Freelance Warfare and Illegitimacy: the Historians’ Portrayal of Bandits, Pirates, Mercenaries and Politicians A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the University of Minnesota BY Aaron L. Beek In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Advised by Andrew Gallia April 30, 2015 © Aaron L. Beek 2015 Abstract This dissertation examines freelance warfare in the ancient world. The ‘freelancer’ needs to be understood as a unified category, not compartmentalized as three (or more) groups: pirates, bandits, and mercenaries. Throughout, I contend that ancient authors’ perception and portrayal of the actions of freelancers dramatically affected the perceived legitimacy of those actions. Most other studies (e.g. Shaw 1984, de Souza 1999, Grünewald 1999, Pohl 1993, Trundle 2004, Knapp 2011) focus on ‘real’ bandits and on a single one of these groups. I examine these three groups together, but also ask what semantic baggage words like latro or leistes had to carry that they were commonly used in invectives. Thus rhetorical piracy is also important for my study. The work unfolds in three parts. The first is a brief chronological survey of ‘freelance men of violence’ of all stripes down to the second century BC. Freelancers engage in, at best, semi-legitimate acts of force. Excluded are standing paid forces and theft by means other than force, vis. In a form of ancient realpolitik, the freelancer was generally more acceptable to states than our aristocratic historians would prefer that we believe. Moreover, states were more concerned with control of these ‘freelancers’ than in their elimination. The second section explains events of the second and first century in greater detail. The observations made in the first section hold true in the second, despite being depicted differently by ancient historians. The third section focuses on the historians, historical accounts and rhetoric employed. The historians make motivations less pragmatic and more idealistic. Additionally, the perception of piracy was affected by triumphal politics, consular authority, and employment of mercenaries Overall, the chief semantic burden of pirate-terms is to convey legitimacy: individuals that possess power that they should not. Condemnation of these figures is not rooted in their actions of plundering (rarely dissimilar from official acts of war) but instead their holding any such power in the first place. In short, this study reveals that the ‘at-large’ soldier was far more complex and far more influential than is normally shown by either ancient or modern historians. i Table of Contents List of Tables and Figures...................................................................................... iii Maps ....................................................................................................................... iv Abbreviations ....................................................................................................... viii Introduction ..............................................................................................................1 Chapter One: The Greek Background....................................................................11 Chapter Two: The Italian Background—Etruria and the Early Republic..............35 Chapter Three: The Small Wars of the Second Century........................................74 Chapter Four: The Small Wars of the First Century ...........................................105 Chapter Five: The Pompeian Campaigns and the Role of Pirates .......................150 Chapter Six: Legitimacy and Rhetoric .................................................................177 Chapter Seven: The Author’s Baggage ................................................................196 Conclusions ..........................................................................................................220 Bibliography ........................................................................................................225 Appendix 1: The Boundaries of Cilicia ...............................................................253 Appendix 2: A Sallustian Topos? ........................................................................258 ii List of Tables and Figures Fig. 1: Dionysus and the Pirates ................................................................36 Fig 2: Dionysus and the Pirates .................................................................37 Table 1: Triumphs in Liguria Table 1: Triumphs in Liguria and Sardinia 90 Table 2: States receiving letters ...............................................................120 Table 3 Governors in Cilicia ....................................................................128 iii Map 1: Crete and Rhodes Map created by author with data supplied by Ancient World Mapping Center. “À-la-carte”. http://awmc.unc.edu/awmc/applications/alacarte/ iv Map 2: Illyrian tribes and Epirus Map created by author with data supplied by Ancient World Mapping Center. “À-la-carte”. <http://awmc.unc.edu/awmc/applications/alacarte/> v Map 3: The Balearic Islands and coast of Hispania Map created by author with data supplied by Ancient World Mapping Center. “À-la-carte”. <http://awmc.unc.edu/awmc/applications/alacarte/> vi Map 4: Cilicia and adjacent regions Map created by author with data supplied by Ancient World Mapping Center. “À-la-carte”. <http://awmc.unc.edu/awmc/applications/alacarte/> vii Abbreviations Ancient Sources Ancient authors are cited according to the conventions found in the front of the OCD (Oxford Classical Dictionary) with the exception that the names of authors are spelled out. Modern Sources CAH The Cambridge Ancient History 2nd ed. 14 vols Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1970-2005. MRR T.R.S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic 3 vols Atlanta: Scholars' Press, 1951-1952. StV Die Staatsverträge des Altertums 3 vols C. H. Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung: München 1962-1969. Collections of Inscriptions Ancient inscription are cited simply by [collection’s abbreviation], [numbering in collection]. The abbreviations stand for the following works, which continue to be updated. CIL—Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum FIRA—Fontes Iuris Romani Anteiustiniani IC—Inscriptiones Creticae IG—Inscriptiones Graecae IGRRP—Inscriptiones Graecae ad Res Romanas Pertinentes (Elsewhere, sometimes, ‘Cagnet’) ILER—Inscripciones Latinas de la España Romana ILLRP—Inscriptiones Latinae Liberae Rei Publicae (Elsewhere, sometimes ‘Degrassi’) ILS—Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae (elsewhere, sometimes ‘Dessau’) Inscr.Ital.—Inscriptiones Italicae OGIS—Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae viii SIG—Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum SEG—Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum ix Introduction In this study, I assess the description of various individuals, groups, and even states as piratical or otherwise engaging in ‘illegitimate’ violence for gain in the ancient Mediterranean world. Illegitimate acts of violence undertaken for the sake of plundering are commonplace—yet so also are legitimate, state-sponsored, acts of violence for the sake of plundering. It is my contention throughout this work that political and cultural motives played a large role in the determining of legitimacy of contemporary events, while historians exhibited similar bias regarding past events. Furthermore, this perception of legitimacy had more influence on the assessment of piracy or banditry than the conduct or severity of any actual events. That is, the act of raiding did not determine piracy so much as the understanding whether the raiders had a right to engage in such acts. The characters in my title, “Pirates, bandits, mercenaries, and politicians” might, at first, seem a strange admixture of figures. For the first three categories, I argue that they had substantial overlap in the ancient world. For the latter, I argue that political discussion of plundering and even invective is key to understanding relationship between the first three groups. It is through politics and political machinations, after all, that any act of plundering was deemed to have been undertaken legitimately or illegitimately. Thus, this work also deals with early estimations of what acts were and were not permitted to groups of warriors either in war or outside of war. While these issues could be studied across a wide breadth of history, I choose to go into greater detail for approximately a 150-year period—the second and early first centuries BC. This work builds most obviously upon the recent works on piracy, banditry, and mercenaries.1 While each of these works provides a thorough and comprehensive description of the targeted group, each also, to some degree, sets the others aside. I argue that these three categories were so fluid that it makes more sense to talk of a single ‘freelance warrior’ character rather than distinguishing three separate groups with 1 Those being the works of de Souza (1999), Grünewald (1999), and Trundle (2004) respectively. 1 overlap. Moreover, these works, like many others, attempt to set aside the political invective to focus on ‘real’ bandits and pirates. My study, I hope, serves a second purpose in bringing that invective back into examination to see what it reveals about these groups. In examining the secondary literature, the literatures for several subfields need to be consulted, as mercenaries, bandits, and pirates are generally studied individually rather than together. Also useful are the studies on particular places, like Crete, Illyria, and Cilicia, which