Cilician pirates   Cilician pirates: group of buccaneers,
destabilizing force in the eastern Mediterranean world in the
late second and early first centuries BCE.  Coracesium (modern
Alanya) Coracesium (modern Alanya)  There have always been
pirates in the ancient world, but in the second half of the
second century BCE, they became really dangerous and started to
destabilize the Mediterranean world. Two  factors contributed to
their rise. To start with, the powerful Seleucid empire, which
had controlled the seas, started to disintegrate after c.150,
when an usurper named Alexander Balas became king. In the second
place, the Roman elite had to buy slaves to work on the large
plantations (latifundia) in Italy. Although Rome already sent a
navy, commanded by a praetor named Marcus Antonius, as early as
104 BCE, it refused to take real measures. It needed the
pirates.  As a consequence, the Baleares and Crete became
pirates' nests, and -at a later stage- western Cilicia.
Desperadoes from all countries flocked to