and quotes in Greek, Latin, French and German elude the modern general reader. Also the introductory chapter giving example after example of modern (17th-19th century) allusions to the various pirate lairs and peoples is a bit overdrawn. I would have preferred that Omerod simply get down to the business of identifying those that were significant in the epoch he covers. That said, this is a quite thorough review of what has passed for illicit and predatory maritime practice in antiquity, which, as the author acknowledges, was often synonomous with outright warfare when dealing with pirate "empires" such as Illyria and Cilicia. An apt modern counterpart might be such "failed state" piratical entities as present day Somalia or the various embodiments of the Al Queada network.