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c h a p t e r f o u r Dialectic of the Medieval Course d a n i e l h e l l e r - r o a z e n Whether ancient, medieval, or modern, seafarers share one common trait: despite the havoc they may wreak, they cannot all be considered equally illegitimate . Many sources indicate, admittedly, that maritime explorers are generally to be feared; but it is significant that, no matter the force they may exert, sailors rarely claim the title of bandit for themselves. Both times Odysseus and his companions are asked whether they are not “pirates [ληϊστῆρες] who roam the seas, risking their lives and bringing harm to others,” the Homeric hero declines to answer in the affirmative.1 There can be no doubt that the question put to him was comprehensible. The actions of the great Achaeans during war bore more than a passing resemblance to those of robbers, and in the Homeric world it was no easy thing to distinguish between the varieties of armed men traveling by ship. Once at least, Odysseus joyfully recalled how he forsook the land for the sea: “I reveled in long ships with oars; I loved polished lances, arrows in the skirmish, the shapes of doom that others shake to see. Carnage suited me; heaven put those things somehow in me. Each to his own pleasure!”2 Then, admittedly, the crafty Ithacan was in disguise, claiming, as he did more than once, that he was a Cretan.3 That mask fit the Homeric hero almost too well. Odysseus competed with the other Greeks for a fame that would depend , at least in part, on the booty to be seized from the sacked city of Troy, and his distinction in battle was to be measured by the magnitude of that which he would take back with him from his raids. As a scholar has recently remarked, “it would seem, therefore, difficult for the modern student of Homeric society to determine exactly, or even approximately, where any boundaries between warfare and piracy might be drawn.”4 This much seems to have changed little in later antiquity. It appears that the people of the classical antiquity, like Goethe’s Mephistopheles, held “war, commerce and piracy” (Krieg, Handel und Piraterie) to be essentially “three in one” (dreieinig), “not to be disjoined” (nicht zu trennen).5 From the archaic age of Greece through to the end of the Roman period, the 70 Rethinking the New Medievalism promise of plunder remained, as Servius observed, the most common reason why anyone—citizen or criminal—would set sail.6 The ancient lexicon of seafaring is to this degree significant. In Greek as in Latin, a reference to “pirate ships” (λῃστρικὰ πλοῖα, piratica navigia) remains resolutely ambiguous. It may point to vessels of two very different sorts: those belonging to bandits, and so, too, to those belong to the appointed representatives of a lawful state.7 The ancient authors show every sign of having been well aware of the formal difference that may separate the two varieties of violent seafarers. Numerous sources indicate that the writers of the classical age could distinguish, when necessary, between the roving standard-bearers of cities who sacked and pillaged their enemies, on the one hand, and on the other, the raiders who preyed on the sedentary inhabitants of the Mediterranean without claiming any rights. Some scholars have argued that the awareness of this distinction is as old the records of Greek culture and that already in the Homeric world, the warrior and the bandit were not considered to be of the same kind. It suffices, some have argued, to recall the relatively marginal place of the term “pirate” (or “plunderer ,” λῃστής) in the epic vocabulary. In the Odyssey and the Iliad, this expression refers exclusively to characters of minor status and negligible dramatic importance, and although many of the major Achaean and Trojan figures commit rapacious acts at sea in search of booty, not one suffers the dishonor of finding himself designated by the iniquitous epithet. The philological evidence suggests a conclusion, therefore, that cannot but perplex: although perfectly aware of the distinction between the legitimate and the illegitimate pillagers of the sea, the ancients did not assign to it any single name. The classical authors disposed of no term, be it Latin or Greek, by which they might divide among the wide expanse of roving sailors, separating in a single gesture the lawful...

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