Organized Crime in Classical Antiquity

Organized Crime in Classical Antiquity (Sponsored by the Division of International Criminology) authored by Bowman, Blythe.:

POSTER ABSTRACT Organized crime is generally regarded as a relatively modern phenomenon, and as such most histories take as their focus the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries with the Italian Mafia as the standard against which other forms of organized crime are compared. But is organized crime really the modern threat that we think it is? The purpose of this poster is to trace the evidence for organized criminal activity in classical antiquity by means of an historiographic approach. Forms of organized crime in ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, and Byzantium will be emphasized. This poster will contribute to the body of literature on organized crime by broadening and refining our understanding of its nature and origins. More generally, it also adds to the criminal justice enterprise in that it engenders a distinctly interdisciplinary perspective on the modern organized crime phenomenon.