translation of LE ISOLE E I PIRATI
by Angelo Mazzei
published by Musei dell’Arcipelago Toscano (Official Guide)
ISLANDS AND PIRATES
A HISTORICAL ANALYSIS
Angelo Mazzei, Museo Archeologico di Marciana
Islands and piracy have shared an intertwined history since antiquity. From the earliest Mediterranean voyages, islands alternately served as pirate strongholds and as their targets. The particular geography of Elba, for example, renders it analogous to a ship: when attacked, its inhabitants have no recourse but to resist, since both an island and a vessel inherently offer no avenues of escape. For the same reasons, islands also functioned as strategic bases, enabling pirates to strike merchant shipping with agility.
For millennia, the sea was the principal conduit for contact and exchange among distant cultures. It is plausible that humans privileged maritime routes from the Paleolithic, and certainly from the Mesolithic, as attested by the distribution of obsidian from islands into continental contexts. In the Tyrrhenian-Ligurian Sea, Neolithic deposits of Sardinian obsidian found in Provence attest to maritime routes connecting major and minor islands along the way. Distinctively colored cliffs and mountains with recognizable profiles, along with the stars, served as primary navigational aids for ancient sailors. Whether these early mariners were “pirates” in a formal sense is uncertain; opportunism often defined seafaring predation, blurring the modern distinction between sailor and pirate.
The Tuscan Archipelago would have been a veritable paradise for piracy, simultaneously serving as both base and target. The earliest bibliographic attestation comes from Apollonius of Rhodes, who, in Argonautica—narrating events set in the 13th century BCE—composed his work around 270–260 BCE in the rich intellectual environment of Ptolemaic Alexandria, contemporaneous with Rome’s final conquest of Etruria and its islands. The earliest surviving textual references to piracy are found in the Amarna Letters, 14th-century BCE cuneiform documents from Egypt, which report correspondence between the Egyptian and Cypriot rulers concerning the predations of the Lukka.
While modern scholars locate the Lukka in southwestern Anatolia, six to seven centuries later associated with Lycia, the phonetic similarity with the Ligurians—protohistoric populations reputed by ancient historians to have colonized Italy from southern Gaul and settled its islands—is compelling. From these same islands emerged the first pirates to enter Greek literary myth: the Tyrrhenians or Tyrsenians, who, according to a Homeric hymn, even abducted a god. Interestingly, the islands and their inhabitants were named Aithalia and Aithalit, as recorded by Stephanus of Byzantium in his Ethnica.
The first historically documented instance of piracy in the Western Mediterranean occurred between Corsica, the Tuscan Archipelago, and Sardinia. This involved the Phocaeans, refugees from the Turkish coast expelled by the Persians, who established themselves at Aleria (ancient Alalia) and intercepted the many vessels transiting the Corsican Channel. Piracy was a tolerated craft; the open sea was considered a common domain, and no divine laws safeguarded territorial limits. Sailor and pirate were often near-synonymous, and the leader of pirates frequently doubled as island ruler. Homeric epics corroborate this, particularly in Odysseus’ nostos, including his encounters in these waters with Circe, described by Greek historians as a “Ligustian woman.” Servius Honoratus even reports that some identified Elba as “Ilva Ithaca.”
Islands continued to play pivotal roles in the centuries following Apollonius. From secure refuges, they later became prime targets for raids in the post-imperial period and, between the 4th and 6th centuries CE, shelters for refugees and religious leaders during Gothic and Lombard incursions. Later, with the emergence of Pisa, the islands became prey to the notorious Saracens from Spain and Morocco.
The distinction between pirates, who acted independently, and privateers, armed with letters of marque from sovereigns, is a later conceptual development. Local vessels patrolling the Tyrrhenian under sovereign authority were considered privateers, while in the 16th century the so-called Barbary corsairs—aligned with Ottoman fleets—terrorized the islands, committing atrocities and deporting youth to North African slave markets. Between 1533 and 1555, Barbarossa, Ucciali, Sinan, and Dragut razed numerous settlements. On Elba alone, towns such as Grassera, Latrani, and Pedemonte disappeared, leaving only the ruins of churches. It was through Cosimo de’ Medici and his Order of the Knights of Saint Stephen that the Turks were finally expelled, restoring the possibility of safe coastal habitation.
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