Piracy in the ancient Mediterranean dates back at least as far as the Bronze Age. The roots of the word "piracy" come from the ancient Greek πειράομαι, or peiráomai, meaning "attempt" (i.e., of something illegal for personal gain). This morphed into πειρατής, or peiratēs, meaning "brigand," and from that to the Latin pirata, where the modern English word pirate originated.^[1] According to the classical historian Janice Gabbert, "The eastern Mediterranean has been plagued by piracy since the first dawn of history."^[2] The Bronze Age marked the earliest documented wave of piracy, as it is difficult to differentiate piracy from trade during earlier periods.

A number of geographic and economic characteristics of the classical world produced an environment that encouraged piracy. According to classicist Henry Arderne Ormerod, "[t]he coasts of the Mediterranean are particularly favorable to the development of piracy."^[3] The barren, rocky shoreline was not suitable for large-scale agriculture and could not support a large population. Therefore, most villages were small and of little means. The primary method of support came from fishing; most men had boats, seafaring skills, and navigational knowledge.^[4][5] When fishing could not reliably sustain them, many people turned to highway robbery and raids of nearby territories to support themselves. However, land trade routes were few and far between, given mountainous obstacles and few rivers; trade and travel therefore was carried out primarily by sea.^[6]

In the early days of maritime navigation, most trade vessels traveled along the coasts. According to geographer Ellen Churchill Semple, "traffic was restricted to fixed lanes in a way impossible on the open ocean."^[7] The naukleroi, or ship-owning merchantmen, moved slowly along established trade routes, weighed down by heavy cargo. Fishermen would encounter treasure-laden trade ships passing the shores day after day and, if possessed of the motivation and means, the more economically desperate among them would take on the risks of banditry for a chance at treasure. Semple wrote that "[t]he pirate was the robber of the sea highways: and the highways of the Mediterranean were well-defined and well-traveled."^[8]

The rocky coast that had been unsuitable for agriculture was well suited to piracy, outfitted with hidden inlets that allowed quick access points to trade routes. According to writer Cindy Vallar, "pirate enclaves grew up along rocky shores that provided shelter and kept them hidden from view until it was too late for their victims to escape."^[9]

Because of early maritime raiders' roots in land raiding, they were known to attack ships and coastal towns and to venture further inland. This caused even the earliest large cities to relocate from 2 to 10 miles away from the shore.^[10] Pirates tended not to go farther inland due to difficulties escaping. This relocation gave safety to major cities such as Athens, Tiryns, Mycenae and others. It protected them from the sea's dangers, although it also cut them off from its benefits. The sea was still the primary area of major commerce. This caused twin cities to be built, one inland city paired with a coastal port, such as Rome and Ostia, Athens and Piraeus, and so on. To protect their connection they built "'long walls' ... that enclosed [their] thoroughfare."^[10] Ormerod wrote that if it is "[understood] that piracy was, for centuries, a normal feature of Mediterranean life, it [would] be realized how great [its] influence [has been] ... on the life of the ancient world."^[11]

Despite these efforts, they could not completely remove contact between the pirates and the ports. Since they could not effectively disrupt the piracy, it further grew. Men often joined the pirate ships that attacked their own towns.^{[citation needed]} Even the sailors on merchant ships attacked by pirates turned to piracy when they were out of work.^{[citation needed]} Piracy offered a lucrative career, a chance for those who were interested to try to change their lives and better their livelihood a hundredfold in a short time. For example, the area around Crete, with its slave markets, was known as "the Golden Sea" because of the profitability of the slave trade.^[8]

Crete was also notable for its pirates. If a city had a successful slave market it was most likely a pirate port. Notorious pirate havens like Cilicia and Delos had thriving slave markets. According to the ancient geographer Strabo, as many as ten thousand slaves were sold in Delos in one day.^[12] Being kidnapped by pirates and sold into slavery was so common that it was a theme of ancient Greek dramatists.^{[citation needed]}

Histories of the early Mediterranean include many references to piracy and measures taken to deal with it. Egypt is the primary source for many of these early accounts, both because of its greater level of documentation in comparison with the less developed states of the Greek Dark Ages and because much of its documentation was carved into stone or preserved in the dry sand.^{[citation needed]}

The Amarna letters, a series of 362 clay correspondence tablets from the king of Babylon to Pharaoh Amenhotep III or his son Akhenaten written around 1350 BCE, tell of sea raiders beginning not just to plunder ships but also to capture Babylonian towns.^[13] The correspondence reveals how such piracy could affect both commerce and diplomatic relations between kingdoms. The tablets mention two groups of pirates, the Lukka (modern Turkey) and the Sherden, raising both security concerns and economic disruption.^[4] Correspondence between the Egyptian pharaoh and the king of Alashiya emphasizes the threat posed by the Lukka, with Akhenaten accusing the Alashiyan king of aiding the pirates.^[5] The king denied this, claiming that his own cities had been raided and that he had introduced countermeasures to combat piracy.^[5][4]

Nearly a century later, the Sherden remained a threat, with Ramses II recording on the Tanis Stele, "the unruly Sherden whom no one had ever known how to combat, they came boldly sailing in their warships from the midst of the sea, none being able to withstand them."^[14]

The diverse group known collectively as the "Sea Peoples", a term used by Ramses III on his mortuary temple at Medinet Habu as well as on numerous obelisks and stelae, may have also been pirates. Ramses III recorded accounts of attacks by named enemies of the Peleset (Philistines), and even the Hittites, but several of the enemies he is shown to be subjugating are only given the uncertain epithet "of the sea". Ramses III describes how he defeated them by drawing them inland, "like the sand on the shore."^[15] Possible members of the "Sea Peoples" include the Tjeker people of Crete, who left to settle Anatolia, the seat of the Hittite Empire, which is known to have clashed with the Egyptians.^[16]

This negative view of the Sea Peoples in Pharaonic texts follows the general pattern of Egyptian discussion of outsiders; they are viewed derogatorily until they become useful. There is evidence that as the power of Greece and Persia grew, it became more acceptable for Egyptian rulers to hire pirates for their own ends, and by the early Hellenistic period they were so widely employed as extra-legal forces that "there seemed to be no real distinction made between a pirate and a mercenary."^[17] Despite the closeness between these two professions, they were not synonymous with "criminal." The original Greek word for pirate was not incorporated into the language until 140 BCE.^[13] More often than not, 'pirate' simply implied 'other an outsider', but not necessarily a lawbreaker.^[18]

The rulers of Minoan Crete were the first to raise a navy specifically for the purpose of battling piracy. Greek sources describe this navy as the product of the legendary king Minos, and suggest "it is likely he cleared the sea of piracy as far as he was able, to improve his revenues."^[19] According to myth, he curbed piracy in his area until his fleet was destroyed by a tsunami around 1400 BCE, and piratical activities resumed.^{[citation needed]}

Many texts from Bronze Age and archaic Greece condone piracy as a viable profession. In ancient Greece, "piracy seems to have been widespread and widely regarded as an entirely honourable way of making a living."^[20] Numerous references are made to its normal occurrence in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, thought to have been written from oral tradition sometime in the 7th or 6th century BCE—for example: