Sulla condizione giuridica dei "capti a piratis" fra testimonianze letterarie e giuridiche

What was the legal status of those who were captured by pirates? Certainly not the servile one, as emerges from the texts of Ulpianus (D. 49.15.24) and Paulus (D. 49.15.19.2). However, the fact that the prisoners were frequently sold as slaves by pirates in the markets raises numerous legal questions about their actual status libertatis. The deplorable phenomenon of the sale of free men ‘capti a piratis’ is also in literary sources and it is in the light of these testimonies that I try to provide a contribution to the study of the ‘de facto slavery’ of prisoners of the marauders of the sea.