The pirates of the ancient Mediterranean

In the first and second millennia BCE, pirates sailed around the Mediterranean, attacking ships and avoiding pursuers

A. When one mentions pirates, an image springs to most people’s minds of a crew of misfits, daredevils and adventurers in command of a tall sailing ship in the Caribbean Sea. Yet from the first to the third millennium BCE, thousands of years before these swashbucklers began spreading fear across the Caribbean, pirates prowled the Mediterranean, raiding merchant ships and threatening vital trade routes. However, despite all efforts and the might of various ancient states, piracy could not be stopped. The situation remained unchanged for thousands of years. Only when the pirates directly threatened the interests of ancient Rome did the Roman Republic organise a massive fleet to eliminate piracy. Under the command of the Roman general Pompey, Rome eradicated piracy, transforming the Mediterranean into ‘Mare Nostrum’ (Our Sea).

B. Although piracy in the Mediterranean is first recorded in ancient Egypt during the reign of Pharaoh Amenhotep III (c 1390-1353 BCE), it is reasonable to assume it predated this powerful civilisation. This is partly due to the great importance the Mediterranean held at this time, and partly due to its geography. While the Mediterranean region is predominantly fertile, some parts are rugged and hilly, even mountainous. In the ancient times, the inhabitants of these areas relied heavily on marine resources, including fish and salt. Most had their own boats, possessed good seafaring skills, and unsurpassed knowledge of the local coastline and sailing routes. Thus, it is not surprising that during hardships, these men turned to piracy. Geography itself further benefited the pirates, with the numerous coves along the coast providing places for them to hide their boats and strike undetected. Before the invention of ocean-going caravels in the 15th century, ships could not easily cross long distances over open water. Thus, in the ancient world most were restricted to a few well- known navigable routes that followed the coastline. Caught in a trap, a slow merchant ship laden with goods had no other option but to surrender. In addition, knowledge of the local area helped the pirates to avoid retaliation once a state fleet arrived.

C. One should also add that it was not unknown in the first and second millennia BCE for governments to resort to pirates’ services, especially during wartime, employing their skills and numbers against their opponents. A pirate fleet would serve in the first wave of attack, preparing the way for the navy. Some of the regions were known for providing safe harbours to pirates, who, in return, boosted the local economy.

D. The first known record of a named group of Mediterranean pirates, made during the rule of ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten (c 1353-1336 BCE), was in the Amarna Letters. These were extracts of diplomatic correspondence between the pharaoh and his allies, and covered many pressing issues, including piracy. It seems the pharaoh was troubled by two distinct pirate groups, the Lukka and the Sherden. Despite the Egyptian fleet’s best efforts, the pirates continued to cause substantial disruption to regional commerce. In the letters, the king of Alashiya (modern Cyprus) rejected Akhenaten’s claims of a connection with the Lukka (based in modern-day Turkey). The king assured Akhenaten he was prepared to punish any of his subjects involved in piracy.

E. The ancient Greek world’s experience of piracy was different from that of Egyptian rulers. While Egypt’s power was land-based, the ancient Greeks relied on the Mediterranean in almost all aspects of life, from trade to warfare. Interestingly, in his works the Iliad and the Odyssey, the ancient Greek writer Homer not only condones, but praises the lifestyle and actions of pirates. The opinion remained unchanged in the following centuries. The ancient Greek historian Thucydides, for instance, glorified pirates’ daring attacks on ships or even cities. For Greeks, piracy was a part of everyday life. Even high-ranking members of the state were not beyond engaging in such activities. According to the Greek orator Demosthenes, in 355 BCE, Athenian ambassadors made a detour from their official travel to capture a ship sailing from Egypt, taking the wealth found onboard for themselves! The Greeks’ liberal approach towards piracy does not mean they always tolerated it, but attempts to curtail piracy were hampered by the large number of pirates operating in the Mediterranean.

F. The rising power of ancient Rome required the Roman Republic to deal with piracy in the Mediterranean. While piracy was a serious issue for the Republic, Rome profited greatly from its existence. Pirate raids provided a steady source of slaves, essential for Rome’s agriculture and mining industries. But this arrangement could work only while the pirates left Roman interests alone. Pirate attacks on grain ships, which were essential to Roman citizens, led to angry voices in the Senate, demanding punishment of the culprits. Rome, however, did nothing, further encouraging piracy. By the 1st century BCE, emboldened pirates kidnapped prominent Roman dignitaries, asking for a large ransom to be paid. Their most famous hostage was none other than Julius Caesar, captured in 75 BCE.

G. By now, Rome was well aware that pirates had outlived their usefulness. The time had come for concerted action. In 67 BCE, a new law granted Pompey vast funds to combat the Mediterranean menace. Taking personal command, Pompey divided the entire Mediterranean into 13 districts, assigning a fleet and commander to each. After cleansing one district of pirates, the fleet would join another in the next district. The process continued until the entire Mediterranean was free of pirates. Although thousands of pirates died at the hands of Pompey’s troops, as a long-term solution to the problem, many more were offered land in fertile areas located far from the sea. Instead of a maritime menace, Rome got productive farmers that further boosted its economy.

The persistence and peril of misinformation

Brian Southwell looks at how human brains verify information and discusses some of the challenges of battling widespread falsehoods

Misinformation – both deliberately promoted and accidentally shared -is perhaps an inevitable part of the world in which we live, but it is not a new problem. People likely have lied to one another for roughly as long as verbal communication has existed. Deceiving others can offer an apparent opportunity to gain strategic advantage, to motivate others to action, or even to protect interpersonal bonds. Moreover, people inadvertently have been sharing inaccurate information with one another for thousands of years.

However, we currently live in an era in which technology enables information to reach large audiences distributed across the globe,and thus the potential for immediate and widespread effects from misinformation now looms larger than in the past. Yet the means to correct misinformation might,over time,be found in those same patterns of mass communication and of the facilitated spread of information.

The main worry regarding misinformation is its potential to unduly influence attitudes and behavior, leading people to think and act differently than they would if they were correctly informed, as suggested by the research teams of Stephan Lewandowsky of the University of Bristol and Elizabeth Marsh of Duke University, among others. In other words, we worry that misinformation might lead people to hold misperceptions (or false beliefs) and that these misperceptions, especially when they occur among large groups of people, may have detrimental, downstream consequences for health, social harmony, and the political climate.

At least three observations related to misinformation in the contemporary mass-media environment warrant the attention of researchers, policy makers, and really everyone who watches television, listens to the radio, or reads information online. First of all, people who encounter misinformation tend to believe it, at least initially. Secondly, electronic and print media often do not block many types of misinformation before it appears in content available to large audiences. Thirdly, countering misinformation once it has enjoyed wide exposure can be a resource-intensive effort.

Knowing what happens when people initially encounter misinformation holds tremendous importance for estimating the potential for subsequent problems. Although it is fairly routine for individuals to come across information that is false, the question of exactly how – and when – we mentally label information as true or false has garnered philosophical debate. The dilemma is neatly summarized by a contrast between how the 17th-century philosophers Rene Descartes and Baruch Spinoza described human information engagement, with conflicting predictions that only recently have been empirically tested in robust ways. Descartes argued that a person only accepts or rejects information after considering its truth or falsehood; Spinoza argued that people accept all encountered information (or misinformation) by default and then subsequently verify or reject it through a separate cognitive process. In recent decades, empirical evidence from the research teams of Erik Asp of the University of Chicago and Daniel Gilbert at Harvard University, among others, has supported Spinoza’s account: people appear to encode all new information as if it were true, even if only momentarily, and later tag the information as being either true or false, a pattern that seems consistent with the observation that mental resources for skepticism physically reside in a different part of the brain than the resources used in perceiving and encoding.

What about our second observation that misinformation often can appear in electronic or print media without being preemptively blocked? In support of this, one might consider the nature of regulatory structures in the United States: regulatory agencies here tend to focus on post hoc detection of broadcast information. Organizations such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) offer considerable monitoring and notification functions, but these roles typically do not involve preemptive censoring. The IDA oversees direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising, for example, and has developed mechanisms such as the ‘Bad Ad’ program, through which people can report advertising in apparent violation of FDA guidelines on drug risks. Such programs, although laudable and useful, do not keep false advertising off the airwaves. In addition, even misinformation that is successfully corrected can continue to affect attitudes.

This leads us to our third observation: a campaign to correct misinformation, even if rhetorically compelling, requires resources and planning to accomplish necessary reach and frequency. For corrective campaigns to be persuasive, audiences need to be able to comprehend them, which requires either effort to frame messages in ways that are accessible or effort to educate and sensitize audiences to the possibility of misinformation. That some audiences might be unaware of the potential for misinformation also suggests the utility of media literacy efforts as early as elementary school. Even with journalists and scholars pointing to the phenomenon of ‘fake news’, people do not distinguish between demonstrably false stories and those based in fact when scanning and processing written information.

We live at a time when widespread misinformation is common. Yet at this time many people also are passionately developing potential solutions and remedies. The journey forward undoubtedly will be a long and arduous one. Future remedies will require not only continued theoretical consideration but also the development and maintenance of consistent monitoring tools and a recognition among fellow members of society that claims which find prominence in the media that are insufficiently based in scientific consensus and social reality should be countered. Misinformation arises as a result of human fallibility and human information needs. To overcome the worst effects of the phenomenon, we will need coordinated efforts over time, rather than any singular one-time panacea we could hope to offer.