Organised Crime in Antiquity

The nine papers in this edited book derive from an international conference on organised crime held at Lampeter, 1996. They illustrate the antiquity of violence and crime and the need to put evidence for criminal activities into their social context.

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'What are states but large bandit bands, and what are bandit bands but small states?' So asked St Augustine, reflecting on the late Roman world. Here nine original studies, by established historians of Greece, Rome and other ancient civilisations, explore the activities and the images of ancient criminal groups, comparing them closely and provocatively with the Greek and Roman government which the criminals challenged.