Piracy, Pillage, and Plunder in Antiquity

Appropriation and the Ancient World

Richard Evans, Martine De Marre, Richard Evans, Martine De Marre

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429803031
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Piracy, Pillage, and Plunder in Antiquity explores appropriation in its broadest terns in the ancient world, from brigands, mercenaries and state-sponsored "piracy", to literary appropriation and the modern plundering of antiquities.

The chronological extent of the studies in this volume, written by an international group of experts, ranges from about 2000 BCE to the 20th century. The geographical spectrum in similarly diverse, encompassing Africa, the Mediterranean, and Mesopotamia, allowing readers to track this phenomenon in various different manifestations. Predatory behaviour is a phenomenon seen in all walks of life. While violence may often be concomitant it is worth observing that predation can be extremely nuanced in its application, and it is precisely this gradation and its focus that occupies the essential issue in this volume.

Piracy, Pillage, and Plunder in Antiquity will be of great interest to those studying a range of topics in antiquity, including literature and art, cities and their foundations, crime, warfare, and geography.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations in this volume
• Piracy, pillage and plunder in antiquity: An introduction
• 1. By the hand of a robber: States, mercenaries and bandits in Middle Bronze Age Mesopotamia
• 2. The limits of nationalism: Brigandage: piracy and mercenary service in fourth century BCE Athens
• 3. Piracy and pseudo-piracy in classical Syracuse: Financial replenishment through outsourcing, sacking temples and forced migrations
• 4. Terra cognita sed vacua?: (Re-)appropriating territory through Hellenistic city foundations
• 5. The colonisation of Pontiae (313 BC), piracy and the nature of Rome’s maritime expansion before the First Punic War
• 6. Campaigning against pirate mercenaries: A very Roman strategy?
• 7. Pirating pastoral poverty: Poetics in Tibullus 1.1
• 8. The revolt of the boukoloi, class and contemporary fiction in Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon
• 9. ‘Bad girls’?: Collective violence by women and the case of the Circumcellions in Roman North Africa
• 10. Piracy, plunder and the legacy of archaeological research in North Africa
• 11. Spoils of Empire: Rider Haggard’s appropriation of the katabasis motif in King Solomon’s Mines
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Index of ancient sources cited in the chapters
• General index