‘Washed by the Waves’: Fighting against Shipwrecking in the Later Roman Empire

Abstract

The enormity and wildness of the sea has always evoked an aura of mystery and uncertainty. 1 In the ancient world, where there was not such a thing as a socio-political imperative to save the lives of those who were shipwrecked, the attitudes towards a sinking ship and the shipwrecked relied on social and political conceptions. Therefore, these interpretations established the limits of legality and what was considered to constitute violence. For the Republic and the High Empire there are many sources, ranging from public texts on statutes to private accounts, that reveal how these sources guided and reflected the imperialistic efforts of Rome. For Late Antiquity, the sources available for the management of sea hazards in the private sphere are largely composed of legal remedies that were previously accepted and have survived because they were compiled in later codes. This can be generally attributed to the type of legal sources available for the study of this period, but it also reflects a continuity in the remedies employed to address the issue of privateers. A question to be asked here is how these remedies and their conceptualization of plundering fit into the socio-political situation of the Late Antique Mediterranean. The diverse nature of the sources available in late antiquity helps to characterize the complexities of managing sea hazards in a Mediterranean environment that was changing from that of mare nostrum, which had symbolised the Roman political expansion and governance of the sea.