Pompey’s Pirate Hunt Turns Ugly
Pompey set out to crush the pirates of the Mediterranean—then watched his own freedmen enslaved in revenge.
Unknown — "Colorless glass ring stone" (ca. 1st century BCE–3rd century CE), public domain
The hunter becomes the hunted.
In 67 BC, Pompey took command to rid the sea of pirates. He swept the coast clean—sleek Roman ships chasing ragged galleys across blue water. But the pirates had one last move: they raided Pompey’s own captured settlements, seizing his men and enslaving them far from home.
The cycle of chains.
Pompey won, eventually—thousands of pirates chained and paraded through Rome. But his own freedmen vanished into the vast machinery of slave markets, lost in the very world he tried to destroy. Power, in Rome, always cuts both ways.
In chasing pirates, Rome’s greatest general found himself staring into the same cruelty he swore to end.
