Pompey's War Against the Pirates (67 BC): Clearing the Seas

Pompey’s war against the pirates was a lightning naval campaign of 67 BC in which Gnaeus Pompeius, later called Pompey the Great, cleared the Mediterranean of the pirate fleets that had been raiding its coasts. Armed with sweeping powers under a law called the Lex Gabinia, he completed the task in about three months. The campaign secured Rome’s grain supply and made Pompey the most powerful man in the Roman world.

Background: a sea without a navy

By the 70s BC piracy had become a serious threat across the Mediterranean. The pirates were based above all in Cilicia, the mountainous coast of southern Anatolia, and on Crete. The collapse of the Hellenistic naval powers, Rome’s own lack of a standing fleet and the demand for slaves in Roman markets all helped them flourish; for a time the Mithridatic Wars also gave them a patron in Mithridates VI of Pontus.

Their raids grew bolder. The young Julius Caesar was kidnapped and ransomed around 75 BC. Plutarch says pirates carried off two Roman praetors with their attendants, and in 68 BC raiders attacked Ostia, Rome’s port, and burned a fleet there. Pirates even cheated Spartacus by taking his payment to ferry rebels to Sicily during the Third Servile War and then sailing off.

Earlier efforts had failed. Marcus Antonius, given a special command in 74 BC, was defeated off Crete. By 67 BC grain ships bound for Rome were being intercepted and food prices in the city were rising.

The Lex Gabinia

In early 67 BC the tribune Aulus Gabinius proposed a law creating a single command against piracy for three years. Its holder would have authority over the entire sea and over coastal land up to 50 Roman miles (about 75 kilometres) inland, equal to that of the provincial governors there. He could appoint many senior deputies, or legates, and draw on large fleets and funds.

Most senators, led by Quintus Lutatius Catulus and Quintus Hortensius, opposed the bill as dangerous concentration of power in one man. Everyone knew it was meant for Pompey. The popular assembly passed it anyway, and a further vote enlarged the resources. Plutarch speaks of 500 ships, 120,000 infantry, 5,000 cavalry and 24 legates; the figures in other sources differ slightly. Grain prices in Rome are said to have fallen as soon as Pompey was appointed.

The campaign

Pompey divided the Mediterranean and the Black Sea approaches into thirteen districts, each under a legate with ships and troops. Working at the same time, they denied the pirates safe harbours and drove them eastwards. According to Plutarch, the western Mediterranean, including the waters around Sicily, Sardinia, Africa and Spain, was cleared in about 40 days.

Pompey then moved east. Many pirate groups surrendered once they learned he was offering lenient terms. The hard core retreated to their strongholds in Cilicia, where Pompey defeated them in a sea battle off Coracesium (modern Alanya) and stormed or received the surrender of their fortresses. The eastern phase was just as swift: Cicero says Pompey reached Cilicia 49 days after setting out from Brundisium.

The ancient sources report large numbers of captured ships and strongholds and some 10,000 pirates killed, though the figures vary. A quarrel with Quintus Caecilius Metellus, who was campaigning on Crete, showed how far Pompey’s powers overlapped with those of other commanders.

Mercy and resettlement

Pompey’s treatment of the defeated was unusual. Instead of mass executions he settled many former pirates, Plutarch says around 20,000, on farmland. The city of Soli in Cilicia was refounded as Pompeiopolis, and others were placed at Mallus, Adana and Epiphaneia in Cilicia and at Dyme in Greece. The aim was to give them a living that did not depend on the sea.

Consequences

The campaign made Pompey a popular hero. In 66 BC another tribune, Gaius Manilius, carried a law transferring to him the war against Mithridates, supported by Cicero in a surviving speech. Pompey remained in the East until 62 BC, returning with immense wealth and prestige that later led him into the First Triumvirate.

Piracy did not vanish forever, but it never again threatened Rome’s food supply on this scale during the Republic. Constitutionally, the Lex Gabinia was an important precedent: it showed that the assembly could give one man vast, wide-ranging power, a step towards the extraordinary commands that undermined the Republic.

Timeline

• c. 75 BC: Julius Caesar is captured and ransomed by pirates in the Aegean.
• 74-71 BC: Marcus Antonius’s special command against the pirates ends in failure off Crete.
• 68 BC: Pirates raid Ostia, Rome’s port.
• 67 BC, early: The Lex Gabinia is passed despite opposition in the Senate.
• 67 BC, spring: Pompey clears the western Mediterranean in about 40 days.
• 67 BC, summer: Pompey defeats the pirates at Coracesium in Cilicia and resettles the survivors.
• 66 BC: The Lex Manilia gives Pompey the command against Mithridates.

Why it matters

The war against the pirates was one of the most efficient military operations of Roman history and restored safe sea travel across the Mediterranean. It also showed how much power the Roman people were willing to place in a single general’s hands, a lesson that shaped the final decades of the Republic.