Piracy off the coast of Somalia has been a threat to international shipping since the second phase of the Somali Civil War in the early twenty-first century. In fact what we are witnessing today may appear as the latest manifestation of a phenomenon which already existed in antiquity. This paper aims to collect all surviving evidence relating to ancient piracy in the Indian Ocean and offer the best possible account. As the reader will soon appreciate there is almost no written evidence beyond the meagre quantity of Greek and Latin texts. Thus this paper deals mostly with the piracy encountered by Mediterranean seamen and merchants in the Hellenistic, Roman and early Byzantine periods.
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