For thousands of years, the calm, bright blue Mediterranean connected the surrounding lands of southern Europe, northern Africa, and western Asia, lands which might otherwise have been separated by rugged mountain ranges, scorching deserts, or vast distances.
Some of the earliest Mediterranean seafaring peoples were the Phoenicians and the Greeks. The Phoenicians sailed literally to the opposite end of the Mediterranean from their homeland in modern-day Lebanon, Syria and Israel, to the legendary gates of the sea between Africa and Gibraltar. They established colonies on the north coast of Africa, the southern coast of Spain, and on the Balearic Islands, Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily. The Greeks, inhabiting the broken coastline of the southern Balkan peninsula and the Aegean archipelago were ideally positioned for seaward exploration. They colonized the west coast of Asia Minor, the "boot" of the Italian peninsula, Cyprus, the Black Sea, Philistia, Cyrenaica, the east coast of Sicily, and the south coast of Gaul.
By the time Rome had begun to expand beyond central Italy, the Phoenician colonies had grown into the thriving Carthaginian Empire, and the Greek colonies had developed into populous and dynamic city states and centers of trade. The early Roman Empire was built upon the infrastructure and trade networks of these cities. Indeed, without them the Romans could hardly have expanded as rapidly and successfully as they did.
In the second century B.C., the clash between growing Roman might and decaying, established empires of the east created power vacuums and chaos. The Roman system of conquest, plunder and slavery created a rising tide of human misery and new classes of desperados, even as it disrupted local authority. The result was an epidemic of piracy, and some of the most deadly slave uprisings in history.