Slave Trade
The main trade of the pirates was slavery. Roman merchants bought the most slaves. Roman land owners held large plantations worked by slaves. Sicily was notorious for its slave plantations owned by Romans.
Delos became the center of the Mediterranean slave market; other markets included those of Rhodes and Alexandria. At its heyday, a 100,000 slaves passed through its markets in a single day. With the plantations came a harsher system of slavery and greater demand. Western Asia was the main supply, and was reduced by piracy and Roman tax farmers.
Read more about this topic: Cilician Pirates
Famous quotes containing the words slave and/or trade:
“I have stopped smoking now and then, for a few months at a time, but it was not on principle, it was only to show off; it was to pulverize those critics who said I was a slave to my habits and couldn’t break my bonds.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“... it must be obvious that in the agitation preceding the enactment of [protective] laws the zeal of the reformers would be second to the zeal of the highly paid night-workers who are anxious to hold their trade against an invasion of skilled women. To this sort of interference with her working life the modern woman can have but one attitude: I am not a child.”
—Crystal Eastman (1881–1928)